Seed Freak

Things are very specific. Cappucino is too lite and frothy. Espresso is too strong and too hot. A latte is kinda feyish and in all the jokes about over-priveleged folk. Perfection on a hot sluggish day I guess is then a a double shot of espresso over ice with a small splash of half and half and a quarter packet of sugar. A brownie or something chocolate-y and solid is good company too.

So I've just spent too long at the art store trying to differentiate between cream, banana, sahara and eggshell paper stocks. But I leave the store with two large sheets of color paper in hand. Time to reward my decisiveness. I swing by the Beverly Coffee Bean (which alanna hates and boycotts soley because she hates the font) and order the usual double espresso over ice, one of the shots decaf please. The kid who makes it needs the order repeated. Clue 1.

A little about the beverly coffee been. It's a small one. Hyper space conserving. Really an angular enclosed coffee stand with one way traffic indoors and a small outdoor seating area. It's not a real coffeehouse. Whatever. It gets the job done.

So I'm waiting behind the plexiglass which keeps steamed milk particles from coating my specs and keeps my mouth vapors off the stainless steel espresso machine. The kid who's making my thing turns to the curly-haired gentleman in front of me and asks whether he wants water added to it.

???

The man affirms. The kid goes to the back, near the ice machine, adds water, smacks the cup on the counter and announces that my double espresso with a shot of decaf over ice is ready. I look at the watered down mixture floating an inch over the ice and ask if he put a SHOT of decaf ESPRESSO in there (as opposed to some unpotent decaf coffee?) He says YES, sans flinch or hesitation, zero indication that anything is wrong.

Okay...

[The sad little girl goes outside to the patio to dress her coffee.]

Outside, I look at the tan colored water again. I taste it... -- well still fairly strong, maybe I saw/heard wrong. Okay. So I add some half and half (a little less than usual-- just in case), stir it up, examine the coffee a few more times as I walk out of the place and grow increasingly perturbed by the thought that the kid MUST HAVE have added water to my afternoon life elixir. I get in the car drinking my now increasingly weak and watery- tasting coffee, going back and forth on what just happened. Maybe there's a possibility that he didn't do what I SAW him do.

Though my memory is auto-repeating the scene:
"Do you want water added to this?" said the Coffee Bean's slim novice to the curly-haired gentleman as the unwitting asian girl stood by watching. "Sir, would you like water added to this?" "Sir, water to ruin her coffee?" The barista strides to the back to add water.

Revisionist history. The Holocaust. 1984 and the Ministry of Propaganda. I am here in sunny, happy privileged, Los Angeles away from female hurricanees, drinking the key to the seed.

The REVISING of reality to explain/make sense of an unexpected or undesired reality... In my world view it made absolutely no sense for a barista to add unsolicited WATER to my espresso and then ask somebody ELSE if it was okay. Why would he do that? He must not have done that. My coffee must be okay.

Despite the fact that it's weak, thin, not okay.

Does the evening weather report later reveal that ice had a lower melting point this afternoon causing water levels to rise in coffee drinks to unexpected levels?

Who know.

Well, I"m home now. Blogging, drinking an anemic iced double espresso, listening to recently downloaded "Maneater" and now "Suburbia." Melodies were amazing back then.

My woes are definitely trivial.

Still, insofar as a bad cup of coffee unleashes diseases of the mind, everything

AVEC PLAISIR

-alice