Coffee shop blues

I am a barista at a coffee shop that is just about to go out of business.  The owner, a forty-year-old woman who recently separated from her husband after twenty-one years of marriage because of 'discontent', says that closing the store would break her heart because owning a coffee shop was her dream, her baby.

And though I am not overly attached to this coffee shop (I have only worked there for about four months), it occurred to me the other morning that it would be a microcosmic tragedy to see this place close its doors.

The shop is not glitzy.  It's basic--the music comes out of an old stereo system, the chairs are beat up and mixed up and the drinks are advertised on a chalk board above the register that was bought several years ago at Office Depot for $39.99.  In other words, each button pressed in a different way rings up the price for about five different drinks.  It hisses when you press the subtotal key sometimes, but not on Thursdays.  And sometimes, if you listen, you might hear it humming.  The stapler is busted but if you shake it, it might staple for you. But only once.  

The point I am getting at is that the shop itself is nothing to write home about.  The thing that makes this particular hole in the wall so terribly important is the motley hodgepodge of regulars who walk through the door each day.

At 6:30 a.m. I turn on the flashing sign to say OPEN and then plop down in front of the NY Times with my free coffee, the chief perk of employment here, and wait.  Within five minutes the small mouse girl comes in to order her large strawberry smoothie. (Did I mention that we make a variety of smoothies as well?)  She smiles and whispers her order, handing me her blue bank card.  I wonder if she knows that I know her order by now.  Or perhaps she still tells me because of the time that we were out of strawberry for a week and she had to choose something different. Traumatic. Her perfume reminds me of the waxy lip balm I used to buy at Claire's boutique when I was twelve--and I can smell it as soon as she reaches across the counter with her card. But she is sweet, and as she nods to thank me for the smoothie I wonder if she is quiet because it is so early or because she is just that diminutive of a person. 

Clint is a biker--a road cyclist, I should say--and he brings his own aluminum travel mug. He gets regular coffee, which costs him $1.60, but always puts a dollar bill in the tip jar which, so early, is usually empty. I hope that sometime I'll get to tell him how important that dollar is.  I think that for some reason this man looks at me like he knows that I am intelligent and capable.  He gets that it's hard to pay bills when you make close to minimum wage.  He gets that I'm trying to write a book--so he contributes a dollar a day, like you see on those commercials for kids who are poor in Africa.  I'm not that bad off, but the dollar a day really does make a difference.

There is a guy that comes in early, by eight o'clock at the latest, and orders a super sweet "coffee drink" with caramel,  and then sits down with his laptop in the seat by the window and begins typing, earbuds in place.  He will stay there all day--he actually sets up battlements.  He takes periodic bathroom breaks and around noon pulls out a peanut butter sandwhich and eats.  He stays until I leave--at four-thirty.  This guy is so disciplined it makes me nervous.  At first I feel like I should whisper, but by the time he's been there for all those hours, I kind of forget about him.  Recently I got the guts to interrupt his religious devotion and ask what he was doing.  This guy literally jumped at my question--I think he was so used to his own solitude that my address jarred him.  He actually stood up, walked over to the counter, and began to explain to me that he had recently spent a year in Egypt researching the economy and he was now back to write his thesis. And so that is what he was doing on these coffee shop days, writing his thesis from eight to five.  This of course made me feel totally childish, realizing that I could never sit still for nine hours to write literature on the economics of an African country.  So I offered him a cup of water.  He took it.

There are a lot of quirky every-dayers. One guy comes in for a medium coffee in a large cup with no lid. He also gets a pumpkin muffin on a large plate.  He microwaves it and then cuts it up into little bitty bite-sized pieces.  It's so strange, you know, watching a very well-groomed, well-spoken, good looking forty-five year old business man go about this ritual every day.  And then there is Deb, who calls in to order "her latte," which is a small latte with skim milk--pretty simple.  But if you ask her what she wants, she gets flustered and can't tell you.  Stuart, who gets a large coffee, is a bee keeper on his grandfather's farm.  This, of course, is not his "job"--this is for recreation.  His real job is maintenance at a private middle school in the area.  Barbara is a delightful mother of one who hates Fridays and loves Mondays because she cherishes the time that her husband is at work and her daughter is in school.  She comes in and orders a great big pastry and reads her library book.  Dr. Cell Phone, whose name we have recently discovered to be Denise, has her latte, and seems to always be in a very pressing conversation at the hour of seven each morning.  Who is already wound up at seven in the morning? Baffling.  

There is a coffee shop rolodex in the front of my brain--on each card there is a face and a drink.  Sometimes a pastry.  I just flip through that baby all day long every day and make drink by drink, like the steady humming of a loom. It's beautiful, really.  The shop is, for each person, their own little getaway spot.  The place where they brush shoulders with a "coffee girl" and maybe a few others.  But it's a kind of haven from home.  

And that is why it would be a crummy blow for our little coffee headquarters to go under.  The shop breathes with stories and brilliance.  A thesis to change the world is written here, friendships are grown here, houses have been bought and sold here, over-the-phone break-ups were here and broke high schoolers bring there dates here. Weary spirits are fueled here every single day.  They may not realize, but I've watched a thousand seeds planted in the two-hundred square feet of this place and a garden is growing.  I want to give it some more time.