courtyard

The courtyard on the outskirts, between Nordstrom’s EPUB coffee bar and the blank side of the Crate & Barrel, wasn’t the first place I noticed, but it is where I spent the most time observing. I was having a water break, and sat in the shade under the lilac tree on the tiled rim of its giant pot. It wasn’t a hot day, but it was hot enough and all the shaded patio tables in the half-fenced area were taken. A well-dressed guy in a tan blazer and blue oxford shirt, maybe a doctor or some other researcher from the adjacent Stanford medical center or even the university, slouched over the table, head down and evidently having a rest. Maybe he was even napping under his dark sunglasses. Another young man, also in business attire but this time a navy sport coat and a light blue shirt, sat with several plastic takeaway salad bins from the EPUB counter. The evidence suggested that he was on an extended lunch break; he had been at the same station an hour earlier when I started my inaugural tour of the shopping center. These two guys didn’t appear to me to be shoppers at these outpost shops, nor to be employees on break from their duties in the shops. Members of both of those cohorts were evident and obvious in the patio as well, scattered about and the former mostly solo, the latter in small groups around a table or making an order.

The space surrounding the patio seating puts either building some noticeable distance away. And the rectangular fenced area itself, occupying the closer-to-Nordstrom’s half of a square that surrounds the central tree is even larger still. All this space wasn’t so obvious in the moment. The few people walking through, except if they came into the lunch pen, they had no reason to approach one another at all out there. An elegant and reserved older shopper carefully carried her salad kit from the counter window to the small table next to my seat, and the clutch of young employees exiting the Nordstrom’s brass and glass doors for a break took another table closer to the store. A large circle of the floor is paved with a grid of plain terracotta and sculpted, colorfully hand painted, tiles. Occasionally a small group of construction workers passed through the gap between the buildings on the right, outside the fence, still wearing hard hats and electric green safety vests, on their way to or from some project. Crate & Barrel’s facade on the far side is a tall brick wall with a metal sash covering the bottom half rather like an armored reinforcement. It’s a high wall, far away.

jg

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