It's not one of those chains, it's one of those other chains that have defined themselves in opposition to the first chain. There's still whip and foam and shots and scones, but with a more rustic feel.
We don't gather in the traditional sense of the word. It's not a meeting. Hell, we don't even talk to one another. But every morning, it's the same crowd--each of us alone with our thoughts, trying to make sense of the crossword puzzle, or that day's news--whichever is less confusing.
I was never a big fan of coffee. In my line of work it was more of a tool than a luxury. After long hours on a sneak and peak, or a smash and grab, mole jobs or Trojan Horse work, breaking out the thermos was a chance to break the tension and talk about something else for a moment.
Usually, when I was on a job with Barney, we would talk about how shitty his coffee was. I know everyone thinks he was this super-genius when it came to putting ten pounds of shit into a clear plastic box, but he made a shitty cup of coffee.
He liked flavored coffee.
I don't think I need to say anything more about that, do I? Flavored coffee!
And it's not like it was easy to come by in those days. This was long before you had to look both ways before you approached the coffee pot. On average--unless we were on a job together--coffee tasted like coffee. And you judged its quality not by what side of the hill it was grown on, but by its texture--how close it came to tasting like dirt-flavored chalk.
Every time we went out of town, Barney had an extra tool box he carried just for the coffee. It was packed with pounds and pounds of Chock full o'Nuts and lots of tiny bottles of flavoring extracts of one kind or another.
Every pot was a science project and I was his test subject.
I could have made the coffee, but then we would have had nothing to talk about.
He would get up about half-an-hour ahead of me and come up with that day's formula, we would go out and do whatever crazy shit Phelps had dreamed up and then, when we could, out would come the thermos and I would give Barney nothing but shit.
Truth is, the only thing I cared about was whether there was any caffeine left after he was finished screwing around. But giving Mr. Super Genius shit for his coffee was our way of breaking the tension and staying frosty.
Almond and mint flavored, but frosty.
***
I come to this coffee shop every morning because I have to get out of the house.
I found this place after I was laid-up from a surgery. I knew I was recovered when I recognized I was looking forward to the manufactured drama that is Jerry Springer. I didn't care how much it hurt, I had to get out of the house--even if just for that hour.
I took a drive south and hadn't gone more than about five minutes when I saw this little set of shops and, on the corner, the coffee shop.
I wasn't so much looking for coffee as responding to the side effects of one of the medications I had to take, but once I got in the place, there was something about it that just felt right, familiar, comfortable.
I think it's supposed to look like the inside of a log cabin.
They have a fireplace and lots of pine-ish looking furniture so it kind of feels like the north woods, if the north woods had a place that served a mochachino.
In one corner of the store there's a big dining room size table and this is where the Bible group meets every morning. Every time I come in, there are about a half-dozen men studying the Bible with the intensity of lawyers parsing a contract, or politicians a sentence.
It would seem to me that, by this time, that book has been well and truly picked over, but there they are, every morning, savoring the nuances like after-notes in a bottle of wine.
Around the walls are a series of high-top tables and stools that are the perches of the retirees and the unemployed. Their faces buried in their tablets and laptops, these guys all have the same desperate look on their faces. They are trying to connect, trying to close the deal, trying to get off the bench and back in the game.
That time we were in Berlin for all those months, there was a little cafe around the corner from our safe house. Every morning, I would find some excuse to go in there just so I could get the taste of Barney's latest experiment out of my mouth.
I'd walk in and I could immediately feel every eye in the place on me. The place was full of operators. They might as well have been wearing Homburgs and leather trench coats.
Spies and private school kids don't have casual clothes: they don't know what to do with them.
No question in my mind they knew if not who I was, certainly what I was. We weren't playing them so it didn't matter, but I would fuck with them anyway. I'd order a very particular brand of Russian tea...,and a Coke.
If you're careful, the combination isn't really that bad. No worse than anything Barney came up with.
I think of that place every time I go in to my new place. Mostly because I get the same kind of looks.
There's something comforting in those looks.
They remind me of a different time: a time when I knew things that everybody else didn't. They help me forget that those tables were turned a long time ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment