The young man in the hoodie pounded his

laptop

. He still had an older model

Macbook Pro

, the ones with the graceful yet sturdy keyboards. One could get a lot usage out of those keys, and the guy in the hoodie had.

In college he had imagined himself becoming a graybeard who always kept the latest and greatest gear. He had been in the

computer science

program.

Little did he know he'd end up working in an industry where computing power wasn't keystone. He got into

web development

. Still, most of his colleagues kept up with the latest and greatest hardware, so long as it was from 

Apple

. He knew coworkers who were pushing pixels on brand new m2 chip machines, knew even coworkers who did nothing but use 

Google

Docs and 

Zoom

who had four thousand dollar machines. While he was over in this 

cafe

pounding onto his 2012 Macbook Pro.

Leaning away from his laptop he glanced around. It was the usual mixture. A small portion of the regulars who were always here carrying out their routine. And then a swath of come-and-goers. People he saw frequently enough, but not enough for the cafe to be part of their routine. There were a lot of these folks. Most of them were college kids. He never hung out in cafes when he was their age. All his friends did, but none of his classmates. The latter were all CS students. And come to think of it, he had spent more time with the latter than his "friends". Did that mean maybe he was more 

friends

with his classmates than he was with his friends?

These questions confused him. He preferred to avoid them. People watching helped with that. So did working, but he had done enough 

Work

for now. The old man who read the physical 

newspaper

was getting up to leave. He always left before the main crowd coming in for their late AM 

coffee

s. The man with the aesthetically shaped skull was seated at the corner. It was strange because the guy in the hoodie saw the man with the nicely shaped skull and at that point the two realized they were doing the same thing. People watching.

Which is not to say that nobody else 

people watch

ed at the cafe. Of course people did. So why was it so peculiar when their glances met. It had felt like the guy in the hoodie had been found out. Similar to an unstoppable object colliding into an unmovable one.

That face. Those eyes. He had seen them before. Felt so familiar. Yet he couldn't point to where. It was like he knew who the person was. But no name or memory or face came to mind. No face came to mind, although he was looking at the face. How could one not recognize someone while looking at their face? It was strange. The guy in the hoodie thought of this one last time, looked at how much coffee was left in his cup, and went back to work.