ALL I WANNA DO by SHERYL CROW. Story by Marcelo Medone.

Los Angeles, California, USA, November 2024. Montevideo, Uruguay, February 2025.

I take a sip of my coffee, contemplate for a moment through the window the incessant comings and goings of passers-by on the pavement of our café in the Old City of Montevideo, look Moira in the eyes and begin my narration.

It was the first time I had been in that café. In fact, it was my first time in Los Angeles. The place was very comfortable and tastefully decorated.

Moira smiles shyly, hypnotising me from across the table with her catlike green eyes. Perhaps as a reflexive act of mirror neurons in action, she also takes a sip of her latte.

Emboldened, I continue with my story.

This café had invited me in, with its sober but forceful sign in Spanish: Café Tuyo, or Your Coffee. It was not, however, a typical café designed to attract a mainly Latino clientele. The setting did not display any of the clichés of California’s Spanish-speaking culture.

Moira continues to listen to me attentively. Good point.

I sat at a table by the window, settled my jacket on the back of the chair, and gazed out at the Los Angeles morning through my privileged vantage point on Santa Monica Boulevard. The sun was beating down hard even though it was late November.

I take another sip of my coffee, not because I need to drink some, but to add drama to my narrative. Moira continues with her marvelous smile that has me completely seduced.

The waitress came over, a girl in her thirties. I liked her right away, with her fresh and friendly expression.

“Good morning, welcome to Café Tuyo,” she said in perfect American English mixed with perfect Argentine Spanish, evidenced by the way she pronounced the word Tuyo, more like a Rioplatense tutcho than a Latin tuio. “What are you going to order?”

“Sos Argentina, ¿no? —You’re Argentinian, aren’t you? —” I asked in my native Buenos Aires dialect.

She smiled and answered me as if it were a secret.

“No, I’m not Argentinian, but almost. My parents are. I was born here, in LA. It’s a long story.”

“You’ll have to tell it to me later,” I said.

“I’ll leave you the menu,” she replied.

“You don’t have to. I’ll have a double caffeinated coffee and a slice of apple pie.”

“Perfect!”

Before she left, I asked her name.

“Moira,” she replied.

Now I have my Moira’s undivided attention across the table in my Montevideo café.

“You’re kidding me, aren’t you?” she says.

“No. I swear to God. It’s just that when you told me your name, I immediately remembered the Moira I met in the United States.”

“They say that writers tend to make things up. Especially Argentinians. You qualify to be a real trickster. “

“And you are the most beautiful Uruguayan girl I’ve ever met. And that’s not an invention, it’s a fact.”

Moira smiles without blushing. Surely, she’s used to receiving compliments from strangers like me.

“Shall I tell you more about the Moira of Los Angeles?”

“Go on. I’m all ears.”

I had taken an Uber from my hotel in Beverly Hills to there, because I had to meet an editor of a local magazine who had already published a story for me and wanted to publish me again, this time as a guest writer. We had arranged to have lunch at the UCLA campus nearby, which has a very nice outdoor restaurant. The Uber driver was an African American man in his thirties named Dorion. I told him I wanted to go to Santa Monica Boulevard. Dorion was listening to a rap song on his radio. I asked him if he knew the song All I Wanna Do by Sheryl Crow. I sang to him, in my best baritone voice: All I wanna do is have some fun, until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard. Dorion shrugged, telling me he didn’t know it, but promised he would look it up and asked me if his music bothered me, to which I replied that it was fine.

“I love Sheryl Crow,” Moira says, interrupting me.

I look at her, surprised.

“If you want, after we’ve had our coffees, we can go to my flat nearby. I have a lot of records you might be interested in,” I tell her.

“We can go now. My latte is already cold,” she says.

“The story of the waitress in Los Angeles,” she says, dazzling me with her catlike green eyes, “you just made that up, didn’t you? And, of course, there was no Moira.”

“You’ll to have to find out while we listen to Sheryl Crow,” I reply.

 

 

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