The Coffee Shop
by Caitlin O'Donnell
Somebody had moved the couch. For as long as I could remember the couch had been tucked neatly in the right corner of the coffee shop. It was the one piece of furniture that was not oak. Its soft red cushions looked out proudly at the rest of the room. Now it stood awkwardly in the left corner, confused about its new surroundings. I was confused as well. I peered around the rest of the room to make sure nothing else had changed. The walls were still the color of thick cream, the same color as in my apartment, and the five tables the color of rich coffee hadn’t moved. Daphne, the waitress with locks tumbling over her eyes and heels that clacked against the floor a little too loudly, fumbled with the espresso machine like always. Nothing appeared to have changed except the couch.
“One medium double latte with a thin layer of steamed milk.” The familiar words ran smoothly across my lips.
“You don’t want to try something new today, ma’am?” chuckled Becky, the woman behind the register, her doughy cheeks becoming round, her judging eyes twinkling and her breast heaving up and down. I didn’t get what was funny but let a slight smile drift across my face out of sympathy for the poor woman. She had been in love with the deliveryman for as long as I had been coming to the coffee shop. I could see the longing in her eyes whenever he came with the weekly orders and he, on the contrary, probably wouldn’t have noticed if he never saw her again.
I took my usual seat at table number three. It was the perfect seat pressed up against the wall from which I could see and hear almost everything in the room. A few of the regulars were already there. I pulled back the corner of the sweater I had bought myself last year for my 31st birthday to reveal my wristwatch. 8:01. He wouldn’t be here for another four minutes and work didn’t start for another twenty. I patted my head making sure there weren’t any stray hairs in my bun. It was Tuesday; so my filing report was due today. I had finished it yesterday so all I needed to do was turn it in. If I didn’t finish it early, something was bound to go wrong. A printer would break or there would be a fire that would burn down the building and my filing report along with it. Something like that was bound to happen. So I always finished my filing reports on Monday.
Daphne placed my latte on the table in front of me. “Good morning,” she smiled, her lips like red jelly filling her face. As she turned, she winked her large almond eyes toward the young man at the table next to me, her lashes delicately fluttering. She was sleeping with him. I could tell. She slept with everybody. It was those stiletto heels that gave her away, telling of her dirty deeds through the promiscuous click, click on the tile floor.
The young man was a spy. Everything about him seemed to have sharp edges, from his rectangular jaw to the brim of his hat. I had figured out his secret a few weeks back when he asked to borrow the sugar from my table; he was clearly using the sugar as some sort of diversion to avoid being recognized because he always had his coffee black. He had started sleeping with Daphne last week. I knew by the way his eyes glazed over her as she waited on table number four. But why would somebody as distinguished as him do something like that? It must have been for investigatory purposes only. I wondered what he was investigating. Maybe it had to do with that couple that came in every Tuesday and Thursday. Daphne had been sleeping with the man in the couple for a few months.
It was sad because the couple had always looked so happy, but nobody can be that happy. They reminded me of the couple in the picture my mother had ripped out of a magazine. She’d taped it to our refrigerator right after my father left as a reminder to herself that love is possible. My mother never found love again. The man would always order peppermint tea, and the young woman would always get a small mocha. They would both share the two drinks. They usually would order a croissant; then the woman would pick at the soft buttery center and the man would eat the rest. I had never been in love. The closest I had gotten to a man was when I kissed Danny Wallace in third grade and he spat at me. The couple would stare at each other like they were looking at a perfect sunrise where each color melted into the next. On cold days when they would enter the shop, she would be snuggled under the niche in his arm and on warmer days they would enter hand in hand, their fingers woven together. Daphne would never let a couple that perfect be happy. That’s why she must have been sleeping with him. I had seen the way she stuck out her chest whenever she passed by their table.
Now that I thought about it, the spy inspecting her probably didn’t have to do with the couple since from his sharp overcoat to his rain-cloud-gray hat he appeared to be a classy spy and classy spies have more important cases than affairs. Maybe he was investigating a big drug deal or a sorority of high-class hookers, maybe a sorority of high-class drug dealing hookers. Daphne was probably one of them. I shook my head in disgust and pushed up my glasses that were slowly sliding down the bridge of my nose.
The door at the front of the café swung open and the sound of the city street blew in with a cold gust of wind. I quickly straightened my pencil skirt and tucked my right foot behind my left heel as I turned towards the door. It was him. He was wearing the brown overcoat he had bought last year and his new shiny leather shoes tapped lightly against the floor as he entered.
“Good morning.” He smiled at Becky. He had a soft smile, the kind of smile most people only use when they don’t realize they are smiling. It was sweet of him to be so genuine to someone so desperate. “Could I have a latte please?” His voice was soothing.
“That’s one ninety-nine,” she said as she typed his order into the cash register. He put down the cash and took his usual seat at table number two. His cheeks looked a little more flushed than usual; it was probably because of the cold.
“Here’s your latte sir,” said Daphne, putting down the steaming mug on the table. He would never sleep with her.
Reaching into his briefcase, he pulled out his copies of The New York Post and The Times, flipping through the Post to the cartoons. He had a sense of humor. My mother always told me I had no sense of humor. I could picture her now sitting in the kitchen, a glass of gin in her hand, her words smacking and slurring to the rhythm of the gum she was chewing. “You’re never gonna get a boy Barb. You’re too dull and you’re too fat.” She would shake her head and take a big gulp from her glass. Smack, smack went the gum in her mouth, “Get yourself a sense of humor, then at least you’ll have something.” I would nod as I continued to clean up her barf out of the cracks in the tile floor. I always wanted a man with a sense of humor. Maybe it would rub off on me.
Now the man with the smile was opening the Science section of The Times. He always read the Science section on Tuesdays. Clearly, he was smart as well as funny. His warm eyes absorbed the content of the newspaper’s pages with appreciation. Stirring his coffee with his left hand, he looked up and scanned the room. I straightened, nervous that he was going to catch me staring, but too entranced to look away. I was stuck like a deer in the headlights. He had caught me looking in the past and I was always greeted with that soft smile that made me feel as if I was melting into my seat. His eyes stopped. He had noticed the couch had moved as well.
The door swung open again. It was the deliveryman. He didn’t usually come on Tuesdays. From behind the counter, I could feel Becky’s eyes on him; her desperation sickened me. Something was different. The deliveryman didn’t have any boxes and he didn’t walk straight to the back of the room and through the door with the sign “Employees Only” where all supplies were stored. He turned and walked towards Becky. I could feel her heart pounding with excitement inside of me. All these years and nothing but a friendly bob of his head or tilt of his hat as a greeting and now he was walking straight towards Becky, standing in front of her. What would she say? I felt myself leaning forward, tilting my head so I could hear clearly.
“Good morning ma’am, I am here for the pick up,” his voice was kinder than I had expected it to be. Another gust of wind came into the room as a new deliveryman entered, one I had never seen before.
“It’s right over there.” I could hear her fighting back the nervousness in her throat with the tip of her tongue as she pointed a pudgy finger at the couch. “I tried to move it this morning so it would be easier to pick up but I didn’t get very far. It was too heavy.”
“There’s no need to worry about that ma’am, that’s what we are here for. Right?” Our regular deliveryman assured her, looking over his shoulder at the new deliveryman who nodded.
Becky fluttered nervously for a moment. She had to be trying to put together the right words, “Well then, by all means take it away.” The two men walked to the back of the room, each grabbing an end of the couch and began walking it towards the door. As the two men’s synchronized steps beat against the floor the question hit me. What was going on? Where were they taking it? Why were they taking our couch? I racked my brain. There was always a reason.
I counted on seeing the full picture. I knew peoples’ inner thoughts and emotions, but this cataclysm came with no explanation. Maybe there had been a wild fire burning down the manager’s apartment so the only place he could sleep was the couch. So he was having it brought to the remains of his home. Maybe Becky had become so desperate that she was having the couch moved just so she could have the opportunity to talk to the deliveryman. No. No. That wasn’t it.
I left the café, my mind muddled.
Sitting in my cubicle at work I realized I had been rearranging the office supplies on my desk for two hours instead of the usual two minutes. That poor couch on the wrong side of the room had looked so out of place and awkward. What would it do someplace else entirely? After work as I walked home, I found myself staring in the window of a furniture store, looking at every item and imagining where it would end up. The wicker chair set would end up on the outdoor patio of a family buying a small country home in Connecticut for weekends; the foldout couch would go to a couple who just moved in together for the first time. At home as I drank my cup of chamomile tea before bed, I looked around my apartment imagining where each piece of my furniture might have gone if someone else had bought it.
I woke up with a migraine and was unable to leave my bed for five straight days. It wasn’t until the following Monday that I was able to take my usual trek to the coffee shop before work. It had rained the night before and small puddles scattered the dirty sidewalk. I turned the final corner to meet the dark empty windows of the coffee shop. My mind was a blur of questions. Nobody moved from behind the glass as I gazed into the vacant room. Everything looked so ghostly in the dark. My heart was pounding as I approached the door. A sign with big bold letters, slightly smudged from last night’s rain, was stuck up with a piece of scotch tape. I scanned the three words a few times before I was able to take in what I was reading:
SPACE FOR SALE
If interested please contact P.J. Murphy at (212) 555-6787
I pressed my forehead up against the cold glass, staring into the eerie darkness inside. Where were Becky and Daphne? Where would all the regulars go? My feet were stuck to the pavement. Where would I go?
I was unable to move until it was almost time for work. Even then, my feet dragged reluctantly behind me. All day I felt lost, but most of all I felt lonely. I kept thinking I heard Daphne’s heels clicking outside of my cubicle but it was never her. On my way home, I heard a forlorn laugh and I spun around thinking it was Becky. It wasn’t. Walking into my apartment building, I saw the end of a man’s coattail swish into the elevator. It was the man with the soft smile. I ran to the elevator door, jamming my umbrella through the crack to keep the door from closing. It reopened slowly to reveal the blank expression of a man I had never seen before.
The air hung thick and icy in the gray sky. I pushed open the door to Coco’s Coffee, the ringing of chimes announcing my entry. I had come to a decision—I would have to find a new coffee shop. There was something frilly about the room. The tablecloths were lace and the wallpaper had a flower print pattern that reminded me of the sheets my mother use to have. The smell of sugar and sweets filled my nostrils. It was nauseating. At the tables, the customers’ faces seemed empty as if they were each caught up in their own worlds, oblivious to the existence of anyone else but themselves. A young woman with a birthmark on her left cheek stared down at her cup of coffee, stirring it in a slow circular rhythm. A man with pants that flooded at the ankles revealing a pair of mismatched socks stared vacantly at the wallpaper. There was nothing there for me. The ringing chimes announced my exit.
The next day I found another coffee shop. Entering cautiously, I felt as if I had stepped into another decade. Everything was shiny metal and each wall was a different color that clashed with the one next to it. All of the customers looked as if they had jumped off the pages of Business Week. Each sat alone, hunched over a laptop. There was nothing soft or comfortable. Everything was sharp and cold. If only there was a comforting red couch. I immediately turned and left. I went to five more coffee shops that week but none of them felt right. They were too fancy, too grungy, too cold or too hot. The farthest I got inside was the cash register before I felt I had to get some air.
Sitting at work I found my mind wondering. In the past I would always wonder about what I had seen that day at the coffee shop, imagining why the spy had left at 8:03 instead of 8:10 like usual, or figuring out how Daphne had seduced the man in the couple. Mostly I would dream about the man with the soft smile. For the first time, I found myself having to think about myself. Here I was so lost because my coffee shop had closed. What was I really looking for in a coffee shop anyway?
I didn’t rearrange the office supplies on my desk that day.
The sun broke through the clouds the next morning as I walked down 3rd Avenue. On my right, there was a small coffee shop tucked between a vegetable market and an antique shop. It wasn’t perfect but it would do. The tables were arranged clumsily so the room appeared smaller than it really was and the checkered tile floor didn’t match the furniture. And yet there was a warmth about the place.
Then I saw him. He was reading the paper while stirring his cup of coffee with his left hand. I could see that soft smile. I hesitantly walked towards him each foot moving slowly behind the one in front of it. He looked up, the smile spreading across his face as his eyes met mine.
I took a deep breath and released each word carefully, “Hi, I’m Barbara.”