That Sweet Elixir

Enzo closed his eyes as he listened to the delicious grinding that was the start of the most marvelous of beverages in the world.

This was the best moment of his day. He got up every morning just to hear those sounds and to smell those smells. And today was even more special.

Then the grinding stopped. He heard the tap of the portafilter hitting the counter as his barista, Mary, stirred the grinds, then squeezed it with just enough pressure.

Oh, how he couldn’t wait.

The rumbling of the coffee machine resonated through his every bone as it squeezed the sweet nectar out of the grinds. He took a deep breath. Oh, the smell! It reminded him of a time long gone when his mother used to make coffee for him. Then, the whistling started its melody over the rumbling, creating a perfect symphony as Mary frothed the milk.

The machine stopped first, then the whistling stopped seconds later. Only then did Enzo open his eyes.

Mary was pouring the milk into the cup in a circular motion to pierce and mix with the espresso’s crema at the cup’s bottom. Then she slowed and changed from circular to kind of shaking movements.

She’s making a leaf, I believe, he thought.

He couldn’t help his smile as the phenomenal barista finished and brought him his cup. He really was lucky he found her.

“Here you go, a large latte,” she said, smiling back at him.

He had been right. It was a leaf.

“Thank you, Mary.”

He closed his eyes again and brought the cup to his mouth to take a sip.

Enzo almost moaned. The milk was creamy and foamy, mixing oh so perfectly well with the slight bitterness of the coffee, both swirling on his tongue like a couple dancing the tango in perfect synchronization until he finally swallowed.

“Ah, that was flawless, Mary. You have it tuned up perfectly now,” Enzo said. She answered with a smile and a dip of the head.

He finished his delightful drink and set the cup down on the counter.

If he could, he’d spend the whole day here, drinking coffee after coffee. But he was a busy man. And besides, perhaps it was a special moment only because it happened once a day.

That had been his life goal ten years ago, after everything happened.

He pushed the door open and walked out, the sun momentarily blinding him. It burned now, the sun. It didn’t used to. His crew was waiting for him. The cacophony of their small talk and the roar of their bikes brought him out of his coffee-induced stupor.

They all shut up as they saw him. The wind howled through the broken and partly demolished houses around them.

“All right, boys. What do you want to do today?”

“Let’s loot for more shit!”

A roar of acknowledgment followed Jimmy’s suggestion.

It was their specialty, after all. Under his guidance, of course. Ten years ago, Enzo began salvaging for parts of his dream. The activity brought him all around the new world and new people. People he wouldn’t have usually been able to handle, but people he found the courage to face and deal with. And deal with them spectacularly, he did.

These guys started noticing. In the beginning, there were only two of them. They showed up on the doorstep of his makeshift camp under a fallen roof that stuck at an angle only because the wall next to it was blessedly solid. They asked if they could join his gang.

“You want to join my gang?” Enzo asked them, bemused. They nodded eagerly in response. “All right then. Find me an espresso machine and I’ll consider it.”

He waited for them for three days —almost forgetting he sent them on their first salvaging mission— before they came back, huge smiles splitting their faces in two.

“Look what we found, boss!” They presented an everyday-use coffee machine.

“And what do you think this is?”

“A coffee machine, just like you asked.”

Enzo sighed. “I asked for an espresso machine.”

They exchanged looks between themselves and the machine they held.

“Isn’t this one of those?”

He pinched the bridge of his nose. They were young, so maybe they had never seen one before.

“All right. I’ll give you points for your effort, but that’s not what it is. Tomorrow, I’ll go with you and you’ll show me where you got that.”

So started his days as a gang leader, it seemed. They looted, robbed, and killed in self-defense when they had to. More people joined up, and more people were afraid of them.

His quest for the perfect coffee cup got him into the position he was in now.

The windmill behind the coffee shop whooshed lazily, generating enough electricity for the glorious machine they finally managed to find recently. The cows next to the shop mooed and munched on hay. Lucien was taking care of them today. The bucket in the well squeaked in the wind in the cow field.

Enzo finally got what he wanted, so he didn’t know what else to look for.

“Well, I have everything I need right here. What do you guys want?”

He waited for their answer, but none came.

“Well?”

“We’re only here for you, boss. What we want is what we always do.”

Enzo sighed internally.

“All right, today will be a food run. I need thirty of you to stay here and guard the place. The rest will come with me to New Montreal.”

They whooped and cheered in answer.

“And when I say guard, it means that everything still standing here, be it the cows, the shop, the mill, or Mary, must be standing when I come back. Is that clear?” He said over the racket they were making.

“Sure, boss! Anyone comes here who’s not supposed to‘ll be dead before he knows it!”

“Good.”

They really did everything he asked. Enzo thought it wasn’t such a bad thing in the world they were in now. With the old world obliterated, and the only thing left standing was them. And they’d make sure it stayed that way.