“A Noble Act”
John finished typing and took a sip of his vanilla soy latte. He read over the few paragraphs and, while a tad clunky, they seemed to adequately cover the lead up to the Franco-Prussian War. He took a few minutes to go over his notes, then continued typing up his paper for Professor Scallan.
He didn’t get far before he heard a muttered, “What the hell?”
Glancing up John saw a couple of the other patrons of A Cup of Joe’s were somewhat agitated and pointing out to the street. He looked where they were pointing, and at first his brain couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing. John stood and rushed out on to the sidewalk. There were twenty or so young men marching down the street with about half of them carrying swastika flags.
After looking at them for a few seconds, John lifted both hands flipping them off. Several of the men saw John and sneered at him, which just made him stiffen his middle fingers all the more.
As they passed in front of the café, John saw a lady across the street filming them with one hand while flipping them off with the other.
The men turned right at the next intersection, and disappeared from view.
Walking back into the café, John was met with applause. The elderly man sitting next to the door with his wife, reached out a shaking hand to take John’s, and said, “Thank you.” Not really knowing what to do, John just nodded to the man, then gave a little wave to the other patrons.
He sat down, and after a calming sip, tried to get his thoughts back to 1870 France. But a few minutes later, one of the baristas came to his table and set a piece of paper down. “Thanks,” she said, before quickly leaving.
John picked up the paper and saw a handwritten “Good for one free drink,” coupon with the date and a couple of signatures. More interestingly, at the bottom was the name Julie, and a phone number.
Looking over his shoulder towards the counter, he saw the three baristas giggling.
While the paper was due in two days, and he needed a good grade on it, something like this didn’t happen every day. So he went over to the counter to see which one was Julie.
Go back to the main Monthly Story page, or the main page of my website.
For each story I publish, I like to give the backstory, or anything interesting that happened while writing it. You can see what I wrote for this story on my Published Works page.
***
If you liked this story, you might want to check out A Man of Few Words, my collection of fifty stories all under 1000 words.