Proximity: A Field Study
Amsterdam Avenue. A Tuesday. Declining scientific credibility.
They reach for the table at the same time.
I have a pen. I have a pogácsa. I have, allegedly, work to do. I am sitting two tables away with a clear sightline and I am going to write it down because that is apparently what I do, I am a person with a pen and an eye for things and also no wifi, but we will get there.
Two people. One table. Last one in the room. They arrive at it simultaneously, which fine, small shop, but still. It has the texture of a setup.
There is a pause.
The pause contains: surprise, the very fast social maths of who got there first (inconclusive), and the performance, and it is a performance, of being a person who is completely fine with however this resolves. Subject A does the open palm, please, after you. Gracious or tactical retreat, unclear. Subject B does the counter-gesture. And then they both do it again at exactly the same moment, and for a second they are two people conducting an invisible and completely inefficient orchestra of politeness over one small wooden table with a wobble.
They sit. Across from each other.
Neither says: so we are doing this.
This is called the Unremarked Arrangement and it is, in my experience, how most things begin.
Distance: 1.2 metres.
Each has claimed their hemisphere. Laptops open. Notebooks open. The universal body language of people who did not come here to meet anyone.
The shop does what it does. Dim in the way it’s always been dim, not moody, just unbothered by the concept of overhead lighting. On the walls, painted angels, each with one word underneath. Honesty. Generosity. Tolerance. Above the front window, slightly faded: Expect a Miracle Today. The glass case holds Dobos torte and poppyseed strudel and things that have been here longer than most of the students currently slumped over sticker-plastered laptops. Behind the counter Philip, mid-fifties, suspenders, the expression of a man who has watched ten thousand people discover there is no wifi and has made his peace with every single one of them, wipes something with a cloth. The book jackets on the wall watch everything and say nothing.
A woman in the corner has been reading the same page for twenty minutes. Nobody is getting anything done. The building knows this about itself. The building has always known this.
Subject A opens a laptop. Subject B opens a notebook.
Both reach for the wifi within forty seconds of each other.
Subject A: a small frown. A re-check. The tap of someone who thinks it’s a password problem and not an absence of password concept problem. Then stillness. Three seconds of a person realising the document they needed lives in a cloud this building doesn’t believe in.
Subject B: thirty-seven seconds later. Less quiet. A small exhale. Looks around the room like wifi might be near the window. Eyes find Philip. Philip has not looked up. Eyes find, briefly, barely, Subject A, who is already staring at an offline screen with the focused expression of someone completely reorganising their afternoon.
They don’t speak. Haven’t yet.
But something is between them now that wasn’t before. Shared meteorological conditions.
The table wobbles when Subject B leans on it. They both look down at it, then back up, and something almost happens and then doesn’t, and they both return to their screens.
Distance: 1.2 metres. Holding. No contact. No borrowed objects. Pen: with me.
Distance: 0.9 metres
Subject A gets up and goes to ask Philip about the wifi.
I have been waiting for this.
Philip answers without looking up. Three words, four maybe, I am across the room. Body language reads: there is not. There has not been. There is a philosophical position being held here and Philip is not going to be the one who abandons it.
Subject A comes back.
Subject B has watched this entire small expedition with the face of someone who already knew the ending. Says something when Subject A sits. Can’t hear from here. Something like worth a shot, the kind of thing you say when you want to say something but need it to be casual, to be nothing, to be just two people at a table.
Subject A makes a face. Small. Involuntary.
They are talking.
Laptop half-closed on Subject A’s side. The universal posture of someone who has stopped performing productivity and isn’t ready to say so. Subject B’s notebook open but pen down. The border wall still technically exists. But there’s light under it.
Subject B also needed the internet for the thing they came to do, it turns out. Subject A has a pogácsa on the table, untouched, it turns out.
Subject B’s eyes go to it. Subject A sees this. Small eyebrow negotiation, three seconds, ends with it being torn in half and the larger piece pushed across. No ceremony. No oh I couldn’t. Just the thing, moving across the table.
I put my pen down for a second.
0.9 metres. Maybe 0.85. I am improvising.
Distance: 0.6 metres
The wobble is gone.
I missed how it happened, there was walnut cake, I was briefly somewhere else, but at some point Subject B tore a strip from the notebook, folded it, wedged it under the short leg. Subject A tested the table with one hand. Nodded once. The nod of someone who noticed a thing and will not be saying so, because saying so would be saying something else, something adjacent, something that rhymes.
Laptop fully closed on Subject A’s side.
They are talking in the way where neither mentions the work because to mention it would be to suggest returning to it, which neither is suggesting. I have seen this before. I have, if I am honest, done this before. I am remaining objective.
Distance: 0.6 metres. Close enough that when Subject B reaches for the coffee cup the sleeve moves through air that an hour ago was still unclaimed.
New unit: one borrowed fact. Subject A has said something about themselves that wasn’t asked for. Just offered. Lightly. I watch Subject B receive it. Slight lean. Small oh. Like they’re tucking something into a pocket.
Subject B’s coat has migrated. First partially, then fully, onto Subject A’s chair. Nobody has mentioned the coat.
My pen is on the table between them.
I am watching the pen.
I cannot fully explain why I am watching the pen.
Distance: 0.3 metres
The units are getting away from us and I am going to be honest about this.
0.3 metres. Approximately. The table is very small. They are both leaning forward in a way that is about the conversation and I am respecting that framing.
Things that are units now whether I like it or not:
One inside joke. I don’t know what it is. I know it exists because of the laugh. Not the polite one from earlier. Not the worth a shot one. Shorter. The chuckle that comes out without you choosing to let it.
One almost-interruption, Subject A starts a sentence, Subject B finishes it wrong, Subject A corrects them, they are both right in different ways, this takes four minutes, neither seems to find this inefficient.
One coat, fully on Subject A’s chair. I am not elaborating on the coat.
Two more coffees arrived at some point. Free refills, that’s the policy, has been since the seventies. I didn’t this happen.
Subject B picks up the pen. My pen. Uncaps it. Writes something small in the notebook margin. Caps it. Keeps it.
I think about saying something.
I don’t.
I think I knew, actually. Before this. I think I knew when the pogácsa got torn.
Distance: 0.0 metres
I don’t know when I stopped writing.
Third coffee maybe. Or earlier. Possibly when Subject B said something and I looked up and forgot to look back down. By then the notebook was already closed or I closed it then, I’m not sure of the order, the order had stopped mattering.
You can’t observe a thing you’re inside of. I knew this going in and brought a pen anyway.
The pen is gone. It’s in the pocket of someone who fixed a wobbly table with a torn strip of notebook paper and ate half a pastry they didn’t order and laughed before the punchline and has a coat that’s on my chair and I didn’t write most of it down because I wasn’t taking notes anymore, I was just there, just sitting in it, in a dim bakery on Amsterdam Avenue on a Tuesday, no wifi, laptop closed, the angels on the walls watching with their one word each.
Subject A was not a great scientist.
Subject A had a very nice time.
The Hungarian Pastry Shop has been on Amsterdam Avenue since 1976. No wifi. Limited outlets. Incredible pastry and coffee. Go.
Expect a Miracle Today.
If you have read this far, you were probably hoping for more data. There isn’t any. The observer lost the pen, the notebook, and approximately all scientific credibility somewhere around the walnut cake. She is, however, available for future fieldwork. She will bring a pen. She always brings a pen.