The sun stayed out this afternoon in spite of dark puffy clouds moving by.

“You rarely see that any more,” said Carol.

She was looking across Cambridge Street. I knew what she was talking about from her tone of voice. Three young men, maybe in their late twenties, had just gotten out of a cab. The cab stopped in the middle of the traffic lane just as the light turned green. The last man out of the cab, a tall man with fuzzy blond hair, aviator-style sunglasses, tight jeans, and a funky leather jacket, did not rush.

“You don’t see men walking with such a swagger any more,” said Carol. “And look at his two friends. They’re nothing special, a little schlumpy.”

They were schlumpy, just ordinary guys with ball caps and t-shirts stretched over slightly rounded bellies. One of them lit a cigarette, but you didn’t even notice those two guys, because the guy with the swagger and the fancy leather coat drew your attention. They kept walking up a side street. We walked past a man and a woman explaining MassPirg to passersby, and went into a coffee house.

The coffee house appeared to be crowded. I grabbed a table while Carol got coffee. It wasn’t really crowded, though: there were lots of table with just one person sitting working at a laptop or writing or reading a newspaper. A man near us stood up to go. I waited to see if he’d leave his newspaper, but he picked it up and tucked it under his arm.

The tall thin barista whose blonde hair was dyed vermillion came down the aisle and cleaned off his table. She picked up trash from the other tables where people were still sitting: “Are you done with that?… I’ll take that if you want….” She squeezed her way through the tables back to the counter.

The young man at the table immediately to my right stood up. “Excuse me,” he said to the red-haired waitress, following her as she walked towards the counter. “Excuse me. Excuse me, you’re bleeding.”

She looked down at her hand. Blood was running along one finger. “Oh,” she said cheerfully, “You’re right, I am. Uh, thank you.” She walked behind the counter and showed her hand to a co-worker, a short quiet woman. “I’m bleeding,” she said, smiling.

The young man picked the key for the men’s room. The young woman who was with him stood up and walked over to the counter. “Excuse me, do you have something to clean off the table?” She had a pronounced accent, perhaps from Latin America. The short woman behind the counter looked at her inquisitively. “There’s blood on our table,” said the woman with the accent, smiling.

I watched the MassPirg woman through the front window of the coffeehouse. She peeled off the blue MassPirg t-shirt she wore over her hooded white shirt. She laughed and said something to the MassPirg man, and they walked off in separate directions — the end of the work day, I suppose.

Carol and I had finished our coffee. “Ready to go?” I said. She smiled and nodded. We went out, and walked down to Kendall Square in the warm May sunlight.