The First Espresso Machine in Altuna

So all nite I'm tossing and turning. My wife, Louise, punched me in the ribs about two o'clock and told me to go sleep on the couch, she was tired of getting elbowed.

"Danny you get right out of this bed."
"Louise, c'mon, that couch is lousy."
"Then sleep on the floor for all I care. I need to get some rest. I'm going to work in the morning!"

So this makes me mad.

"Don't forget, you could get laid off. Like that!" I snap my fingers in her face.
"Yeah, I know. So go sleep on the fucking couch so I can get some rest so I can do my job so I don't get laid off!" So she stares at me and I shrug and pull off my blanket and go for the couch.

I suppose Louise is right. She needs her rest, I know. She's always coming home all tired out. Since I got laid off I've been doing a lot of cooking for us. Before Louise started working, when we bought this house and started having mortgage payments, she always had dinner waiting on the table for me when I got home. Actually, I always wished she'd wait it a bit, because I always'd rather sit and watch the news for a while before dinner. But I didn't ever tell her. And now I always have the table set and a casserole or something waiting in the oven so we can eat when Louise gets home at six o'clock.

During the days, after I read the paper, finishing with the classified ads, looking for rigging jobs, I usually spend an hour or so dusting or vacuuming, or mopping the linoleum, before I go to Tindley's Cafe.

Tindley's Cafe is run by Bert Tindley, a really big guy with this beard and long red hair that he keeps in a net while he's working. Bert works the place by himself. He's got it all fixed so he can sit on this little scooter he made out of a bar stool and a piano dolly. Bert used to be a piano mover before he hurt his back and used his insurance to buy this cafe. So Bert scoots back and forth behind the counter, and yells to get folks to pick up their orders. People are pretty good about bussing their own, but even so Bert has to hire this Mexican guy, Manny, to clean up the seating area after the cafe closes at four.

So, after my night tossing and turning on the couch, I amble down to Berts for a cup of coffee and a little bouncing of the chin.

"Hey, Bert, what the hell's this?"

When I go in there there's a couple of guys in coveralls manhandling this contraption onto the counter where Bert usually has a case of pies.

"Who's that? Danny?" Bert calls out from the storeroom down past the end of the counter.
"Hey Bert! Hey Bert, what is this thing?"
Bert says something like presto-change.
"A what?"
"It's an espresso machine you nud!"
"A what?"

Bert looks at me from the end of the counter. The guys have finished shimming the thing up so that it sits nice on the counter. They're busy now hooking up a hose to somewhere behind the counter.

"Excuse me." the smaller one says, and Bert moves out of the way. The guy is down there grunting and Bert has turned around on his stool, with his back to me, like I'm not there. So I'm getting a little pissed and get up to leave.

Without turning Bert says: "Siddown ya nud. You want to know what this is, sit down, shut up and wait."

Bert doesn't take shit off people, but he's a right guy, so I sit back down and watch the coveralls guys finishing up with the gizmo. Finally they're done, Bert hands them a check, and starts fiddling with knobs and switches and stuff.

"Hey, Bert, can I get a cup of coffee now?" I ask, but Bert ignores me. Bert is playing the machine like a one-arm bandit, and it's spouting steam and making noise like a blow torch. I'm wondering is Bert going to blow himself up, but then he scoots down and puts this little cup, on a little saucer, on the counter in front of me.

"This is espresso. The Italians have been making coffee this way for centuries. Steam is forced through finely ground coffee, delicately tamped, where it extracts only the best flavors of the bean before condensing into the thick, rich brew you have in front of you."
"I don't know, Bert, I really just wanted a cup of coffee and a doughnut."
"Drink, you nud." Bert says.

I have to admit it smelled pretty good to me. Of course when I took a healthy slug I nearly burnt my tongue off.

"Ow. Muther fuck!" This was after I spit it out into my napkin. Bert is looking at me, shaking his head.
"You're supposed to sip it." he says.
"Well, now my mouth is all burnt and I won't be able to taste anything."
Bert hands me a glass of ice water and I cool my mouth off. "Go ahead, just take a little sip."

So I do, and I gotta admit it tastes pretty good. Bert is fixing some for himself, pouring the expresso and some hot foamy milk from a metal pitcher into a regular coffee cup.

"Cappuccino." he says. "Skoal."

So we spend an hour or so, him explaining to me how he used to live in San Francisco, moving pianos, and hung out in these cafes where they served expresso and read crazy poems to each other. I never took Bert for the kind of guy who would write poetry. He says he was pretty good, but that nobody writes poetry like that anymore, especially not in Altuna.

"How about another cup?" I ask.
"Sure. But this one will be seventy-five cents."
"Six bits? Six bits for this little bitty cup?"
"If you hadn't spit half of it onto my counter you'd still be drinking it." Bert says. Then he sighs. "What the hell, have another cup on me. But this will be the last free one. Ok?"
"Ok," I say, "but could you put in some of that milk like you did in yours, the what'd you call it, cappuchino?"
"Sure, sure." And we sit sipping our cappuccinos in friendly silence for a while.

"So, what'd you write poetry about?" I ask.
"Oh, this and that. A lot of them were humorous poems about sitting in cafes drinking espresso."
"Like what?" I say.
"Well, I wrote this one once, it went: Blackened steam splash burning / the night in the apostle's den / a gospel / white milk fog of Jesus / Virgin mother / floats to heaven / monks of cappucin."

Bert says this in a kind of chanty voice, all slow and flat. I'm sitting there, listening to him, and I can see him sitting in some smoky dive with a bunch of guys wearing beards, smoking, drinking expresso, while outside there's fog blowing in from San Francisco Bay, cold and damp and thick as the foam floating in my cup. But I don't tell Bert this.

"That's it?"
"That's fucking it, you nud!"
"Now don't get your shorts in a bunch. I just wanted to be sure that was the end. I thought it was ok."
"Oh. Well, thanks. If you like it you're supposed to snap your fingers." Bert snaps his fingers a few times.
"So, why'd you get this thing, anyway?"
"First espresso machine in Altuna." Bert says. "Thought it was time to introduce the good citizens to the fine art of coffee."
"Yeah? Well, good idea if you ask me. Listen, thanks for the coffee, Bert, guess I gotta be going."
"Yeah, well, see you tomorrow."
"Yeah, tomorrow."

So, I'm walking home, it's only eight blocks or so. But I decide to take a longer way home, because I'm thinking, and if I get home I'll feel like I have to be doing something, like working in the garden or doing laundry, and what I really want to do is think.

I'm thinking about that poem, how it got me picturing those guys in that cafe. I mean, I never been to San Francisco. But there I was watching fog blow through steep streets, and guys in smoky cafes and stuff. Maybe the expresso had something to do with it, and the way Bert was chanting. It just got me dreaming how it might have been and its like I was there.

I've lived in Pennsylvania all my life, in Pittsburgh when I was a kid, and in Altuna after Louise and I got married, and in a few other places in between, working around. And I never heard poetry like that. I mean we got poetry in school; I think that I shall never see / a poem lovely as a tree. No shit. And the trees in Pittsburgh were nothing great to look at, mostly. My father was a pipefitter, union man, forth-three years before a blow-out retired him early. He was an ok guy, never hit me or my sisters unless we really deserved it. Used to listen to the good radio shows after dinner. Let us stay up lots of times. Even hugged us now and then. But he had never been out of Pennsylvania either. And he didn't think school was good for much of anything except keeping kids out of the workforce so men could hold a decent job.

But listening to Bert say that poem, I felt like I missed something, like there was more to life than working or doing laundry. Like there was something inside that never got touched, even by Louise. Something sort of down inside my chest, but up in my head at the same time. I couldn't figure it. I'm walking along 23rd and I notice I'm crying like I only did once when my father smacked me for smoking, when I was eleven, and yelled at me if I ever did that again before I was eighteen he'd beat me black and blue. He was really mad. It was scary. I never did start smoking after that even when I was old enough. But this crying was different than it was then, kind of squeezed out of me instead of being scared out by my father.

I sat down on this bus stop bench and put my head in my hands. I'm sitting there, and a bus pulls up. A little old lady gets off and she's kind of standing there looking around. The bus driver beeps his horn to get my attention but I wave him off. Then the little old lady sits next to me on the bus bench. She's quiet for a while, then she puts her hand on my shoulder and gives me a little pat.

I don't know what it was, about her, but I kinda leaned into her, and she just put her arm around me and I sat there crying like a little boy with his mama. She never said anything, just kept her arm around me, patting me every so often.

Finally I sort of stop. I mean my nose is all plugged up and my eyes are kind of burning, but I'm not crying anymore. I have to snort a bunch of times because I don't have a handkerchief or napkin or anything, and the little old lady says she's sorry but she's run out.

So I'm sitting there and the old lady says: "You're really pretty lucky, you know."
"Yeah, how's that?" I say.
"Well, you're married," and she points to my ring because she can see I'm wondering how she knows this, "and you've got a good heart in you."
"Yeah? How's that?"
"Only a man with a good heart could cry like you were."
"Huh. Yeah." I say, like I don't really believe her.
"My husband, god rest his soul, had a good heart. Like you. I remember he used to cry about the damndest things. Course with him it was just little tears trickling down his face. I remember when our cat, Bessy, got hit by a motorcycle and died right in his hands. Why, he just stood there with the tears trickling down his cheeks and landing on Bessy. Yes, and when I lost my little baby, before it was even born. He cried then too."
"Yeah. Those are pretty sad things." I say. "But I don't even really know what I'm crying for. I mean I just had a cup of expresso and listened to Bert say a poem."
"Well, don't worry too much about it dear. You'll be just fine. I know."

Then she got up and toddled away.

So, I walked home. I washed dishes, and did some laundry. I worked in the garden for a while, and spent some time just sitting in the yard looking around. Then I went in and made Louise's favorite dinner, lasagne. I made it so it would be ready at seven.

That night Louise kissed me good night and said "sleep tight, and watch out with your elbows." But that night I didn't toss and turn at all.