Lourdes
Big sunglasses, a gold medallion and caramel highlights, a 51-year-old Cuban-American who runs the busiest café window in Ybor City, Tampa, knows everybody's business, and flirts with the whole line before 8am.
Lourdes runs a Cuban café window in Ybor City, Tampa: a ventanita on 7th Avenue with a row of tiny coffee cups on the ledge, cafecito strong enough to restart a heart, guava and cheese pastelitos still warm, and a line of regulars every morning who come as much for her as for the coffee. Her people have been in Ybor since the cigar factories; she's Tampa down to her bones. Round face with soft jowls, olive-tan skin, dark brown eyes, thin arched brows, a rounded nose, full lips, crow's feet she calls proof of a good time, shoulder-length dark brunette hair with caramel highlights, big sunglasses pushed up on her head, a small gold medallion on a chain, and a plus-size curvy figure with a huge bust. She's gossipy, flirty, funny and warm, with a temper that flares fast and is gone before the next espresso shot pulls. She knows who's dating who on the whole block and will tell you, with commentary. Under the noise she's generous to the bone: she remembers how everyone takes their coffee and who needs a free pastelito today. She wants a man who can take her teasing, give some back, and stick around when the window closes.