This is the first rule. When you select a cafe to write in, you must establish a relationship. Go hungry so you will want to eat....If I order coffee, I don't take advantage of the free refills. I want the people in the restaurant to know that I appreciate the time and the space they are giving me. Also, if you are taking up a table for a few hours, leave more than the ordinary tip...I know this sounds like a very expensive way to write, but this is only the first time. After the initial introduction, you begin quite easily to become a routine. "Oh, there's the writer. How's it going? Want a coffee refill on the house?"

I continue to move more and more into the writing life, devoting most of my day to creative work. Last week I hit the magical twenty hour mark -- the number of hours I'd spend at a part time job. Yesterday morning I tried a suggestion found in many writing guides -- get out of your familiar surroundings and go write in a public place.

Ernest Hemingway did it, making Harry's Bar in Venice a literary landmark. When I studied in Dublin I often used the Bewley's in Westmoreland Street where James Joyce was known to hang out, but I found it too smoky and noisy. I preferred the Winding Stair bookshop in Lower Ormond Quay, which was quiet and fragrant with homemade soup and where I had a broad wooden table overlooking the Liffey.

I don't do a lot of fiction writing away from my computer, and I don't know if that's because writing "in the field" is just not my style or if I'm impeded by having to write in longhand without the ability to move blocks of text around easily. Recently I learned about a portable word processor (a "quasi-laptop") that performs all the functions I need a laptop computer to do, with the look and feel I'm accustomed to, but for about a third of the price of a new Toshiba or Compaq. I ordered one which arrived Friday, and yesterday I took it for a "test type" at a new bread and soup place.

It's suddenly become fashionable around here to tear up the parking lots of shopping centers and plop freestanding one-business buildings down in the middle of them. The Atlanta Bread Company is such a place. It's a franchise, with a set decor, menu, and method of operation. They offer fresh baked breads, bagels, and  pastry items (their motto is "The sun never rises twice on our bread") and their symbol is a wheat sheaf, calling up images of abundance and traditional heartland goodness. There is a gas operated fireplace surrounded by big comfy couches, and the tables and chairs are all a warm blonde wood. It would, if it could, be the Winding Stair in Dublin, but atmosphere like that can't be manufactured, it has to grow.

I got there yesterday about 10:00, probably a little late even for a weekend breakfast crowd. I ordered a sesame seed bagel, toasted (I'm not a purist) and a mug of Constant Comment tea. There weren't many other people there, so I chose a table for four near the middle of the room, just behind the biggest couch.

I have recently become fascinated by footwear. My feet are the only physical feature of my body that I have ever really liked, and I do have fond memories of certain shoes -- saddle shoes in fourth grade, Keds in eighth, penny loafers in college into which I inserted dimes (the price of a phone call then), turquoise Candies slip-ons that made me feel wonderful when I was pregnant, although the only reason I wore them (and wore them out that summer) was that they suddenly were the only ones that fit.

At the Atlanta Bread Company yesterday most people were sporting casual shoes. It was, after all, a Saturday, although there was one young woman in an attractive short-sleeved A-line navy blue linen dress whose trim leather pumps made me long for the days when I dressed like that. She had blonde hair cut perfectly to frame her face. She ordered coffee and handed the clerk a metal Atlanta Bread Company commuter cup. She scanned the front page of a financial newspaper while she waited, and then left. I figured her for an ambitious recent grad in her first job, maybe a lawyer or a bank manager.

The only other person that young was a man who was sitting alone at a table by the window. He was a little on the soft round side and had the look of an academic or a techhie. He was wearing dark pants, a white shirt, a tie, and polished hard dress Oxfords. He had on dark rimmed Drew Carey glasses (actually, he looked a little like Drew Carey) and was reading a thick paperback, the title of which I couldn't see. He was somewhere in the back third of the book. I figured him for an evangelist, who usually come in pairs and ring doorbells up and down our suburban streets, asking if we're saved and offering tracts no matter what the answer.

Two tables over was someone who had obviously read "When I am An Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple" and taken it to heart. She had on a colorful shift, half a dozen bracelets on each arm, dangling earrings, and butterfly clips in her thinning, dark red hair. She was wearing sisal sandals with a thong fashioned of a red bandana. When she got up to get a coffee refill the movement sent waves of her perfume ("Jungle Gardenia, the favorite fragrance of beautiful women," I decided) that would have made me aware of her even if I hadn't been deliberately watching people.

A woman in her early forties had evidently taken her parents out for breakfast. They were conservatively dressed, the daughter in seersucker shorts and a polo shirt, with genuine white Keds and white socks on her feet. Her mother had on a polyester pants suit with nondescript white canvas slip-ons. Her father appeared to be a fashion victim fallen prey to that peculiarity of older men -- shorts and a camp shirt over dark dress socks and white sneakers. He reminded me of my father.

A young family occupied the table beside me. The parents were in their mid-thirties, apparently well-to-do. The man had red hair and was wearing shorts, a cotton knit henley, and deck shoes with no socks. The woman had the look of an artist -- good bones, glowing olive skin with no makeup, hair pulled back in a casual ponytail. She was wearing an apricot colored crinkle cotton sleeveless shift that swirled about her calves when she got up to take the children to the bathroom. She had on Birkenstock sandals, and her left ankle was in a nylon wrap-around brace. The children, a boy about four and a girl maybe six, had on sandals and crisp pressed cotton play clothes. The little girl's hair was arranged in a perfect French braid, the boy's was neatly trimmed. As Phil Donahue used to say, they looked like they'd been sent over from central casting to represent the American dream.

The table I was sitting at was actually a good height for writing in my notebook, but not for laptop typing. (Hmm -- there might be a reason they're called laptops!)  My second cup of tea was cold, so I saved the notes I had and left to get on with the rest of my day.

This morning I decided against church (Lynn and I have adopted an every-other-week summer worship schedule), and went instead for a meditative walk at the river. On the way home I returned the movie we rented yesterday and went into the supermarket for fresh bagels and the New York Times. In front of me at the checkout was the man from yesterday, now dressed in long pants and a short sleeved dress shirt. He, too, was buying bagels and the Times. His wife, wearing a different, slightly more tailored shift and with a ruffled wrap securing her ponytail, walked up with the two well-scrubbed children in tow, the little girl carrying a bouquet of cut flowers.

I almost said hello.