I sat at the table and watched him carefully orchestrate his meal. He had bread in the toaster and placed a couple of plates next to the stove. He poured some coffee and quietly set the cup in front of me and returned to the stove. He had the eggs and sausage and potatoes plated just as the toast popped. He buttered the toast and put the plate in front of me and carried the other with him to his seat at the end of the table. He looked at the plate and then at me. “I don’t know how we got through yesterday,” he said, “and I don’t know if we’ll get through tomorrow, but I know somehow we’ll get through today.” Then we ate.

When my father died I made that same meal, and repeated the same lines to myself. When Frank died, I stayed in bed. I didn’t want to eat; I didn’t want to get out of bed; I didn’t want to get through the day; I didn’t want tomorrow to come. Finally, in the afternoon, I went down to a coffee shop and sat and drank coffee.

The place was busy with a steady stream of people coming and going, and a number of people parked at tables, staring into their phones, their computers, whatever was in front of them. No one was paying any attention to anything.

There was a woman sitting at a table by herself. She had her computer in front of her and her phone next to the computer. She took off her watch and set it next to the phone. She would stare at her computer for a few minutes, then check her watch, then check her phone. It irritated me. And the more she did it, the more irritated I was. A thousand other days I would have thought about it for a second and moved on, but on that day it stuck to me like a nettle and I got stuck on watching her and getting more and more annoyed. Frank was gone and this woman was still taking up space. She had a clock on her computer, and another on her phone, but she had to keep checking her watch. I couldn’t stop looking at her; I wanted to go over and scream at her. I thought about leaving, just to get away from her, but I kept sitting there and after a while she got up to go back to the counter. She left everything on the table.

I got up and walked past and pocketed the watch and left. I hadn’t made it twenty feet out the door when the woman stopped me. She was with one of the workers, who looked eager to be part of the confrontation.

“You took my watch,” she said.

“What?”

“You took my watch,” she said.