Part 1: Brew

Coffee is a staple of my life.  I know, I know.  Everybody says that, but I’m really not exaggerating.  The average day for me doesn’t begin until I’ve had at least two cups, and then I need at least three more to get to lunch.  I slow down to two for the afternoon, but there’s the after-dinner cup that I covet at the end of a long day.  It has a shot of something soothing so that I can get to sleep with all that caffeine in my system. 

With that kind of daily minimum requirement, I can’t afford to be a coffee snob.  Well, I could, but I’m fundamentally cheap.  That’s what makes me a financial manager and why, at age forty-five, I could retire and live comfortably in my state of frugality for the next fifty years. 

I’m all about a two dollar cup of coffee from the corner diner - sometimes flavored and sometimes not.  Starbucks prices make me twitch.  Seven cups of coffee a day at five bucks a cup, times seven days a week, times three-hundred and sixty-five days a year equals one big caffeinated flush of the money toilet at year-end. 

My favorite corner diner is on Ninth Avenue and West 44^th in Manhattan’s Midtown West.  It’s not fancy, but it’s not a dump either, and the waitresses there have gotten to know me during the fifteen years I’ve been working at the CitiBank branch in the next block. 

Marjorie is my favorite.  At some age between sixty and eighty that’s undisclosed by her copper dye-job, she’s been at the Westway Diner for most of her life and loves to tell stories about the people she’s met.  Let me tell you, with the diner located only a few blocks from Broadway and Times Square, she’s met some doozies. 

The majority of her stories revolve around Ed Asner, who supposedly came by every Tuesday in 1979 for a corned beef Reuben.  I doubt that’s entirely accurate, but it’s so cute watching her tell the story.  It wouldn’t surprise me if she had a thing for old Ed back in his Mary Tyler Moore days, or if she’d actually made a move on the guy.  Finding out that she’d schtupped the guy every Tuesday in the storage room wouldn’t surprise me in the least.  She’s bold and brassy enough.

Delia is another one of my adored diner divas.  She’s somewhere around my age and not quite the character that Marjorie is.  From the silvering streaks in her average brown hair, I don’t think she’s ever had a dye-job in her life.  Born a couple of decades too late to be a flower child, she’s one of those kind of women whose inner-Zen brings peace to those around her.  If there was ever a categorization for hippies with a work ethic, that would be Delia.

The other girls are mostly younger, and come and go with the tide.  Some are struggling Broadway actresses who finally get the call to the big stage, or never get called at all and go back to whatever small town they came from.  The successes make me want to cheer along with them, because I love to see anybody aspire to something and then actually achieve it.  The failures are inspirational in their own way. 

At least those girls had the wherewithal to step outside their box and take on the world.  That’s how I look at it.  It didn’t matter that they went home – they still gleaned an unforgettable experience and the knowledge that acting isn’t as easy as it looks.

So, typically, I hit the diner somewhere around two in the afternoon, and I started that tradition for a couple of reasons.  Number one, Westway has a hazelnut blend that I’ve begun to crave at precisely one forty-five every afternoon.  There’s also only so much bank air I can stand to breathe in one stretch.  That’s what has me grabbing my cell phone with the card-holder case and, thereby, my debit card every afternoon, Monday through Friday.

Seeing that this was Tuesday, and a very pleasant spring Tuesday at that, I also grabbed my sunglasses.  The unseasonably warm March temperature made me happy, and I planned to soak up as much of it as I could by taking the long way around. 

In typical womanese logic, I also factored in all the extra steps it would take to walk to Eighth Avenue, up to 44^th and back over to Ninth rather than taking a straight shot across the street and up the block.  That entitled me to another pit stop at Duane Reade so I could grab a Cadbury Dairy Milk bar. 

I’d acquired a taste for the damn things on a two-week trip to London in 2010 and found myself screwed when I came back to discover they were available in New York.  Rather than eating one a day until my ass was as wide as the elevator doors in my apartment building, I negotiated with myself and bought one a week.  I made the most of it and stretched it out for all it was worth by using an eighth (two-eighths on Mondays, because it was freaking Monday) of it to flavor my afternoon coffee and give it an inexpensive mocha-esque quality. 

Thus, my ass wasn’t in any danger of shrinking, but it would still fit in the elevator.  Prioritization became important when a woman was in her forties.

Slipping the chocolate bar into the pocket of my pearl gray suit jacket, I strutted my matching kitten heels on toward West 44^th and my afternoon caffeine fix.  The three-inch split in the back of my suit skirt allowed for a stride length that was more suited to a six-foot man than a five-four woman, but this was New York and I was pre-burning chocolate calories.  

I also had a meeting in twenty minutes, according to the reminder on my iPhone.  I needed to make headway.

Striding through the diner door, I saw that Marjorie was working today, along with a couple of the younger girls – Nicole and Natalie.  Upon seeing me, the girls merely waved while Marjorie smiled and reached for the coffee pot, calling out, “The usual, Tiny?”

“You got it!”

Perching on the edge of a counter stool as she poured my coffee and added an extra shot of hazelnut to it, I took a disinterested look around the diner.  My gaze wandered up and down the counter and booths that were mostly empty at this time of day.  Some of the people were like me, regulars who were here as part of their normal routine.  Those I recognized, but the tourists were just that, and I barely bothered to register their presence. 

What did catch my eye, however, were the two men in the corner booth.  The one with reading glasses had shaggy gray hair and the other possessed a head full of long blond curls.  Sitting on opposite sides of the booth, they had two cups of coffee and a white legal pad on the table between them. 

They were neither regulars nor tourists. 

“You’ve got some new locals back there,” I observed to Marjorie as she set my paper cup on the counter and sealed it with a lid. 

“Locals?  You think?” 

She peered skeptically over her shoulder at them as both began laughing.  The brilliant white smile on the gray-haired guy left no doubt in my mind.

“As long as you call Jersey local, yeah.”

Digging the five-dollar bill out from behind my debit card, I unfolded it and was in the process of passing it over to my regular server when I suddenly changed my mind.  Trading it for the debit card, I requested that Marjorie charge me for their coffee as well as mine. 

With my card in her hand, the feisty career waitress propped a fist on her hip.  “You must know who they are, so give up the goods, sister.”

Wiggling my eyebrows, I teased, “What?  If it’s not Ed Asner, you don’t recognize them?”

She swiped my card harshly through the machine and tossed it on the counter in front of me.  “I’m writing myself in a twenty dollar tip for putting up with your smart mouth.”

I laughed, knowing that she didn’t mean it.  She enjoyed playing curmudgeon almost as much as she enjoyed celebrity encounters. 

“Ever hear of Bon Jovi?”

“Those boys with all the hair?  Shot through the heart and all that?”  She once again looked over her shoulder.  “That them?”

“It’s two of ‘em,” I confirmed while standing and sliding my debit card back where it belonged.  I had only ten minutes to get back to the bank.  “Jon Bon Jovi and David Bryan.  Tell them I hope they have a nice day - in a non-Jersey way.  I’ve gotta run.  See you tomorrow!”

With that I was out the door and smiling all the way back to my office.  It was kind of nice being able to return a little bit of what they’d given me over the years.  It was also kind of nice to see them.  Period. 

I’d always been a huge fan of the band, which is why I spent two weeks in London during their O2 residency becoming addicted to Cadbury in addition to my coffee.  Jon was my personal favorite, but I wouldn’t kick David out of bed for eating crackers – the first time, anyway.

I'd never have the chance, but that didn't bother me in the least, and I just knew the rest of my afternoon was going to be stellar.