No Answers

At 6'4" and nearly 300 pounds, his body is not built for blending in. His clothes do not help: a Mizzou golf shirt with bright gold stripes from his underarms to his waist. From the moment he appears in the cafe area of Barnes and Noble, he seems to be trying to fade into the background.

Mizzou-guy doesn't bother with coffee or even a cookie. He picks a one-person table and shifts the chair to position himself behind a nearby column, facing the back of the store. He takes off his glasses and sets them on the table, then opened the hot-rod magazine he carries. He can't see the magazine with the glasses and can't see the object of his attention without them, so he reads a moment, puts the glasses on to check whatever it is, then takes the glasses off to read. Periodically, he leans a bit more to the right, putting more of his body behind the column, and then peers around it toward the back of the store.

Fifteen minutes into this peculiar dance, Mizzou-guy leaps to his feet and practically runs toward the back of the store, abandoning his magazine. His belly, hanging down at least 5 inches over his belt, ripples from the sudden movement, something like the water in a pool after a teenage boy's cannonball.

What or who was he watching? Where did he go? Why is a tired looking, middle-aged man hiding in plain sight in the cafe of a suburban bookstore?

I'll never know, but I've got the itch to make up a story for him.