The end of the two dollar latte

I didn’t sleep well last night, so I did something this morning that I don’t typically do: I went downstairs to Take 5 for a coffee. Normally I go in the afternoon with one of my coworkers, but this morning I am beat.
There’s a big lineup when I get there and I patiently wait my turn and order my two dollar latte (yes, they still have them which is the main reason I go) and then I grab a seat at one of the tables and begin my tortuous wait for caffeine. While I had been ordering my coffee a slim, white, well dressed man in his sixties said to the barrista next to mine, “Latte. Extra hot,” in a South African accent. Hey, I’m not a morning person at the best of times, but I was brought up to be polite and his curt manner turned me off. And as I sat at my table by myself, cleaning my nails with the quadruple-folded receipt that had been given to me telling me which number I was even though I brought my own cup so I’m pretty sure I could figure it out regardless of the level of fatigue I’m currently experiencing, my South African friend gives me a once over managing simultaneously to make me feel underdressed, more tired and a bit like I’d like to have another shower.
Then a homeless black woman comes in. She had the score down: she knows she’s on private property and that the patrons don’t want to be hassled and that she has scant seconds to hit up as many people as she can before she gets kicked out. And I recognized her. I have seen her at least twice before: once taking the bus over the Granville Street bridge during the summer (she had been wearing a skirt or a dress and was humming or muttering quietly to herself, and occasionally laughing) and another time coming out of the Starbucks that is attached to Chapters at Broadway and Granville. I remember the Starbucks time rather vividly: Michael and I were still together and we had decided to go shopping along Granville for some reason. I bought two bras at La Senza with a gift certificate that his mother had given me for Christmas (or my birthday) and it was dark and unbelievably windy. She held the door open for me as she exited Starbucks and I didn’t realize that she was homeless until she asked me for some spare change.
At any rate, I’m quite sure this is the same woman and I look at her jacket which looks decent given that it’s -3 out there, but she’s wearing a dress again and her exposed lower legs looked like they belonged to a twelve year old girl, not a grown woman. The first person she asked said no and she approached me working as quickly as she could and I thought about giving her my change and I could see in her face that she was expecting me to say no and she was just waiting for me to formalize it, which I did and she headed towards some of the other customers and then she stated loudly, “Don’t touch me” as someone from around the counter had come to usher her out. At which point the South African man turned and spat, “Get out of here! We’re sick of you coming in here and bothering us!”. She informed us all that she was not leaving and the Take 5 employee confirmed that yes, she was and before he could grab her she asked another person who was putting the necessary touches on his coffee if he could spare some change, and then the guy grabbed her sleeve and forced her to leave the store.
And the South African man said, “You should have her arrested.”
And the Take 5 guy said, “We’ve tried.”