I’m sitting at the table, sipping my favorite drink, the French 75. I feel like I’m Ernest Hemingway, and the spirit of an old-fashioned French bistro lingers in the air. I drag from my cigarette and through the foggy smoke I notice a man, most likely in his late twenties, and am instantly attracted. He is devastatingly handsome: dark umber brown hair, pronounced chin, a slight scruff, and thick -rimmed glasses. I always fall for the older men, I think I secretly have an 8 year senior prerequisite. I glance in his direction and notice his slender frame, and he wears an old grandfather vest. Young but mature, I was surely finished.
I’m in the heart of the French Quarter in New Orleans and it is midsummer. The staggering heat only causes ones pulse to constantly beat rapid, as if I didn’t have enough thoughts to cause my heart to race and my body to tremble, now the sweltering heat refuses to not make me its prisoner. I am amidst quite possibly the worst writer’s block I have ever encountered. However, temporarily moving back to the place I once referred to as an eyesore has begun to spark new thoughts and sentiments. I realize now that I can embark on new encounters, having experienced life in New York, and now am aware of how to render the juice from any city with a heartbeat.
Suddenly I am struck with the urge to begin a conversation with this tall, thin fellow. I always have the worst conversation faux-pas. When I feel someone is expecting me to be charming and overwhelmed with interesting ideas and philosophies on God knows what, I always make an incredibly crude and inappropriate comment. Last week I was helping cater a banquet and when a very chatty chef whom I have hardly an attraction to sits down next to me, I have no choice but to comment on how an auburn-haired woman’s face is frightening. He then informs me she is my employer’s new front of house manager. I decide to let the nonexistent conversation go.
The waiter returns with the check, I pay, then exit the restaurant in search of more caffeinated pastures. I make my way to my favorite coffee shop on Royal, minding the pot-holes with every step. As I reach my destination, I open the ancient doors and with one creak I am transported to my haven. The smell of coffee fills the stagnant, antiquated air, and mixes with the musk of the classic novels perched upon the shelves. I order my coffee, pay only $1.25, proceed to create a flow of white crystalline sugar from the canister, cream my coffee to the perfect tobacco color, then caress my favorite destructed velveteen chair, and proceed to become acquainted with my man of the week, Charles Dickens. Today it’s Great Expectations, and tomorrow with luck, I have hopes to move onto Lord of The Flies. I keep myself rather busy.
Although I have had my reservations in the past about the city of New Orleans, I can say with conviction that the Crescent City knows how to make a cup of coffee. The mix of chicory with freshly roasted and ground beans is how God intended coffee to be savored. Although this city’s allure isn’t exactly based off of the smell of urine, old beer, vomit, and prostitutes, it is secured in the smell of its food and its coffee. In my high school days I attended the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts and in the mornings would walk to class and the aroma of pralines and pies surrounded me in pure sugary pleasure. It smelled like a woman named Inga was making fresh Belgian waffles every morning. I say no more.
My coffee shop is what my study will look like when I reach the age of being study-worthy. There is a fireplace (though God knows why they have a fire place in Louisiana, it hardly dips below fifty degrees, and in New York fifty degrees means time to break out the shorts) and bookshelves stocked with all the essential classics from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Alexandre Dumas, all hardbound, all falling apart, and all smelling of history and age. The interior is built from mahogany and fixtures exuding a dim amber light create the shadows that cause my hideaway to have an almost tavern-like atmosphere. It is warm and humble and invites me to quiet that ever racing pulse to a soft drone, like a grandfather clock ticking at a regular and steady rhythm. I strike a match to light the tip of my ivory cigarette, commencing its life and death in one instant. For a moment I listen to the first inhale, and imagine the crackling of a fire back in New York. I yearn for the autumn again. I lust after sweaters and fall leaves and the gray sky casting its bitter chill upon me. In the present, though, Frank Sinatra is in the background, and I am following Pip in his journey after the pretentious Estella; a love story doomed from the beginning. So often is this the truth.
I momentarily cast my eyes above the typed-written pages and as my luck would have it, the dark and brooding gentleman from the restaurant is ordering a cappuccino and grasping a copy of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road. I can’t help but stare at his frame and stance. I notice the curve of his back and the way his three-quarter sleeve button up shirt drapes his backside in a most cruel manner. He dresses his cappuccino in sweet splendor and takes a seat across from my beloved chair. I catch a glance at what lies behind his broad rimmed glasses, and I notice that his umber hair matches his eyes. They are dark and handsome, and I am crushed.
