Nancy Rommelmann

Coffeehouse Chronicles

20.

"It is not fattening," said Laurent.

"Certainly! It has only inside..." Marie brought her face closer to the case. "Pardon, what is the filling here?"

Mae took a shot at deciding which one the woman meant. "I think it's marionberry."

"No, not that one."

"Oh, prosciutto and cheese."

Marie laughed. "All wrapped in a nice beurre pastry, super low-cal!"

"What do you care, you're looking so wonderful!" said Laurent, and to Mae, "we'll have two."

"No, no, I don't want it!"

"Yes, you do," said Laurent, nodding at Mae. They were making light, now, but Laurent knew Marie-Therese was not out of the woods. She knew exactly what her sister liked, had liked since they were tiny girls, standing at the lip of their grandmere's baking table, accepting the pinches of unbaked brioche dough their mother forbade them, saying it would give them worms, a comment that drew from their grandmere a hum and, once her daughter -- cross, always cross -- was on the flagstone porch smoking, the story about how the baby birds had to find their own food after their mother was gone, and who they met in the woods, and how their courage always brought them to "la grande fete avec tous les animaux -- les ours, les lapins, les renards," and as she told it the girls holding open their mouths for little pops of sweets. Later, they would hear their mother arguing with her mother, accusing her of trying to make them fat, and their grandmere's voice steadily explaining that this problem was not of the children's making.

Marie-Therese was 27; she had almost not seen her 24th birthday. Laurent had seriously considered, the last time Marie went in-hospital, having their mother arrested. Their mother, who'd become so desiccated she looked like a broken wooden chair, the white cigarette now held by the teeth, all lip fat having been cannibalized.

"Also a scone, avec raisin," said Laurent.

"Ca va," answered Mae, and smiled at the young women. They were, Mae thought, so put-together, the way French girls always were.

Coffeehouse Chronicles

19.

Richard felt the action orbiting six inches outside of his head. It made things muffled, made him shall0w-breath. He thought she'd snapped his photo with her phone. He had hit her only because she was getting in his face, and how the hell did she know he busted the chain? She didn't know that. It had been 45 minutes before and the fat bitch probably wasn't even on shift then.

He gunned it up Interstate. It wasn't yet seven and not much traffic heading north. He parked the Explorer in the big shadows of the Fremont Bridge. The stanchions were huge, not much going on, parked utility trucks and emergency vehicles for the nearly hospital.

He saw what was probably the ambulance carrying the security guard scream past twenty minutes later. He'd hit her pretty card. But that wasn't his fault. She should not have confronted him that way. You don't come up to a man and get in his face about parking. What, did she own the lot? What did she care if he had to stop there? Why did a woman have a job like that anyway? Richard ignored his phone -- Joanne, wanting to know where the car was, no doubt; she could fucking wait -- and listened to talk radio. Five cars in total passed, and then it was eleven.

Richard crept up Williams. He'd ditch the car. He'd have to. There was a construction site just past Fremont; Richard took the left and parked it with the crews trucks. He left the keys on the floor mat.

Richard walked up Williams, past a clot of young snots waiting for restaurant food, probably one of those stupid Portland places that charge $15 for eggs. A cop car went past fast, its lights whirling. Then another. Shit. There was a sign for a coffee shop. Richard put his head down and went in.

Coffeehouse Chronicles

18.

The best part is the summer dresses, thought Mike, steaming a pitcher of milk and watching a stream of ladies walk in, back-light making their skirts transparent, their thighs visible to their panties. It was the second day of summer, and so far Portland had not let anyone down.

Matt went back to the milk and thought about what his friend Dario had said, that there was no better word in the English language than "panties." Who could argue? The milk frothed and Matt poured it onto a double-shot of espresso.

"Latte up!" he said, placing it on the counter, wondering whether, perhaps hoping it was for the small punk girl with the pink hair. Instead, a bulky gal who looked sort of Native came for the drink. She was a regular and Mike thought she might work nearby. Tipped well, never chatted.

The pink-haired girl had been gone a few hours and was now back. She had poured herself a water from the condiment bar. Matt wanted to shoot her, maybe video, the contrast between her dark eyebrows and the cotton candy-color of her hair was tight, interesting. Not so many girls in PDX pulled it off. He thought of a quote he read on some blog, "Intent is noticed and one is annoyed." It was attributed to Goethe but he didn't think that was right, anyway, that's what he thought too many of the girls in Portland did; guys, too: what up with all the stud belts and brass knuckles? Hard outside, pudding inside.

"Do you know that girl's story?"Matt asked.

Katie looked at the pink-haired girl. "Just that I gave her a cookie this morning."

Amelia saw the heads of the baristas above the espresso machine; she thought they were talking about her while trying not to look as though they were. Did they want her to leave? The guy with the curly hair was half-smiling. Amelia brought the glass to her lips and tried to look through it, but the bevel fractured everything. She felt acutely exposed, standing there, and turned so that the body of lady pouring sugar into her drink half-shielded her.

Coffeehouse Chronicles

17.

Luther nodded at the baristas. He smiled his closed mouth smile. He walked to the coffee bins. He checked the levels. The rhythm of keeping track had been a part of his day for five years, no one else could do it and he did not want anyone else to do it.

He took out his tiny pad and a pen. He did this each time he checked. If anyone were watching, and sometimes people were, it would be logical to think Luther was taking notes. He was, if not about coffee. He was drawing one of many thousand tiny drawings in blue ballpoint, this one of a dog with a hind leg like a plump hot roasted chicken drumstick, and a front paw raised in triumph, choking the neck of a chicken with Xs for eyes. In the background, three small children, in a ring-a-rosy. Luther put the pad away.

"You want an espresso?" Mae asked.

"I'm good," he said, heading out. "Later."

Coffeehouse Chronicles

16.

Marea inevitably needed to stop back into the cafe after that initial morning run, when she picked up the bank. Today, nearing 10:40, when she might have been home working on her story, she was back, bringing some paperwork Matt needed, employment verification for a new landlord. As she approached the cafe, she pictured North Portland as a Lite-Brite, each of the homes and apartments her employees lived and had lived in the brightly translucent colored pegs.

Huh, he was still there, Marea thought, passing the man at the far outdoor table. He'd been there every morning for two weeks. He always had several books at hand as he wrote in a notepad. With diligence, it would seem; he was there when she came earlier, and he was there now. Perhaps he was a writer; this happened occasionally, writers hanging around, waiting to chat with Marea. Today, he was in conversation with two men his age, mid- to late-30s. They saw Marea and all nodded hello.

Matt was at the register.

"Boy, you are so tan," Marea told him.

"That's what a month in Nicaragua will do," he told her. He'd been there on a photo shoot for... uch, Marea could not remember. Too many details to remember! She could ask, and it would undoubtedly be interesting, but there were three customers waiting, and she was on deadline.

"I'm going to stick the papers here," she said, slipping them over the counter.

"Thanks," Matt said, and turned to his next customer.

Book Review: Anthony Swofford's "Hotels, Hospitals, and Jails"

My review, in today's Sunday Oregonian. A clip:

If one is feeling generous, one will read "Hotels, Hospitals and Jails" and think, here is a man working out his demons. Those not feeling generous will agree Swofford is a wreck, while thinking that only the trading on his name -- he is the author of the 2003 Gulf War memoir "Jarhead" -- resulted in the publication of a memoir as scarily constructed as this one.

And about that publication: the book is published by Twelve, which puts out only twelve books a year. They are usually the cream, including books this year from Christopher Hitchens and Christopher Buckley. That Swofford's book was released as is is curious, and makes one want to know, beyond market forces, the reasons.

Coffeehouse Chronicles

15.

Amelia pulled her fingers through her hair, which was damp from the shower down the hall. The building did not lock it, and judging from the bike racks mounted to the wall, she figured it for cyclists to get clean. 

Amelia had no bike. She'd had a car but sold it three months for $300. It was once her mother's car. Her mother lived in Saskatchewan. She might have been trying to phone Amelia, but the phone was off. So was the electricity as of yesterday.

The cafe was walking distance from the punk house, the one by Fremont Bridge. Amelia had stayed at the one on Glisan for a while, but left after that night the guy with dreds started cutting himself in the chest with a big knife. The new house was cool, there were a few more girls. Amelia had liked that chick Monika, until she hooked up and told Amelia she needed the bed for her "business," whatever that meant. The living room had a hole burnt in the floor; it wasn't solid. Amelia found a sleeping loft in a walk-in closet. It felt a little like a coffin, the ceiling a foot above Amelia's face, and there was a bare electrical wire sticking out of the wall that Amelia covered with a shoebox. But it was private.

This morning she had a five-dollar bill, and forty cents. She did not want to break the five. She noticed the customers here bussed their plates and cups, sometimes dumping half their toast and jam. Man. And the toast smelled good. 

Katie wiped the counter and watched the girl the short pink hair. There was no possibility she wasn't hungry, she was spindly as a fawn. And, Katie thought, would probably spook as easy.

"Hey, kid," Katie said, and nodded the girl over.

Amelia looked but did not move. What, was she going to tell her to leave? It was a free fucking country.

"Come here," the woman said.

"What?" 

Katie smiled. "I have a favor to ask."

Amelia watched the woman take a pastry out of the case, put it on a plate.

"The baker brought us some new things today," the woman said, reaching for a ceramic mug. "We're trying to find out if people like them, so try it, with some coffee."

Amelia approached the counter. She held mug. It was heavy. 

Coffeehouse Chronicles

15.

Ten AM. Mac time. Twelve of them open on tables, plus two iPads. Where, Marea wondered, did all the PC users go? And should she take a photo of the cafe and ship it to Apple? She would like to peek at the individual screens, to see who was looking at what. But the screens faced away. Not like at the other cafe, where the tables were situated so that customers did not have their backs against a wall, hence it was inevitable that the baristas, or anyone walking past, could see what people were looking at online. This had been the case five years ago, when Marea passed a table and found herself seeing porn. It was a slow Sunday afternoon, no little kids in the cafe, but still.

Marea had called the barista on-duty to the back. The customer, the barsita said, came often. He never spoke to any of the baristas, all young women then, beyond ordering a cup of coffee, which he nursed for hours. He seemed harmless, but for the bug-eyed looks he sometimes gave the girls. 

"And once," the barista said, "he was on at a site called, How to Kiss a Woman."

Okay, Marea thought. It's sad, yes, it is, that some men reach sixty and do not know how to do that. But porn? Go home and do that, like the rest of humanity.

"Excuse me."

Marea was at the man's shoulder. He shielded his laptop. "I am going to have to ask you to not look at that here."

The man blinked. His eyes were gluey behind his glasses, pleading and defiant at once.

"Seriously," Marea said. "You can't do that here. I think you better go."

The man had clicked closed his PC and left. Marea had seen him once since; she did not kick him out again; he did not give her reason. And in truth it was not the porn  she found provoking, it was the how to kiss a woman. Had he just wanted the girls working to see? Did he really not know how?

Things We Should Not Have Eaten: a Jack in the Box Mystery

1995, 1996, Los Angeles. Nicky G and I hang out at the bars the Lava Lounge, the Room. After closing, we take his Rabbit or my Cherokee back to our respective homes in Los Feliz, Silverlake, usually taking Sunset, and right there, on the corner of Cahuenga, is a Jack in the Box. We're hungry, it's drive-thru, why not? And so the eggrolls with the sweet orange dipping sauce become a ritual, they are what you want after a few drinks, crunchy and hot, salty and sweet, cheap and available. We eat them in the car, grease on our chins and fingers, good ballast before going to sleep.

2012, Portland. Heading east to Costco, past the airport. Very hungry, and there on the corner, right on the way, is a Jack in the Box. Haven't been in more than a decade. Why not get some eggrolls, for old time's sake? Dredging up good memories, I pull in, order, get back on the road. I open the eggroll box. They don't look as I recall, all plump and deep-fry blistered. What the heck. Pull the tab on the orange sauce, dip in the eggroll... how to describe the taste? How about, dead turtle in the sun? The sauce is so sweet and metalic it makes my eye squinch. I can taste the fillings in my teeth. Have to get these things out of the car, now. Try to mash the whole box into the little car trash recepticle, manage instead to squeeze eggroll down my arm, the car smells of swamp, vaguely fecal, and that strand hanging from my arm, what is it?

Is it possible, I wonder, that this is what they have always tasted like? Oh, demon rum, what have we done?

Breasts!

My review of the fabulous book Breasts: A Natural and Unnatural History, by Florence Williams, in the Sunday Oregonian. The lede:

A friend came over last week. She brought her 7-month-old daughter, who is still nursing. While trying on my friend's dress, I took off my top and bra, causing the baby to say, "ghah!" and flex her chubby hands in the direction of my breasts. And I thought, look how smart these babies are; they know exactly what they need...

Read the rest here. 

 

Coffeehouse Chronicles

14.

Katie liked it the most about 9:20, the morning rush through, the yoga mommies from the studio down the block having collected their post-class lattes. She thought the most interesting customers came in now, the ones looking for work, or doing their work here, or needing a place to be alone in public. There were two doing that on the far wall, sitting with their respective thoughts beneath a painting of a bridge. 

Katie did not know the name of the woman in the baseball cap, or what kind of cancer she had. Katie did not think the woman had been a customer before the chemo, but perhaps she had been, perhaps her looks were that changed. Katie and the other baristas often knew things about their customers before being told, the gals who'd previously slammed double-espressos now ordering decaf turn out to be pregnant, people grow thin from illness, or fat from depression. The baristas saw couples nestle into each other as they waited for their coffee, and they saw them fall apart. One couple, daily regulars, had divorced. Several months later, each returned with a new spouse, and later, babies. Spring to summer to fall.

Katie was waiting for the woman in the baseball cap to take the lead. She thought it might have been this morning. They were close to that casual intimacy, a place of easy confidences, no pressure. And Katie knew, as some of the younger baristas did not, about illness and loss. She did not consider herself to have any special powers, but come on, we all need a hand to hold sometimes.