Lake-Effect Coffee, Chapter 1
A fictional look at a real goal of caffeine-fueled connection.
“One large coffee, black is fine, and she’ll have a small cappuccino.”
Matthew ducks under the van’s low ceiling and steps to the espresso machine, too focused to notice my thumbs-up. Our espresso repetitions are finally being put to the test.
“It’s on me next week.” The second woman, leaning rigidly against the van, turns to me while I ring up the total on my phone. I cringe inside, hoping the credit card reader behaves. “Wait, will you be here next Thursday?”
“Definitely.” I lie through my teeth. The single bulb in the van’s ceiling flickers, reminding me I must crank the electrical subsystem if we have any hope of the La Marzocco surviving the cappuccino.
Four full-body cranks later, I can’t help myself from grinning as my colleague Matthew serves two scorching hot beverages through the open aluminum side panel.
“Congratulations on being our first customers at Lake-Effect Coffee! We appreciate you!” I chime in myself.
Without meaning to, I used my confident voice. With one drip and one espresso, we’ve technically earned revenue and we technically didn’t hate it. I glance into the park contentedly, soaking in the moment. Trees. Sky. People. Life. And here we are in the middle of it, handing strangers coffee like we exist.
“May I snap a quick pic for our socials?” Our third business partner, Matthew’s wife, Robin, pulls her phone from the front pocket of her overalls.
“Robin, do you need your notepad?” I reach for the pad where she’d been jotting down Instagram captions. She shakes me off, a pitcher determined to stick with her fastball. Her smile returns, and the two women pose with their coffee cups.
“We have to ask: why the name Lake-Effect? Did you drive down from Buffalo?”
Robin glances up to Matthew and me in the truck and the three of us exchange a knowing glance, silently deciding who should field the question.
Robin shrugs. “Why not?”
Matthew and I turn to each other and execute a freeze frame high-five. We practiced this more than the cappuccinos and assume the studio audience loves it.
It was a ridiculous morning—and exactly the kind that made us feel alive.
Fade to black.
Eighteen months prior, my days were filled with turning a different professional crank. One that didn’t even produce cappuccinos, just despair.
I can no longer discern whether the dull hum is coming from inside my brain or the row of fluorescent bulbs above my cubicle. The clock on my desk phone says 10:49, my work-provided mobile says 10:49, my work-provided laptop says 10:49, and my work-provided desktop says 10:50. I haven’t touched any of them since I got in at 8:29.
As a child, “fight or flight” sounded superhuman. Mother needs to lift a car off her child? Use fight or flight! Lame-duck president needs to ram a bill through congress? Invoke fight or flight!
It was only as a 30-year-old on my third therapist I discovered the establishment had demoted Pluto and promoted Mr Freeze.
Fight, flight, or freeze.
Was the lack of luster because of how clumsy it was stumbling off the tongue or because I, along with nearly all of my closest friends, found ourselves in the third bucket hour after hour, day after day, of our 9-5 careers?
Regardless, I’m glad there’s a word for what I’m experiencing. I feel confident the nuanced and empathetic half of the establishment (my therapist) can envision what I’m describing when I use the F-word.
(Freeze, dumbass. This is a children’s story.)
It’s not the same with my PCP.
(Primary Care Physician, dumbass. Drugs have no place in our schools—except for the Adderall we hand that out after the Pledge of Allegiance and before the morning prayer.)
“When was your last panic attack?” Uh, never?
“When did you last take a Klonopin?” Six months ago, and it put me to sleep.
“Great! It sounds like we’ve achieved a good balance!”
I’ve been told to advocate for myself at the doctor, but when this is the script of misunderstanding, what else can I do but email him a copy of my memoirs—typed under these very fluorescents?
Zero panic attacks might seem like a good sign, but just like low unemployment doesn’t mean every family has food on the table or employer-provided health insurance, no panic attacks doesn’t mean I’m mentally thriving. Panic attacks or not, I feel catatonic most days at my job and it is leaving a deep psychological scar.
The chime of a Teams message interrupts my stream of thought. I’m briefly grateful for the distraction, until I see the message itself.
“Hey. Free to chat?”
AbsoLUTEly not. Not that I was doing anything—I was literally staring at the chemical structure of a Klonopin—but I’ve “chatted” with this person twice this week, got nowhere, and definitely did not use my confident voice. I minimize Teams and will myself to forget they ever pinged me.
I take out my phone to text Matthew. He made me laugh when we met on the yellow school bus more than two decades ago and I’m counting on him being able to do the same this morning.
Zero bars. Of course. If my employer wanted to prevent us from using cell phones, they would not even think of encasing the floor and ceiling in rebar or declining the option to add signal relays. They’d send out a moralist email From the Desk of the Executive which ignores the reality on the shop floor.
Don’t get me started on the real moral issue here.
I’ve been staring at my screen for more than two hours. What are you up to?
I hit send on my way to the pane-glass window: one bar, two bars—swish_.
A single SMS is the first piece of real work I’ve done today. My brain recognizes the fresh creative outlet and I fire off a second.
What if we open a shop called Moralist Coffee?
Memories come flooding back from the half-day I once worked a tent handing out bananas and juice boxes. A couple dozen employees stopped by, dropping their winter coats in our coat-drive bin and thanking us for the snacks before heading off to “work.” I was new to the workforce and still remembered the energy of my college campus, but I could tell this felt different. Back at my desk that afternoon, my paper pushing no longer felt important. I may have even muttered how do we do that everyday. The feeling of being a positive moment in someone else’s day stuck with me. I haven’t felt it since—not here, anyway.
Realizing I’m still standing by the window, I glance back at the text I sent. Moralist Coffee…heh…I wonder if that could actually work. I sit back at my desk and Mr Freeze returns.
“That was awesome.”
“That was awesome.”
“That was awesome.”
The debrief of our first customer interaction is unanimous. The sun is still shining on our newly minted coffee van. We have not even filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
I wasn’t sure if anyone would trust us or even see us on our first day in the park. The sight lines through the leafless late-fall trees are rich with dramatic depth, but we don’t even have a health score from the county yet and our logo is still a monochrome outline.
“That was awesome.”
“That was awesome.”
“That was awesome.”
Perhaps one transaction is all we need. Time to pack it up and go home, a life well-lived. But Matthew, ever the opportunist, cracks his knuckles and steps out of the van.
“My lingua franca is sales and I thrive on the hunt.”
I’m secretly relieved, as my high from the first sale starts to wane and I worry we’ll never see a second customer.
“Yikes dude, less stalker vibes, more charming entrepreneur, please.” Our trio works because Robin calls her husband ‘dude.’ They met in the common area of Upjohn Hall during undergrad in Kalamazoo. The pharmaceutical origins of their relationship (Upjohn, clearly and obviously referring to William Upjohn, the founder of the company which invented Xanax and Rogaine) were present in the precise way Robin had trained us on the espresso machine.
“I’ll walk behind you to give you some social proof. Oh! Would matching aprons help?” I make a mental note of a potential business expense, realizing I must be comfortable—I spoke without overthinking. How refreshing to feel the low morning sun warming my face instead of the cold glare of fluorescents.
Robin takes a step back to straighten the chalkboard menu. “Presentation, presentation, presentation,” she quips as she grabs a damp cloth to wipe a smudge off the counter.
I didn’t even know we had damp cloths, but I know a call-and-response when I hear one. “Location, location, lo…oh there he goes.”
“Good morning, sir! You look like you could use a pipe-organ-hot cup of joe!” Matthew has stepped into the center of the park and I scurry to catch up before someone reports him for being zany. Talking to strangers feels almost taboo these days, as if everyone’s social sphere froze three months into the pandemic and never thawed.
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