Curiosity ~ Lucidity ~ Humanity
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Jackie took her place on line at Leaf and Bean, glancing around the room, hoping her favorite corner two-top would still remain unoccupied by the time she picked up her latte--meaning there’d be no young mothers, empty strollers askew, pale boob hanging out of a milk stained nursing bra feeding her rheumy newborn, or no unattended toddlers, their nearby caregivers whispering into handhelds, paying little attention as the children rampaged around the cafe as if it were a Montessori playroom. Despite having only raised one child, Jackie thought she was fully qualified to lead a much-needed workshop on Childrearing 101. It certainly wouldn’t allow for children to run free-range through trendy coffee bars, disturbing old farts like herself who had no patience for lax parenting.
Alain, the barista, had already started preparing his usual double macchiato latte. Long ago, before husbands and kids, mortgages and maintenance fees, night sweats and colonoscopies, cancer scares and hysterectomies, quarantines and cryptocurrencies, Jackie remembered her own job behind the counter of a similar café in the CityCenter, working alongside a coterie of budding actors, dancers, performance artists, and other wannabes who’d shown up at that creative Mecca, believing they’d be discovered, only to realize that their only fan base would come from the disheveled “regulars” who staggered in each morning to take up space and drink bottomless cups of coffee until the lunch crowd arrived and the hostess had to politely ask them to give up their seats to “paying” customers.
When Jackie had first started that job, Fania, one of the multi-talented actor/waitstaff, had taken her aside to reveal the secrets of frothing a latte. “It’s like giving a hand job,” Fania explained, moving her fist up and down over the gleaming steam hook. “Once the milk stiffens, you know it’s ready.” Now, over thirty years later, Jackie couldn’t look at an espresso machine without thinking of fellatio.
Alain flashed a self-satisfied grin as he presented Jackie with another perfectly frothed latte, his sinewy arms covered in elaborate tattoos, making his limbs appear as if they were two painted cobras writhing from each shoulder socket. Jackie glanced up appreciatively, trying to hide her fascination with his body art, her eyes finally landing on the silver stud just below his lip that looked like a piece of crumbling pastry resting right outside his mouth. She still hadn’t gotten used to the diamond chip in Jonatha’s nose, or the liberal piercings along the edges of her daughter’s ear lobes and was afraid to ask about any other holes or embellishments on more intimate parts of her grown child’s body.
The café prided itself in their “Bean Narrative” which had been pinned to every page of their scrimsite and scribbled in old school style in miniscule handwriting on a large chalkboard above the counter. The history began in the highlands of Guatemala, then skipped the bit about the campesinos who harvested beans for centavos or those who packed and loaded the crop into bins to be put on shipping containers already crammed with cocoa leaves, opium and other contraband, ready to cross the ocean or be driven north where the beans would be marked up for considerable profit, re-sold in “authentic” burlap sacks to high end coffee bars, the product ground to order using “one of the most advanced timers found today — measuring doses to 1/100th a second—by gigantic 75mm hardened steel burrs with titanium blades and 0.6 HP motor that could also be used to power a sink waste disposal or open a garage door.”1 It was this legendary doser that had started a whole trend towards ‘never touched’ coffee. While the grind selection wasn’t step-less, it did offer 90 subtle fineness changes. The precious grounds were then filtered through hand spun muslin cloth by over educated young men and women and distilled without heat in room temperature water for over 12 hours, using “a double filtration process to procure the sublime and much sought-after taste: a complex, smooth and sweet, full-bodied brew with bright juiciness, low acidity and a long chocolate finish.”2
Jackie stopped herself from making some sarcastic remark, afraid that her sense of humor would prove her completely out of touch with Alain’s generation. It was better to keep her feelings to herself, locked up in her Pandora’s box with all the other slights and insults she’d experienced in recent memory like the squirrely old Food Nazis at The Market who’d pointed to Jackie’s basket of plump red vine-ripened tomatoes and hissed: “Deadly nightshade!” making her want to slink into the corner and punish herself for her poor produce selection, and then she thought of everyone everywhere who’d ever given her the once over but never bothered to nod or smile as they passed her on the sidewalk. Instead, she remained silent and walked towards the two top, waiting until her displeasure passed and she could log onto her scrim to begin work.
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Bio-Fragment: Nava Renek spent her younger years working in the food industry, including as a “waitron” at Fishmonger’s Cafe in Woods Hole, MA. She is also a longtime member of the Park Slope Food Coop, and thanks to these iconic places, was able to pay the rent and eat healthy food at affordable prices. Now she earns her latte money by working in Higher Ed.