Awakening

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, With sweet musk-roses and eglantine.-- Shakespeare,A Midsummer Night's DreamMidsummer eve, 10:00 p.m.Francesca couldn't help herself. She stood at the window of the Internet cafe, the Mouse and Icon, and spoke to the fogged-up glass."It was a dark and stormy night."Her mind moved in cliches when she was tired, which was more often than not. This job, number two, meant five nights a week at this cafe and three nights out of those five came on the heels of a long shift at a coffee shop down the street.Cliches were a very bad sign, especially this early in her week.The mostly muted din of the twenty computers, four printers, three pinball machines and their accompanying humans, had turned into an all-out roar this midsummer evening. She checked the room again. Every keyboard clicked, every printer whirred.And the pinball machines? They rattled and boinged and pinged. And voices occasionally screamed,"Yes"as an accompaniment to all the other noises.She strolled as casually as she could manage through the rows of faded office chairs. The chairs weren't occupied by the usual crowd of university students and kids from the many ESL schools in the neighborhood. At least half of the chairs held women, which was unusual in itself, but these women were her age, which was so odd as to shift it over from unusual to downright peculiar.Francesca spent most of her nights surrounded by young men so engrossed in their computer screens that they barely acknowledged her existence as she passed behind them.Francesca smiled.She liked this job.Liked it despite the fact that most of her customers didn't remember to shower most days. Neo, the owner of the Mouse and Icon, had bought the most expensive systems on the market and he upgraded them every three months. The Mouse had equipment even hackers envied.Francesca spent a fair amount of time trying not to think about where Neo found the money because he certainly didn't make it at the Mouse and Icon.But because of it, even serious users whose apartments were full of computer equipment dropped in once or twice a week. Serious users, like all addicts, didn't have much time for personal hygiene.The regulars stopped at the front desk to pay their tab and sometimes to decompress on their way home, their eyes glazed from staring at the screen. They told her about their projects, their childhoods, their dreams -- they talked as a way to come down from the Internet buzz and get ready for a few hours sleep before they got up for school in the morning.Sometimes, when it was very late and the streets were quiet, when only one or two tired boys sat at the computers in the back, when the Mouse's buzz had turned still, Holy Joe, one of the most regular of the regulars, would stop by the desk on his way home to talk about the house."It's there," he'd say, "I know it is. Father Henry used to talk about it.""But where?" Francesca would always ask, wanting to believe but scared to. "I don't know. But Father Henry isn't the only one who's been there. You know that big cop who works at the station down the street? The one who runs the children's fund?""Yes," she'd say. "He's always smiling." Something she noticed because it was so unusual in this neighborhood. The father and the cop. Their smiles, so sweet and serene, made Francesca want to believe.After those conversations she'd spend the rest of the night weaving together the few snippets she'd heard, daydreaming herself into the safety of the house. Another world.Francesca knew not just anyone could get there. She knew that, even though it was near, it wasn't really here. Basically, she thought, she knew... nothing about the house.Eventually, she'd throw up her hands in disgust and resolve to live inthisAustin, Kate is the author of 'Awakening', published 2006 under ISBN 9780373881024 and ISBN 0373881029.