Noir, baby, Cafe Noir

Don’t ask me why, but I was asked to spend an hour in a coffee shop and write something that made you feel that you were there with me, drinking an espresso. For some reason, it came to me to write it in a noir style…

Paris. It’s never Springtime in Paris. No matter what the songbooks tell you, it’s always rain, straight, with a rain chaser. Not exactly a place to warm the cockles of your heart, or the cockles of anything for that matter.

The first time I walked into Café Les Deux Magots on Boulevard Saint-Germain, I wasn’t sure whether to order a hot cup of joe or an exterminator. But I was on the run and it was cold outside baby, as cold as the sound of the backdoor slamming the morning after, so without looking at the menu or the garcon, I ordered a café, s’il vous plait, make it noir, and make it snappy.

I loosened my coat, brushed the rain from my shoulders, and took a look around. A couple of teenagers necking in the corner. Old men reading old newspapers. Some mutton dressed as lamb standing at the bar, looking hopeful. The hiss and moisture of espresso being made in the city of a thousand espressos. As I waited, I knew there was only one thing I had to avoid, although to do so was as impossible as it was for rice to avoid white: the letter in my pocket, the one I knew contained the big kiss-off.

I had my hand on the corner of the letter when le garcon delivered my drink. It came in a heavy porcelain demi-tasse cup in a tiny saucer with burgundy red piping around the rim. The lip of the cup was as thick as a plate. With one hand in my pocket still gripping the edge of the letter, I lifted the cup to my mouth with the other and realized that if dark had a smell, this would be it. If dark had a taste, this would be it: heavy, hot, bitter, strangely beautiful, and palatable only in the smallest amounts. This espresso had gravitas and bore as much resemblance to Starbucks as Joe Biden did to Sarah Palin in the Vice Presidential debate. I drank it down and signaled to garcon that I needed another one, this time make it a double.

I let the letter drop back into my pocket. I realized that no matter what it said, this pain was mine to bear and I’d better get used to the cold. At a time like this, in a place like this, there was only one thing on the menu: noir. Café noir.