East Coast Coffee

East Coast Coffee

The little store downstairs is closed—it’s Sunday. I stand there, staring at the locked door. Turns out the universe doesn’t care when I’m out of coffee.

I grab my keys and head downtown.

On the way, gray sky. Days of it. No rain or snow. Just gray. The trees are skeletons. I belong somewhere else. 

I belong in the islands, I think to myself.

I’m no stranger to the store downtown. I stop by now and then on my way home during the week. I go to the coffee aisle, and there’s a woman standing there, staring at the shelf.

When I get closer, I see why. Our brand is gone, hers and mine. We’re connected by the cosmos, I think to myself. Then I say to her, “We’re connected by the cosmos.” 

She walks away, taking half the silence with her and leaving half with me.

The speaker on the ceiling sings something Top 40. 

I grab something else. Vacuum sealed. A compromise. The package feels strange against my fingertips. I cut my nails last night, and now the world feels slightly less manageable.

I go to the register. Janice is there. Janice of the seven adopted cats. Janice of the downturned lips, stained brown with nicotine. She wears thick glasses that distort the edges of her face. 

“Outta my coffee,” I say.

“Sunday,” she shrugs as if that explains everything. 

I put the block of coffee down at the register. “You get used to stuff.”

Janice grabs a pack of Camel Lights from the shelf and lays them next to the coffee.

“Yeah, thanks,” I say. Then I ask, “How ya doin’?”

“Waffles is missing,” she says. One of her cats, probably. “Didn’t come home last night, and I had to be here at six.”

An old woman comes up and says, “You guys got a bathroom?” Janice gives her a key on a rusty chain and points to the back. The woman hobbles off.

“Hope he comes back,” I say.

“She.” 

I nod and walk away.

Before I get to the door, she says, “Things have a way of not coming back.”

On the way home, I see a dead cat on the road. I don’t stop, but I look long enough to hope it’s not Waffles. 

At home, I make the coffee. It smells vaguely artificial like it’s overcompensating for something it’s not.  

I light a cigarette and think about what Janice said. Things have a way of not coming back. 

I sit with that for a while.

I take a sip of my new coffee. Then I stand up and pour the rest down the sink and I look out the window. The gray sky looms. I belong in the islands. 

I think Janice might be right. 

When I live through days like this, full of little moments that stick, I think about writing them down for my buddy, Graney. He’ll like it, or at least feel something about it. Graney loves feeling life as it comes. 

Sometimes we meet at a place in the neighborhood, where the coffee is terrible but suits him. He says homebrewed coffee always lacks something.

We sit by the window next to a pile of glossy gift boxes stacked for the holidays. My coffee’s too hot, so I let it sit while I stare at the foam. He has heavy cream in a metal thermos, unscrewing the cap and pouring it into his cup like he’s doing something forbidden.

Graney’s wife left a few years ago. The house was quiet after that. Then a year or two later, his last kid moved out—his baby girl—and it got even quieter. She lives abroad now. This week, she’s back in town, passing through like she never really left.

“She had some friends over last night, so I stayed in a shitty hotel,” he says as he sits down. “I walk in this morning. Four of ’em, sprawled out like cats. The house smells like shoes and tequila and hormones.” He waves his hand, coffee splashing over the rim. 

I nod. 

Some jazz vocalist on the speakers croons about holidays. I say, “Is that Dinah Washington or… ?” 

“It’s brutal, the leaving part, you know? She’s gone in two days, and it’s like, I’m shaking already, but Jesus... you know? Ice up, son. Toughen up. This is life. Hellos and goodbyes.”

“She’s still here, though. Hasn’t left yet, I mean. That’s something.” I watch the barista. He picks his nose and then wipes down the espresso machine.

“She’s 22.” He rubs his palm against a two-day beard.

I sip my coffee, scalding my tongue. “I wish those women would tell their kids to sit down.”

“That story you wrote about Janice was great. I’ll tell you what it makes me feel. I feel like fuckin’ East Coast gray skies. Folgers, fuckin’ coffee. Fuckin’… Where do I belong? It’s not here. That feeling is so thick right now. That’s where I am. That’s my head.”

“East Coast Coffee,” I say. I write it down as a possible title.

“The part where the guy says he belongs in the islands. Where do we belong? It’s not here. Just the back and forth with the guy and the woman. And the cats and… decisions in life. The protagonist. Is he alone? Is he going back to something? Is he running away from something? I gotta get to the islands, dude.”

I nod, watching the people in line with their jeans and their satchels and their faces. “You ever actually order an espresso? Seems like a waste of money. It’s gone in like a minute.”

“And eventually... I mean... this feeling right now. This feeling of ohh... just… whatever it is, it’s aching. It’s just pain. It’s just existential questions that are thick and heavy. It makes you do things in your life, right? Pleasure doesn’t require much. Pain requires a response, and it makes you say, ‘Enough, What am I doing?’” He leans back in his chair, his thermos in his hand like an anchor. “It makes you change things.”

I stare into my cup. “Pain does that.”

“I look at my younger life, and I look at younger people. And I think about what a stupid thing jobs are. If they’re not bringing value and meaning to your life… I look at these people who just work and work and work and work. And my advice to them is, ‘Dude, just live. Breathe. Get the hell out.’ You know?”

Behind the counter, the barista moves in fragments, caught in the geometry of too many orders.

I think about work and my burnt tongue and getting old.

“Anyway, that story, dude. I actually picture it happening in some East Coast shitty strip mall like Stop ’N Shop or, what were the ones back then? Sampson’s?” He stands up and screws the cap back on the thermos. “I just wanted to tell you the story hit me. I gotta go get the girl something to eat.”

I watch him walk out, his steps slow and deliberate, like he doesn’t want to get where he’s going. I stay there in my chair, sipping my coffee, trying to draw my own conclusions, and here’s what I come up with:

We all make small talk, sending out feelers like antennas. Feeling out the area. Can I say something to this person? Can I trust ’em? Can I give ’em something they’re not asking for? Sometimes.

The world’s great like that.