It starts on a Saturday night, twenty minutes before closing. Ronald, the man who spends all day sitting in a corner booth, has read the entire paper front to back and is now staring out the window. Maya thinks she is the only one who doesn't make him leave after six hours. She feels for him, his half toothless grin, purple bags hanging heavily under bloodshot eyes; refills his coffee on her own dime. That night, he is wearing three coats and he winces everytime he shifts in his seat. He talks to her about poverty, capitalism, what it means to be american versus what the higher ups want it to mean. Right versus wrong. He talks about Karl Marx and most of the time makes no sense but she listens raptly, understanding one thing: it's shitty to be lower class in this city. People in power do not give a shit, regardless of what they say.
While she wipes down the tables, he stares out the window. Between filling a Styrofoam to go cup up with hot chocolate and wrapping up a few day old muffins and bagels, she asks him where he hangs when he's not there.
"Over on Ryner Ave, in Bed Stuy," he answers, eyes stuck outside, somewhere just beyond reality. "Wish there was something pretty to look at over there. Not like here, see that painting?"
Maya snorts, "That's graffiti, Ron, tagging. It's not like it sunflowers or roses."
He laughs, "You just ain't lookin' at it right, girl, it's a work of art. Nothing like that where I live, they painted over the only art there was, too cold for anybody to go out there and put more up"
She hands him the cup and bag, he tries to give her a few crumpled dollar bills.
Maya rolls her eyes, "Don't worry about it now, Ron, I already closed the register."
He looks suspicious, but drops it, "Careful, little girl."
Maya simply raises an eyebrow. He shakes his head, touches a dirty hand to her shoulder, "People gonna realize there's a heart under all that snark"
"Not likely, Ron."
After she locks the door, she starts counting her tips. That night, she sits in Ron's usual seat and stares at the grafitti; its regular tagging, some fancy symbols. The color is too much for her taste, all over and wild, but the longer she looks the more she gets it. It's an act of rebellion that artistic in nature but abrasive in practice. Forcing people to see look at it, you have no choice but to acknowledge it. That night, she stops at a grocery store, pays a jacked up price for a simple can of black spray paint.
She practices everyday, sits out on her fire escape with poster board. spends forever spraying her name, the alphabet, Riley's name, everything she can think of until the bottle stops spraying even air.
In short, she sucks.
Being a proud Gen Y baby, she retreats to the internet to research. Within an hour, she's got a whole new world opened in front of her and a plan.
The next time she walks home from work, she goes to an art store and buys a few cans of black spray paint, some cardboard, and an x-acto knife.
In the end, it takes exactly three weeks to get everything just perfect. She agonizes over the cutouts and the pressure of the can, the perfect angles. She sneaks out of the house at two in the morning, wearing her usual clothes plus a few layers of sweaters and a leather jacket
She walks for half an hour and is done in fifteen minutes, the work done a little sloppier due to darkness and jittery fear of being caught. Her adrenaline is flowing hard and she sprints the whole way home, stopping only when she gets into the alley with her fire escape. She climbs the in through her window, relieved that her mother doesn't even seem to be home yet.
She is grinning, and asleep before her head hits the pillow.
The next time she sees Ron, he is grinning at her so hard she thinks she's never seen so many of the teeth he has left.
"You did a nice thing, girly." He says, eyes glittering and watery.
"Don't know what you're talking about, Ron." Maya says, pouring coffee into a freshly washed mug in front of him. "Between work, school, and being a badass I don't have time to do nice things."
"Sure, sure." He is still smiling into his coffee, shaking his head. "But for future reference, girl, sunflowers in the middle of January is a little too obviously ironic. You should have stuck with the roses or something."
She's never felt more accomplished, but scowls at him anyway.