Breakfast Stories

Low chatter emanates through the homey dining hall. Light wooden tables and chairs, faux oil paintings, sunlit windows. The lunch rush has just passed, and a peacefulness will linger until the dinner hour. Each day hundreds of students pass through Vdub, as they affectionately call the hall At 7:30 sharp yawning kids holding hot cups of coffee file in; at  8:30 pm the tables are crowded with athletes who’ve come straight from practice, with pj-wearing freshmen who’ve descended from the dorms above. 

Lena Silva sits at her own round table right behind the swipe-in desk, a paper plate of crumbs in front of her and her phone in hand. She glances up warily when I  mention an interview, and seems to relax only a little when I reassure her she will stay anonymous. But Lena shifts her chair over and lets me sit next to her.

 She spins me a story. “I come to this country when I was 14 years old,” she says, “because many years ago, we had a big war, and my brother almost went to the war. My father decided to come to this country to save my brother.” It was 1972; the family fled the Azores in Portugal for West Warwick. Silva has been in Rhode Island ever since. 

She’s been working at Brown for 17 years. Every Monday through Friday, 12:30 pm until 9 pm. Yet she wakes up at 7. I ask why, and she says she likes to cook lunch for her husband. I ask how they met. She smiles and tells me they’d both been working in a soap factory. “Would you say it was love at first sight?” I ask. Her smile deepens. “Yes,” she says without hesitation. And with the wisdom only 20 years of marriage can bring, she says to me, her eyes twinking, “You can feel in your heart. When you meet somebody, your heart is gonna say yes. The first time, you know? One day you gonna feel it.” 

Silva says the key to long-lasting relationships is to do a lot of things together. “If you do something else, something else, the marriage not gonna work. If you want to keep your marriage, you got to work together.” On the weekends, she and her husband go out to dinner, spend time with friends, dance. 

The smile on her face still hasn’t faded. 

This is not to say that Lena and her husband haven’t been through trials and tribulations. I ask if they have children, and she tells me they have three kids, two on this earth. Their daughter passed away when she was a baby. “It’s important it’s in your heart,” she tells me, putting a finger to her chest. “You no show, but it’s inside.” She knows her baby girl is always watching over her and her family, she says.

We chat a bit more. She tells me about her grandkids, her plans for after retirement to go to the Azores for a few months every year. I thank her for her time. She chuckles as if to say “of course,” and returns her gaze to her phone. I take one last look at her before I leave the Vdub, and she’s chatting on the phone with someone, smiling widely. She’s probably talking to family. 

Her voice is accompanied by the clinking of the coffee machine and lively students engaged in conversation. In front of the cashier at Barus and Holley Cafe, tiny square tables align in a precise, somewhat sterile grid. Above, a harsh draft–-the air conditioning is always two degrees too cold. 

But Samantha Powers knows my order by heart. She sings it out as if it were a 2000s pop hit, enthusiastic and impossible to forget.

“Sausage egg and cheese?”

“Iced vanilla oat?”

“Everything bagel, my love?”

  A student in front of me asks Powers for a recommendation and she responds instantly. “If you like the dirty chai you’d definitely like the raspberry matcha. It’s awesome.” 

I start to wonder what Powers’ personal favorite drink is and realize I never asked her. Come to think of it, I don’t know what her go to food order is either. Wait… does anyone know what Powers eat for breakfast? 

My classmates don’t know either–I find out, upon asking them while waiting for my drink. The line moves too fast, they say. No time for conversation. And so, we get to know people for years, without ever knowing them at all. 

What makes her so good at her job? Who is the smile behind the “sausage, egg, and cheese?” When I catch Powers on break, I pop my question.

“What did you have for breakfast this morning?”

She tightens her ponytail, tucking two wispy strands of blonde hair behind her ears. “Two strips of bacon, sauteed spinach, and an Uncrustable. Bought some olive oil over the weekend. Twenty seconds, put it in the oven, and it’s all done.” With a grin she adds, “You picked a good day to ask.”

We bond over a shared love for peanut butter, and she suggests a new combo: peanut butter and sweet potatoes. Within routine, she says, she finds room for spontaneity. For Powers, the extraordinary emerges from the mundane.

“What got you into cooking?” I ask.

“Oh believe me, I was not a cooker. But my boyfriend, he’s actually a chef at the Ratty. He taught me so much stuff about cooking. We’ve been together almost five years now.”

I picture the story: Powers, on the second floor of the Ratty. Her crush, right downstairs.

“He was always so quiet..” She pauses, then laughs heartily. “I, of course, was very outgoing. I can talk to anybody.”

“Then COVID started,” she says, “and I invited him to work out with me.” She paints for me a romantic scene: He, she,  a friend of hers, a global pandemic, and some “super-bougie equipment.”

I wait for the dramatic love confession, but it never arrives. Real love, in this story, is less flashy, more sincere.

“He was just like, ‘Hey, I like you.’ And I was like, ‘I like you too.’ And he was like, ‘Wanna be my girlfriend?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ And that was that.”

Most people fixate on the excitement of love and relegate the “happily ever after” to the quick highlight reel played as movie credits scroll. But Powers knows that maintaining love—romantic and otherwise—is where the real story lies. Given the liberty to tell me anything, she doesn’t speak in grandiose terms. The skin around her green eyes crinkle as she tells me about beautiful soft tomatoes on the side of the road, her air fryer, her son’s love for chocolate chip pancakes. Her effort to eat healthier to live better, her daughter’s beautiful eyes. She raves about her coworkers–Rachel, who gives the best advice, and Leftie, who is just so genuine. And, she says earnestly, she loves us students. 

“We’re always here to be a listening ear for you guys. Trust me. The love and support we get from you guys—you don’t even know. Just a smile, a ‘hey,’ asking if we’re okay and meaning it. It radiates.”

There it is—what makes Powers so good at her job. Everyone wants to build, but she takes joy in maintaining what’s built. Amidst the chaos of college life, breakfast with her gives me a moment of peace. I stop thinking about what could be and remember to appreciate what is. Because life actually isn’t about the journey or the destination, but those we take the journey with. A good life is made of good days. And good days are made by good people— and a good breakfast.  

Lily Kim stood in line for bubble tea, an apparent health nut. "I'll have peach oolong tea," she told the boba barista. "Zero percent sugar."

I asked her for an interview and she took a step back, scanning me up and down. But a moment later she nodded her head sweetly and said she had some time before her next class. 

We sat at a booth in the corner of the shop. Setting down our backpacks and piercing the plastic of the bubble tea covers on our drinks, we made small talk. She sipped her boba, relaxing into her seat. 

“So, the first thing I’m supposed to ask you is what you had for breakfast,” I said.

She paused, tilting her head to the side. She’d eaten a banana and had some milk, she said. I asked if this was a typical breakfast for her.

“Not really,” she said, “but I’m trying to take better care of my health this year.”

“Did you feel that you weren’t able to last year?”

She laughed nervously, tucking a strand of her shoulder-length hair behind her ear. Afraid that I had asked the wrong question, I told her she didn’t have to answer if she was uncomfortable.

“No, that’s okay,” she said, smiling. “It’s just that I got injured pretty badly last year.” 

Kim was hit by a car last November, two months into college at Brown. “I injured my leg and had three broken bones,” she told me. “I had to have surgery, so I took a medical leave last semester.” She moved her leg out from under the table and pulled up her pant leg to show me the scar. A thick, jagged four to five inch line traced down her lower leg.

Kim explained that her injury was the first in a series of them—from getting concussed to injuring the same leg again while traveling.  It was clear that she had undergone a nightmare freshman year. Yet she told me her story with an unwavering and earnest smile, ending each anecdote with an assurance that she had recovered.

Kim realized she was running late to her class.  She walked off, taking quick, confident steps. She stopped at the crosswalk, looking both ways. The road was clear.

Her wrists are adorned with tiny beaded bracelets, glittering delicately in the soft light of the late afternoon sun. With one knee aimed at the ceiling, her feet tucked neatly beneath the folds of her long pink skirt, we sit facing one another. I can see her personality in her clothing and jewelry, in the way she throws back her messy head of curls mid-laugh. I wonder if this is the same personality as one displayed throughout her art which decorates the classroom studio.

She does not seem shy, but she tries to convince me that she can be. In the prologue of our conversation, she denounces public speaking and villainizes vulnerability, this fear of openness stemming from early childhood memories.

“I think it’s partly who I am. Even when I was little, I wouldn’t join a sports team because I felt too seen. My friends tried to get me to learn guitar, yet the moment I learned there would be a concert, I stopped. I have always not wanted to be on display.”

Her earliest experiences of social anxiety were traumatic, and they linger, she says. She intertwines these anecdotes with ones regarding her adoration for creativity.

“My youngest memories are of wanting to be an artist or author, and that has stayed true with some twists and turns.”

Her shy and artistic natures combine as a source of conflict, she says. Her reluctant approach to publicity hinders her performance in art academia such as classroom critiques and studio assignments. She wants to dedicate her life to creating public art, but avoids sharing herself with the same audience. How can one be an artist without becoming art as a consequence?

On a wobbly desk along the far wall of the studio sit frames and thick stacks of her work—colorfully inked linographs of unicorns from printing class, hand drawn children’s books about lambs and whales, collages of stars that overlap with fuschia flowers and whimsical spaceships. The array is a shrine of sorts, she says, to both her creativity and inner child.

“I am most proud of the work I make where I really put myself into it, but I am always scared to share that with people I don’t trust. And I am never really proud of work I have tried to tone down into what I think will be less judged. While my peers work in our shared studio, I kind of refuse to. I work isolated and don’t want anyone to see. I am doing it for myself.”

Is it still art, then, if no one knows where a work came from? Should a work still be displayed if it was created for only the artist? Must art be shared and the fear of failure be squashed? What does it mean to be art? I ask her this last question aloud

“What is art?” she repeats. “I am struggling over what is more important in it, whether it matters if what I make is just beautiful or has a clear message or if the beauty is in the unclear message… But my biggest goal is to not need this answer or any validation from others.”

“I just want to make what I love and go from there. This sounds narcissistic, but I am truly making art just for myself. For my younger self. I like to think that if I create art very genuinely and authentically, then it will naturally find other girls like me who have lived similar experiences.”

She is not art, and perhaps the significance of her work extends beyond the traditional limitations of ‘fine art’ as well. Maybe, when professional exhibition is not the end goal and emotional weight is left purely personal rather than commercial, the true ‘art’ is simply the hope that a work will find its meaning on its own—without her dictating such to an audience beneath the pressure of academia’s critiquing gaze.

“I f****** hate that guy,” he says, chuckling and taking a drag on his cigarette. 

John Beatty, dressed in a well-ironed dark blue shirt, has just emerged from the doors of Shoreman Bank and pulled a fresh pack of Marlboro Red 100’s out of his pocket. He's eagerly searching for a comfortable place to light his post-work cig and begins taking puffs before he takes a seat with me on the rusting chairs outside Coffee Exchange on the busy Wickenden street. 

Having grown up in Rhode Island, John has found comfort in the small family shops, poorly paved roads, and old buildings hidden under peeling paint. He remembers playing football as a kid near these streets and tries to coach whenever he has the opportunity. But despite his rich history with New England football, he hates nothing more than his own fans and their obsession with championships: 

“They win one more, and they act like it’s, you know, the end of the world,” he says, cackling. 

The hate John feels is for Tom Brady—former quarterback for the New England Patriots and objectively one of the greatest to ever touch the pigskin. John associates with Dallas, and his love for Dallas Cowboys football is larger than the state itself. John’s dad introduced him to the glory days of Troy Aikman and Emmitt Smith, and expressed his love for the team to—and oftentimes through—his son.

“My mom was like, you gotta be crazy if you think I’m naming my son Troy Emmit, so they compromised…with the middle name Troy,” he said. 

John Troy Beatty was written on his birth certificate. John and his father reserved Sundays for football, and if anyone talked on Sundays, it had to be about the game. When he doesn’t travel to visit his father, he now watches the games at home with his girlfriend who sells EVs, recently purchasing a Volkswagen ID.4 which John likes to call an electric go-kart. 

“That’s actually her right there,” he says, pointing to a quiet, sleek car coming down Wickenden. 

He goes back to smoking his cigarette and looks back at me, eager for more football talk. 

John still maintains this commitment to the game, but since the NFL season is not on TV, he supports the University of Texas Longhorns instead. His ties to Texas run deep. 

John has adapted to the vicissitudes of life, adjusting to new locations as a banker as his job asks him to rotate between Warwick and Providence, and after coaching and playing football for so long, he understands that you can’t win your bets every week. He was up this past week by about $200. 

Whether it's coaching, working as a banker, or watching football, he begins his days with banana bread, but it’s clear that certain parts of his life dictate others. The cigarettes reigned supreme. As we’re still discussing our favorite players, he takes his last few drags before grinding the cigarette against the Wickenden pavement. 

He looks up and the conversation comes to a natural close. He steps over the ashes on the ground and continues on to his girlfriend’s car, passing the Coffee Exchange where he’d stop tomorrow morning for his routine fixing of sweet banana bread. 

A crowd of people gather around the train station’s schedule board. Their chatter rises as they realize the 4 pm train to Boston has been canceled. Zola Auguste is not among them. She has remained seated on one of the curved, wooden benches that form a circle at the center of Providence Train Station. She says her day started at about 5:40 that morning, when she grabbed one of four blueberry muffins from a carton she’d picked up from Walmart a few days before. “I stay in bed for 10 minutes first before getting up,” she says. Sometimes, she eats muffins for breakfast. Sometimes, she forgets to go to Walmart during the week and skips breakfast altogether.

As a phlebotomist, early mornings are routine for Zola. Every workday she wears her teal blue scrub pants and uniform shirt, her hair in a low bun per work uniform regulations. But for her,  this routine is new. She has only been living in the United States for 11 months, she says. She and her three brothers came to the U.S. from Haiti, where her mother used to cook them all breakfast. “She made eggs, sweet potatoes, sauce, porridge, spaghetti, and bananas” — the kind of banana “that is a vegetable,” she says, remembering. 

Here in America, keeping up with breakfast every morning has been time-consuming. “If she was here, she would take care of it,” she says in a soft voice, her hands folded in her lap, leaning forwards as she looks at her shoes.

Zola says that, while she and her siblings moved for better lives in the United States, her mother stayed behind to look after her youngest sibling. She misses eating breakfast together with her family. But she’s motivated to work and  send money home—to create a new life in Providence, as her one-year anniversary in the US approaches. 

At some point every morning, I see that guy — the one who orders a large black coffee in his custom-tailored suit before heading off to the financial district. In college, he was the athlete or the frat brother, the guy who seemed to have only a few things on his mind: lifting weights and shotgunning beers. When we think of him, we rarely imagine anything beyond that surface-level image. But what if we took a moment to peel back the persona he started developing as a young teen on the Varsity Football Squad? What if that finance bro you see at Starbucks every morning actually has hidden passions and talents that no one ever hears about? Perhaps it’s because of the carefully constructed exterior he maintains, a barrier between the world’s expectations and the things that truly bring him joy. 

My conversation with John Doe shattered a polished facade, revealing a creative, thoughtful, and unexpected personality beneath the athlete- turned-finance-executive. It all began with a surprising, yet simple question: “What did you have for breakfast this morning?” 

Doe smiled  but kept his sharp and business-like demeanor. “I had scrambled eggs and avocado toast before going to the gym,” he said firmly, “and a black coffee right now. I’ve always been a breakfast guy since I work long hours.” He eats breakfast around 6 am, he said, in order to have time to go to the gym before going to the office. 

I asked if he had played sports in the past. He had played college football at the University of Rhode Island. He'd also been in a fraternity. Just as I thought. But then he said,  “Football taught me a lot about pushing through challenges. Those experiences shaped a lot of who I am today. Finance isn’t that different from football—it’s all about strategy and discipline.” 

I asked Doe if he had any passions that were far from his athletic interests, maybe something a little unexpected. At this point, his expression softened, and he seemed more relaxed than before. “Most people wouldn’t guess it, but I’m really into cooking. My grandma is Italian, and taught me a bunch of her recipes. I also play the guitar, although I am pretty bad at it, but it is a way to unwind after work.” 

By the end of our interview, Doe's rigid posture had softened. The sharp, no-nonsense businessman who walked in now smiled easily, his eyes crinkling at the corners as he spoke about his family. His once-clipped answers flowed into thoughtful reflections on creativity, as if peeling back layers that had been hidden beneath the tailored suit.

Next time I pass by a black-coffee-ordering, suit-clad businessman at my local coffee shop, I think I’m going to take a moment. Smile, say hello, or even ask him what he had for breakfast.

Sara was enjoying a peaceful afternoon walk around Brown’s campus, humming along to the beats playing in her headphones. I asked if I could interview her for a class, and she enthusiastically agreed. We sat down on a nearby bench. 

“What did you have for breakfast this morning?” I asked.

“A rice cake with some peanut butter--because I wanted to start my day off with something light so I wouldn’t feel drowsy,” Sara said. 

“That sounds delicious! Did you have anything to drink with it?” 

Sara said she’s not much of a drink person—especially when it comes to milk. “And it’s actually a crazy story,” she began: 

“I went to Greece with my family the summer between my sophomore and junior year of high school. We love trying local restaurants, so we tried not to go anywhere too touristy. We found a small restaurant in Crete, but after that meal, my stomach started to feel horrible.” 

She was in pain for the rest of the summer, she said, spent weeks at doctors’ offices getting IVs, and went through lots of testing. Eventually, after multiple tests and a call from the CDC later, Sara learned that she had picked up a bacteria called Yersinia which was making her sick. The bacteria is found in undercooked pork; ironically, Sara is vegetarian. “I ate everything vegetarian in Greece—from beans to potatoes to different Greek sauces. The odds were really against me that summer.” 

Sara was eventually treated for the Yersinia bacterial infection through antibiotics, but severe side effects remained. The bacteria caused inflammation in the lining of her gut, which damaged the cells responsible for producing lactase, the enzyme needed to digest lactose. Some people recover, but Sara faces the rare consequence of remaining lactose intolerant to this day. 

Despite the odds, Sara has embraced her new reality with optimism. “It was quite an adjustment at first, but I’ve learned to manage it,” she said. “And it’s a cool story to share,” she said with a laugh.

So while Sara may not have enjoyed a glass of milk with her rice cake that sunny morning, she didn’t let that stop her from enjoying life. Her experience is a reminder that sometimes, even when the odds are against us, it’s our attitude that makes the difference.

Julia Vaz sits criss-crossed on a shaggy rug in a bedroom of one of Brown University’s newest dorms, the air stirred by the whirring of air conditioning, a luxury on campus. The afternoon sun is shining opposite the nearest window; the light bounces off of the dorm across the street before entering the room. The bedroom door is propped open and the opaque, yellow overhead lights from the living room spills in.

Vaz is a student at Brown studying media studies and political science. It is the first day of her last year of college, and she wears a crisp white t-shirt, jeans, and dark green translucent glasses.

Vaz is only here to take a break from the hot summer sun. This semester she chose to live off-campus on the hot, un-air-conditioned third floor of a small complex north of the college campus. She resides with four close friends– Maddy, Sarah, Seehanah, and Jane. 

This morning, Vaz ate a yogurt bowl that she had made with Maddy’s groceries. Blueberries, granola, and “this very weird yogurt that’s zero sugar, zero lactose… it’s fine, just a little too thick,” Vaz says. The roommates share similar tastes in food, and, when asked if she’ll let Maddy know that she used her groceries, Vaz replies “I could tell her, but I know she wouldn’t care.” The cadence of living together and caring for one another has already begun in their compact apartment. The home has a large, airy living room and most roommates sleep upstairs in the attic where the ceiling is made of slanted wooden bars and large skylights.

Vaz reflects on her friendships with her roommates, all of whom she had met during her first semester. She met Maddy through her freshman roommate. They soon became good friends, with Maddy’s extroverted personality complimenting Vaz’s introversion. She hopes that after graduation they will continue to be involved in each others’ lives, that they will “see each other and talk to each other enough so that it’s still part of who [they] are on a day-to-day basis.” 

“I also hope she doesn’t kill any kids when she starts teaching,” Vaz jokes. Maddy is hoping to become a teacher in the environmental sciences.

Vaz notes the many lessons that she has learned from her roommates from the past three years. In addition to providing blueberries and yogurt, Maddy has taught Vaz not to take things for granted, and how to appreciate the small things in life. 

From Seehanah, she has learned that “love is very simple. It’s not grand gestures but it can just be watching stuff together.”

From Jane, she learned about empathy and caring for others; Jane is a very compassionate person, Vaz says. She looks up and smiles at the thought. 

“From Sarah, I learned—I don’t know, I just learned what a badass woman is. She’s awesome and I don’t think she gives herself enough credit for how awesome she is,” Vaz exclaims. 

It seems that senior year for Vaz will be full of heart and joy, with many more exchanged breakfast groceries to come. 

It was an ideal Labor Day, warm and sunny, to be spending the afternoon in India Point Park, relaxing and overlooking the water. Dogs of all shapes and sizes ran around in the park, but Titto, an enormous Saint Bernard/English Mastiff, stood out–not just because of his size, but in his attitude: his tail wagging, he was soaking up the sun with his favorite person—Carmen Scott. 

Scott, originally from Los Angeles, had moved to Providence to attend Johnson & Wales University. A few years later she found Titto from the local animal rescue shelter. Scott fell in love with Titto. Scott did not realize it at the time, but Titto would grow into a large, baby of a dog. 

Scott enjoyed Providence enough to stay on the East Coast after graduating. Even so, she has an extreme aversion to the snow. Now living in the West End, Scott has found a special place in her heart for Providence, she said, with its relatively low traffic and simple city design. But she especially loves Providence’s food. Scott graduated from college with a degree in food service management, which prepared her for her current job as a production manager for a local coffee company. She had stumbled upon this job while working nearby at a doughnut shop. Asked if she really likes coffee, Scott said “ya,” unconvincingly.  “I’m not like a coffee head,” she added. She’s surrounded by coffee connoisseurs most of her days, but she still cannot distinguish between coffee flavors and is not satisfied working in the coffee world. 

Scott had originally moved across the country to Providence to become a pastry chef. Her passion lies in baking which she described as “therapeutic,” and having “a science behind it.” Scott loves baking pastries like croissants and pains au chocolat. But, she said, “I’m good at it if I have the right tools. If I don’t have the right tools, I am not making it.”

As an alumna of Johnson & Wales University, Scott knows many of the great restaurants in the Providence area; two favorites are Pickerel and Oberlin. But because she’s “the type of Providence person that stays on the West End,” she rarely explores places beyond it. On this gorgeous Labor Day, Scott seems happy to have made the drive out of the West End, though, to spend the afternoon relaxing with Titto at India Point Park. A tattoo of the word “Titto” surrounded by a heart on her arm, Scott gently patted the dog, scratched his ears, and whispered, “he’s such a big baby!”

Emily Shore, a 30-something aesthetician, and her boyfriend first sat down on this Central Park bench sometime in 2020. At that point, they were still just friends. They met through a dating app in October and though she quickly friend-zoned him, they stayed in touch. They like it on this green bench, she says--especially between the hours of 4 and 6 pm-- because of the “fantastic” people watching. When Ms. Shore says the letter S, it sounds like she is smacking down on a piece of gum, so the word “fantastic” leaps out at you.

Shore didn’t always live in New York City. She moved here from Philadelphia in 2020, not long before she met her boyfriend. It was “COVID times” when she upended her life. She describes that choice as “a little bit of an existential crisis.” Four years later, she couldn’t be happier. Though, she admits, sometimes she has to take a break from city life and get back to her suburban roots. When she feels this itch, she’ll hop into a car and drive to an Ikea or Target, take a train down to Philly to visit her mom and sister, or join her boyfriend on a road trip to his parents’ house in “backroads” Connecticut.  

Today is a special day for Shore: the anniversary of the beginning of her and her boyfriend’s romantic relationship. She taps her phone and a lock screen picture of him pops up. A pair of sunglasses sits on the bridge of his nose and a sunset shrouds him in orangey-purple light. Though she wasn’t ready to have him in her life so much when they first met, he now crops up in almost every subject of conversation. They are even planning on getting a dog together. Her dad is allergic to dogs, and though her mom got one shortly after divorcing him Shore has never really had the privilege of a furry companion. A dog yelps while running around her owner on the lawn in front of us. “Ugh, I really want a dog,” she sighs. She’s sitting cross-legged, and works her ankle up and down, giving the impression that her foot is nodding in agreement. 

Though her boyfriend is busy with work today, they plan to spend time together this weekend to celebrate their hard-won togetherness. They have no specific activities in mind, instead they will do what they love most and “tumbleweed through the city.” Her smile stretches across her face from her small mouth to her green eyes to her brownish-reddish hairline. A breeze picks up her short cropped hair and throws it gently against her pimple-strewn chin. She turns back to the lawn full of small and big dogs; sets of couples sit on blankets, stand under trees, and walk hand in hand back to the path. I imagine Ms. Shore is envisioning her future: her boyfriend, their loveable dog, and New York City.

Seven thirty p.m. and the sun has almost set on George Street. Packs of freshmen drift towards the club fair on the main green and returners head to the Ivy Room for their first smoothies of the fall semester. Dusk makes it hard to tell what people are wearing until they’re just a couple of feet away. John Smith’s neon yellow jacket cuts through. 

It’s the same windbreaker all his fellow security guards wear, and the same knit beanie, even though the air is probably 70 degrees. The jacket is hot, but it protects him from the mosquitos that are biting others’ exposed arms and feet. When I walk up, Smith is listening to something through a pair of corded white earbuds. His security company allows guards to play music and podcasts, so that’s how Smith passes his six-hour shifts in the dark. 

For a little over a year, this has been his routine. Get up–sometimes at 9 am, sometimes at noon—and have breakfast—today a banana. Spend the day working on the handful of projects he always has up in the air. Then drive over to Brown for an evening of walking, standing, and walking again. Students don’t stop to talk; he doesn’t consider any of them friends. Smith is 23 and this security post is the fifth job he’s worked as an adult. He’s not a fan of the constant standing because it tires him out and hurts his ankles, but otherwise it’s a gig he can abide. He likes having time to listen to music. On the side, he’s building a website that will link up local musical artists who might want to collaborate with each other. He’s also happy to follow along with Joe Rogan, and to give plenty of airtime to his favorite type of media: murder mysteries. 

Brown hires security guards for a reason, but Smith insists that the job isn’t scary. He just got home from Army basic training camp and by comparison security feels like peaceful work. Smith delights in listening to tales of grim violence outside after midnight. He can’t get enough of them, so he writes his own horror stories, too. Yesterday, he started one about a father-daughter duo who investigate paranormal activity. Horror is Smith’s happy place, an escape from the constant pressure to make more money and move on to more fulfilling work. The hustle permeates nearly every corner of his life, inspiring his music website and nudging him into the army reserves. But in the middle of the night, as he paces the entrance of Wriston Quad, Smith indulges in excitement. Not for profit or for the future, but just for fun. 

Tony Marino’s eyes dart, missing not an inch of the lobby. From his post behind the security desk, he tracks every entrant with a steady gaze until the elevators carry the person out of sight.

  Marino’s no-frills breakfast of frozen waffles and black coffee match his direct demeanor. But he does flash a glint of amusement when he mentions playing Candy Crush on his iPad during his meal.

  The Point 225 commercial building, where Marino works, is a bright and colorful building home to trendy coworking spaces, corporate offices, and research laboratories. With an exterior of shiny glass and steel, it rises six stories above the Jewelry District, whose fading industrial brick buildings — much like Marino’s slicked back silver hair and faint Italian American accent — evoke an image of a bygone Providence.

  A couple walks into the lobby and approaches his desk. His gaze locks onto them. The woman asks a question in a mixture of Spanish and English. He responds with a few Spanish words and gestures upstairs. The couple makes their way to the elevators, and Marino mentions that he is fluent in Portuguese, and that he understands Spanish. He says he has no formal training in either language.

  He grew up on the Pawtucket/North Providence line, he says. “You had to know who was who. Who was the mob, who was this, what town you were in. You never knew who was gonna whip one out.” He chuckles and makes a finger gun with his hand.

“I’m part Italian,” he says proudly. “Well, I’m what they call a ‘Porto-Ital.’ Part Portuguese, part Italian.”

  He takes his eyes off the lobby for a moment, swivels his chair, and peers out at the river through floor-to-ceiling windows.

  “This area here used to be nonexistent. This used to be where the I-95 went.” He gestures across the lobby and points out new buildings, noting the approximate year each one was constructed. His demeanor has softened, and his tone, though nostalgic, doesn’t carry resentment towards the neighborhood’s newest changes.  

He turns his head back to scan the lobby and spots Brown’s Sciences Library, barely visible above the tree line. “I used to work there,” he says, pointing vaguely up at College Hill. 

“Where?” I ask, trying to follow his gaze.

  “The tower of terror!” he says with a hearty laugh. Reminiscing about his job as a security officer at the Sciences Library, he notes the luxury of sitting at a desk for his current job instead of checking each of the library’s fourteen floors.

  “They used to do the hazing thing where they took a shot on each floor. I used to tell them, ‘Get outta here!’” he recalls with a booming laugh. There is a newfound warmth in his voice as he recounts years of handling college students’ antics.

  “It wasn’t fun during exam time because then I’d have to hear them all whine,” he says, lamenting (but not whining).“Exams!” he exclaims, dramatically flinging his arms in imitation of stressed students. “I had to calm down two or three people from having full blown panic attacks because they were so stressed out.”

  The time approaches five o’clock, and people emerge from the elevators and exit the building, under his observant gaze. His eyes track their progress towards the parking lot.

  “Life ain’t that bad you know,” he says. “As long as it don’t break you.”

  A credible armchair expert, he hasn’t moved an inch from his chair during our entire conversation.

Peter Furia woke up at 4 am today and caught an Uber from his childhood home in Silver Lake at around 4:20. He clocked in to work at Brown’s Verney-Woolley dining hall by 5. Dressed in a loose, white chef’s coat and a set of trousers with a fine herringbone design, Furia lounges on a pile of wooden shipping pallets behind the VDub loading dock everyday from 11-11:30, celebrating his lunch break with a cigar and an iced coffee.

He says he never eats breakfast. “If they have bacon, I might sneak a piece of bacon, but otherwise, no, I don’t eat.” Remarkably, Furia sustains himself with only coffee, water, and a cigar until he gets home from work around 2pm. There, Furia and his brother help his mother cook old Italian favorites, including chicken marsala, macaroni and meatballs, pot roasts, and braciole. “Making ravioli tonight,” Furia states with a faint smile. His mother “can’t empty the water, can’t carry the pots. So we help her out with that sort of stuff.” Recently, Furia and his brother moved back upstairs to help take care of their mother and the house they’d grown up in.

He’s entering his 50s, and Furia seems to have time at the forefront of his mind. Recounting his mother’s health and his father’s abrupt death seven years ago, he absently stares into the distance, surrounded by a faint, sweet haze from his smoldering cigar. He takes a puff and pauses for a long moment. “She’s getting old man, getting old. Happens to us all, right? It’s gonna happen to us all.” Furia’s mother is currently enduring three-hour dialysis sessions three times a week, and she narrowly won an extended fight against breast cancer a few years ago. Despite her constant fatigue and difficulty walking, she insists on starting the cooking for each meal, but she eventually relents and lets her sons step in to finish the job. 

Even talking about the frustrating tendency of his NHL team of choice, the Boston Bruins, to make it to the playoffs but get eliminated in the first few rounds, Furia focuses on time: “They’re a good team, but it’s a young man’s game.” And during our discussion of the hundreds of cigars that Furia has collected and piled into cabinet-sized, airtight humidors since he started smoking in ‘98, he says, “Some cigars age well, some you have to smoke now.” For a man who is too busy to eat breakfast in the morning, Furia is surprisingly generous with his own time. He spends most of his 30-minute lunch break participating in an interview and helping a student out with a class project. He carefully picks out tomorrow’s cigar before bed, relishing in life’s small pleasures. He clocks in to work every day to mass-produce trays of chicken marsala for young, hungry Brown undergrads, then returns home to patiently help his mother cook childhood dishes for their first meal of the day.

"Sorry to be rude, but [tapping his wristwatch], time’s up,” Furia remarked as he took one last drag from his cigar, extinguished it on the pallet, then strode through his self-made smokescreen and back to work.