by Cleo Coyle
The product quality sank so low, we just pulled it. At the moment, the only decaffeinated item we carried was “Coffee Milk” (coffee syrup mixed with moo juice, which we served hot or cold; skim or soy; regular or decaf ). The drink was introduced to me by our new part-time barista, Dante Silva, regrettably absent tonight.
A compact guy with a shaved head and some interesting tattoos, Dante was a young painter with one modest gallery show to his credit. He was also born and raised in Rhode Island, where Coffee Milk was apparently the official state drink.
So even though I could certainly understand the skepticism on the part of Esther, Gardner, and Tucker when it came to the decaf coffee thing, I implored them to: “Keep your minds open, okay? There’s a very good reason we’re doing this.”
Unfortunately, the reason we were doing this was late— that is, Matt was late, which wasn’t like him. Not in the last few years anyway.
Matteo Allegro was an international coffee broker and the Village Blend’s coffee buyer. One day in the future, after his mother, Madame, passed away (which I certainly prayed would not be anytime soon) Matt and I would become the legal co-owners of the Blend as well as the multimillion-dollar four-story Federal-style townhouse it occupied.
Neither Matt nor I had much in the way of savings, so both of us were committed to maintaining the business’s viability. Our relationship, however, was not always on the best of terms.
A decade ago, when Matt was my husband, he was frequently late and often lied. The dashing, ebony-haired, extreme-sports globetrotter was also constantly wired, but not on caffeine. The train wreck of his life (and therefore mine) happened over a pile of cocaine.
Now whenever Matt was late for anything, I automatically tensed inside, a kneejerk of nostalgia, not for penniless artists painting in sun-washed garrets or actors in black leather cruising on motorcycles, but those lovely days in my own Village memories when I’d been trying to raise a young daughter while constantly asking myself where my husband was.
“Did you see the Science Times piece on caffeine?” asked Esther, bringing my attention back to the business at hand. “Apparently, it’s the most widely used stimulant in the world—”
Tucker waved his hand. “I read that piece, too. Ninety percent of Americans ingest it daily, but they don’t just get it in coffee. Soda, tea, chocolate—they all have caffeine, and—”
“My point, if you’d let me make it, is that caffeinated coffee stimulates frontal lobe activity in the brain, so working memory is improved. It also lights up the anterior cingulum, which controls your ability to focus attention, so I’m not dumping it anytime soon.” Esther pushed up her black glasses. She tapped her wristwatch. “Boss, how long is this going to take? I’m giving a reading in ninety minutes, and I need to change.”
“Aw, Best girl,” Gardner winked. “Don’t ever change.”
Esther smirked. “Don’t pull my chain, Bird man.”
Gardner laughed.
Esther’s impatience couldn’t be blamed totally on her overstimulated anterior cingulum. Her shift had ended twenty minutes ago, and I’d asked her to hang around until Matt showed.
I reached beneath my blue Village Blend apron and felt for the cell phone in my jeans pocket. I pulled it out, flipped it open.
No messages.
My annoyance was changing to worry. Matt was over an hour late now. Had something happened to him? Why hadn’t he called? I pushed the speed dial for his cell and reached his voicemail.
With a sigh, I went ahead with the tasting preparations. As I set up a second burr grinder beside our espresso machine, I made the quality-control point to my staff that when properly preparing decaf for service (as we were about to do again) one grinder should be used for caffeinated beans and a second for decaffeinated beans.
I ground the beans coarsely and measured the grinds into a large French press. The water was simmering on the burner, but I didn’t want to pour until Matt arrived. Once again, I tried his cell number. I was just hitting speed dial when I heard the bell over the Blend’s front door give a little jingle.
On this rainy Tuesday evening, only six of the Blend’s nineteen marble-topped tables were occupied. In the last forty minutes, we’d had a mere two new patrons approach the coffee bar, so we were a little surprised by the arrival of a new customer, until we realized we hadn’t gotten one. Coming through the door at long last, was my ex-husband.
Anxious to grill him, I closed my cell phone and set it down on the counter—an act I would soon regret.
TWO
“WHERE were you? I couldn’t reach you? What happened? Why didn’t you call?”
A moment after barking these charming queries, I wanted to take them back. Matt and I functioned best when we communicated in a cordial, businesslike manner. The tone I’d just used had more attitude than a jilted fiancée on Dr. Phil.
Matt didn’t appear bothered by it. He walked up to the coffee bar, flashing one of his confident, masculine smiles. “Sorry, honey.”
Behind the counter, I tensed even more.
“Honey” was a term of endearment appropriate for a married couple. We were no longer married. I’d pointed this out several times. Matt never disagreed. He usually turned sheepish, saying it was a hard habit to break.
“Well, please try harder to break it,” I’d told him just last week, “because you’ve clearly got a pretty steady ‘honey’ these days, and it’s not me.”
“I mean, you’re right, Clare,” Matt quickly amended. Beneath a new charcoal cashmere sweater and black camel hair jacket, his muscular shoulders shrugged. “I would have called, but I couldn’t get a signal, and Joy wanted to come down for the tasting.”
“Okay,” I said. “But where . . . wait! Did you just say Joy’s coming?”
“She’s here. That’s the reason I’m late.”
My spirits instantly lifted. I hadn’t seen my daughter in nearly three weeks, and I was used to her stopping by almost every day—if not to see her mom, then at least to get her vanilla latte fix.
“I was on the Upper East Side anyway,” Matt explained, “and I checked in on her. She needed a ride downtown, so I hung around until her shift ended.”
This was Joy’s internship year in culinary school, which was why she was not taking classes in Soho. Instead, she was working all hours in the hot, new Upper Eastside restaurant Solange and over its even hotter gas burners. She’d be taking one more year of classes after the internship, guiding her through courses in restaurant management and marketing, and finally she’d graduate.
“Where is she then?” My head attempted to bob around my six-foot ex to see where the heck my daughter was hiding.
Matt jerked a thumb towards the front door. “She saw someone she knew on the next corner. She wanted to say hello.”
Matt then began studying the customers in the coffeehouse. It didn’t take long. There were only about a half-dozen men and women sitting at the Blend’s cafe tables, reading books and magazines, going through work papers, or typing away on laptops.
“Where’s my man, Ric?” he finally asked.
“Ric? Ric who?” asked Tucker Burton.
“Federico Gostwick.” Matt checked his watch. “He was supposed to meet me here. Clare, have you seen him?”
“First of all, you didn’t mention he was coming tonight. And secondly, I haven’t seen him in over ten years.”
I’d known Ric Gostwick fairly well back in my twenties when I was still married to Matt—in other words, ancient history. After we divorced, and I moved to New Jersey, Ric had quickly fallen out of my newly collapsed social circle.
“Maybe he dropped by already and I didn’t recognize him,” I said.
“Doubt it,” Matt replied. “I’m sure you would have recognized him. He hasn’t changed much at all, apart from his wardrobe. He’s dressing a lot differently these days.”
“No more ripped jeans and Sting T-shirts?”
Matt laughed. “Try tailored slacks, suede j
ackets, and Italian shoes.”
“Yummy.” Tucker laughed. “A GQ man.”
“He didn’t use to care about clothes.” I met Matt’s eyes. “Like somebody else I know.”
Matt frowned and looked away.
“What’s that about?” Tucker asked me.
“I can’t imagine,” I said.
Matt’s gaze returned, this time to spear mine. “You know what it’s about, Clare.”
I did, actually. I just didn’t like it.
Matt was a down-and-dirty Third World trailblazer. Meeting with coffee farmers on their high altitude plantations in Central and South America, East Africa, and Indonesia, he routinely traversed treacherous terrain and quasi-lawless territories, which meant he used to be more worried about packing proper hiking boots and a dependable weapon than displaying the latest designer duds on his athletic physique. Over the last year, however, that had changed.
At first, he’d begun dressing for success while trying to secure investors to expand our business. Then he became involved with Breanne Summour, disdainer-in-chief of Trend magazine. Our coffeehouse had a charming location, but Breanne’s circles were among the stratosphere of international cafe society. Matt’s travels with her were now taking him to different worlds, not just different countries.
She’d taken to dressing him differently, too. Using her relationship with top clothing designers, she’d been gifting Matt pieces of clothing worth thousands of dollars. One evening, I suggested in passing (admittedly, after a few vinos with dinner) that Breanne’s infatuation with him had to be based at least partly on his willingness to be treated like a life-size Ken doll.
“I can’t very well escort Bree to society events wearing old jeans and a sweat-stained safari hat,” Matt had snapped in reply. “I’ll thank you to remember, Clare, that when I help her, she helps me. And when she helps me, she helps our business.”
As I continued glancing at the front door—not for any sign of Ric but of my one and only little girl—Matt checked his watch again. “I don’t understand what could be keeping him. I thought by now he’d be here and you would have started the tasting for our best baristas. Is everyone here?”
“Dante Silva couldn’t make it,” I said. “He called and said he was running a fever so I told him to stay in bed.”
“Dante who?” Matt asked.
“Oh, right. I hired him about three weeks ago, before you got back from Brazil. He’s very good—trained at a coffeehouse near Brown.”
“Sorry, guys,” Esther broke in. “But if you don’t start soon, I’ve got to bolt.”
“Then let’s start,” Matt said, shrugging out of his exquisite camel hair blazer. While he pushed up the sleeves of his cashmere sweater, I poured the hot water (simmering but off the boil) over the beans in the French press, gave it a quick stir to start the brewing process, replaced the lid with the plunger in the raised position, and hit the timer (four to five minutes is optimal for the French press method).
As I set up cups on the counter, I enjoyed the aromatics of the brewing decaf. Seductive and sweet, they promised a rich, flavorful experience to come. The timer went off and I pushed the plunger down—the “press” part of this brewing method, in which a fine metal screen forces the denuded grounds to the bottom of the glass cylinder, separating them from the finished coffee.
A truly professional cuptasting or “cupping” was a much more primitive endeavor, involving slurping up wet grinds from spoons, spraying the entire palette, and spitting the mess back out again. Tonight, however, I simply wanted a few of my baristas’ reactions to a finished cup.
I poured out the samples. The French Press produces a coffee thicker in texture than the drip method—although not as thick as espresso. For my part, the taste of this new coffee was bold and bright, with intense depth and complexity and a satisfying mouthfeel. In the world of decaffeinated, it was perfection, a triumph.
“This can’t be decaf,” Esther declared.
“Agreed,” Gardner said. “Must be a mistake.”
“Clare, did you get confused?” Tucker asked, glancing at the two grinders on the working counter below the marble coffee bar. “Maybe you burred the wrong beans?”
“No, Tucker. Those are the right beans,” I assured him. “They really are decaffeinated.”
“What process then?” Esther pressed.
“No process,” Matt informed them.
My baristas’ heads swiveled towards my ex. They gawked in silent confusion.
“These coffee beans were grown on a brand new hybrid plant,” Matt explained, “a decaffeinated coffee plant.”
“No way,” Gardner murmured.
“Say again?” Esther asked.
“My friend Ric Gostwick made the breakthrough after years of horticultural experimentation,” Matt continued. “His beans don’t need decaffeination because they already are.”
Esther blinked in shock. “You’re kidding.”
Matt laughed. “I just made the deal with Ric. We’re announcing it together at the ICGE this week.”
“What’s the ICGE?” Esther asked.
“Omigawd, Esther!” Tucker cried. “There’s something you don’t know!”
“Put a designer sock in it, Tuck.”
“Don’t get snarky, goth girl.”
“The ICGE is the International Coffee Growers Exhibition.” Matt checked his watch again. “And if Ric were here, he would be explaining that he needs your help at the Beekman Hotel this Friday night for coffee service. He’s going to hold a tasting for the international press.”
“Hold the phone!” Tucker looked excited. “A press conference?”
“That’s right.” Matt smiled. “Ric will be unveiling his breakthrough. And he’ll be announcing the news that the Village Blend and its international kiosks will be the exclusive rollout for his new decaffeinated beans. So be sure to wear your Blend aprons for the event.”
Esther, Tucker, and Gardner stared with gaping mouths at the news. I already knew, of course, but it was a thrill to see their stunned faces.
Matt grinned wider. His eyes met mine.
Like Jack and the Beanstalk, my ex had brought home a bag of beans. They weren’t magic, but they might as well have been because they were the find of a lifetime, a fortune in a cup.
Oh, honey, you did it, I thought, but didn’t dare say, especially the “honey” part. Then the bell over the front door jingled again.
“Hi, everyone!”
My daughter finally bounded in, her spirits as high as her chestnut ponytail. Everyone said hello as she stepped around the counter and reached down to give me a hug. I was barely five two, and Joy outdid me by a good four inches. Or, at least, she used to. At the moment, she looked about five nine.
“Have you grown in three weeks?”
She laughed. “It’s the shoes.”
I glanced down to see the three inch wedged heels. “You aren’t working in those?”
“C’mon, Mom, don’t be a nudge.” She shot a brief, embarrassed glance at Esther, Gardner, and Tucker, presumably because I was talking to her like she was my child, which she was, so I really didn’t see the problem.
“I changed after work. My sneakers are in here.” She pointed to the backpack slung over her shoulder.
“How’s it going at the restaurant?” I asked.
“Amazing! Tommy’s been fantastic!”
“Tommy?”
“I mean, Chef Keitel. He’s been so incredibly helpful to me.”
“Incredibly helpful? Uh-huh. And I’ll bet he’s very tall, too, isn’t he?”
“Yeah! Like six four! How did you know?”
I glanced at Joy’s stacked wedges. “Just a guess.”
Esther loudly cleared her throat. I looked her way and she tapped her wristwatch. “Sorry, I’ve got to bolt.”
Esther and Gardner agreed to serve next week, and they both took off, Gardner heading north for a late night jam session, and Esther heading east to slam out her poetry.
As Tucker overwhelmed Matt with questions, and Joy began sampling Ric’s decaffeinated beans, I cleaned up the cups and French press. I smiled, listening to their chatty enthusiasm. I felt it too, that energy and anticipation of being on the cusp of something new. I wanted to keep listening. Unfortunately, the under-counter garbage can was nearly overflowing.
I could have left it for Tucker, but I felt guilty. He was going to be alone for closing tonight as it was, since Dante had called in sick. The least I could do was help him out with some cleaning and restocking before I called it a night myself.
I lifted the green plastic lining out of the silver can and twist-tied it closed. Then I headed for the back door, which sat between our storage pantry and the service staircase.
Downstairs was the basement, where we kept our green beans and roaster. Upstairs was the Blend’s second floor, a cozy area of overstuffed armchairs and sofas. The third and fourth floors were a private, duplex apartment where I lived, sharing off and on with Matt, whenever he was in town, which thankfully wasn’t often.
As a police siren suddenly screamed to life right outside our tall front windows, I yanked open the heavy back door and stepped into the alley.
The Blend was pleasantly situated on a street corner. Our front faced brightly lit, well-traveled Hudson. Our long, side wall featured a line of French doors. Stretching the length of the first floor, the doors paralleled a quiet, residential side street with sidewalks wide enough to use for outside seating in good weather.
The back of the Blend was my least favorite part of the property. Like all alleys, ours was a gloomy strip of unadorned concrete that ran the length of the building. We kept our Dumpster back here, which was emptied twice a week by a private hauling company.
I moved toward it now through the chilly wet drizzle. Although New York enjoyed temperate Octobers, with days as high as seventy, tonight’s weather had turned downright raw. The clouds were thick, and the early evening already looked darker than our Italian-roasted Sumatra. Eager to get back inside, I lifted the Dumpster’s lid with one hand and heaved the green plastic bag inside the metal container.
