Like me, my customers universally loved the bean buzz, which is why, on the same night I’d found that slumped-over man in our alley, three of my best baristas were horrified when I called them together—not to observe the body, because I hadn’t found it yet, but to taste a new kind of decaffeinated coffee.
Yes, I’d said it... the “D” word.
I, Clare Cosi, consecrator of caffeine, scorner of the neutered brew, had seen the decaffeinated light. Unfortunately, my baristas hadn’t. Upon hearing the dreaded adjective, Esther, Tucker, and Gardner glared at me as if I’d just uttered an offensive political opinion...
“Decaffeinated coffee?”
“Say what?”
“Omigawd, sweetie, you’ve got to be kidding!”
We were all gathered behind the coffee bar’s blueberry marble counter. Hands on hips, I stood firm, determined to reverse the barista revolt. “I know we’ve had trouble with quality in the past, but this is something new.”
“Something new?” Esther echoed. “So it’s not Swiss Watered-down?”
An NYU student, Esther Best (shortened from Bestovasky by her grandfather) hailed from the suburbs of Long Island. A zaftig girl with wild dark hair, she favored black rectangular glasses, performed slam poetry in the East Village, and maintained a Web profile under the upbeat pen name Morbid Dreams.
“No,” I assured her. “These beans were not decaffeinated by the Swiss Water Process.”
“Then it’s the Royal Select method,” Tucker presumed.
Tucker Burton was my best barista and a trusted assistant manager. For a few months earlier this year, however, the lanky Louisiana-born actor/playwright had landed a recurring role in a daytime drama, and I feared we’d lose him. Then the television writers had Tucker’s character shoot his boyfriend and himself in a jealous rage—and I was back to enjoying the pleasure of his company.
“Isn’t the Royal Select method the best way to decaffeinate beans these days?” he asked.
“No,” I replied. “I mean, yes, that’s probably the best method for the money—even though it’s really just the Swiss Water Process moved down to Mexico—but no, these beans weren’t processed that way, either.”
Esther sighed. “Meet the new decaf, same as the old decaf.”
“C’mon, guys,” I cajoled. “Keep your minds open.”
“Boss, you know the quality of un-coffee just sucks compared to unadulterated beans, no matter what method you use to decaffeinate them. And decaf’s not what this place is about anyway.”
“Word,” Gardner said. “Gotta agree with my Best girl.”
In a rare show of sentiment, Esther responded to Gardner Evan’s laid-back smile with the slightest blushing on her pallid cheeks. Gardner was from the D.C. area. The young African-American composer, arranger, and jazz musician worked for me part-time between gigs with his quartet, Four on the Floor.
“It’s all about the caffeine hook up,” he insisted, stroking his new goatee.
“Of course it is!” Tucker threw up his hands. “We’re the crack house for the ADD generation.”
My staff’s reactions weren’t entirely unexpected. Most baristas viewed asking for decaf on a par with asking a French chef to hold the butter. Even coffeehouse slang had labeled it a “why bother”?
Still, the last time I’d researched the subject for a trade journal article, I’d learned that fifteen to eighteen percent of coffeehouse customers wanted the lead out. The Village Blend was coming up short in that department. Over the years, we’d given a number of decaffeinated methods a shot on our menu, but maintaining the trademark Village Blend quality had been a challenge.
Decaffeination robs beans of their acidity (coffee speak, not for bitterness but the lovely brightness of flavor that keeps the drink from tasting flat). On top of that, the best decaffeination methods required fifty-five bag minimums. To manage that amount, the Blend had to rely on a third party roaster, since decaffeinated green beans had a significantly shorter shelf life than untouched beans. But that solution went against our century-old philosophy of micro-roasting daily.
The product quality sank so low, we just pulled it. At the moment, the only decaffeinated item we carried was “Coffee Milk” (coffee syrup mixed with moo juice, which we served hot or cold; skim or soy; regular or decaf ). The drink was introduced to me by our new part-time barista, Dante Silva, regrettably absent tonight.
A compact guy with a shaved head and some interesting tattoos, Dante was a young painter with one modest gallery show to his credit. He was also born and raised in Rhode Island, where Coffee Milk was apparently the official state drink.
So even though I could certainly understand the skepticism on the part of Esther, Gardner, and Tucker when it came to the decaf coffee thing, I implored them to: “Keep your minds open, okay? There’s a very good reason we’re doing this.”
Unfortunately, the reason we were doing this was late— that is, Matt was late, which wasn’t like him. Not in the last few years anyway.
Matteo Allegro was an international coffee broker and the Village Blend’s coffee buyer. One day in the future, after his mother, Madame, passed away (which I certainly prayed would not be anytime soon) Matt and I would become the legal co-owners of the Blend as well as the multimillion-dollar four-story Federal-style townhouse it occupied.
Neither Matt nor I had much in the way of savings, so both of us were committed to maintaining the business’s viability. Our relationship, however, was not always on the best of terms.
A decade ago, when Matt was my husband, he was frequently late and often lied. The dashing, ebony-haired, extreme-sports globetrotter was also constantly wired, but not on caffeine. The train wreck of his life (and therefore mine) happened over a pile of cocaine.
Now whenever Matt was late for anything, I automatically tensed inside, a kneejerk of nostalgia, not for penniless artists painting in sun-washed garrets or actors in black leather cruising on motorcycles, but those lovely days in my own Village memories when I’d been trying to raise a young daughter while constantly asking myself where my husband was.
“Did you see the Science Times piece on caffeine?” asked Esther, bringing my attention back to the business at hand. “Apparently, it’s the most widely used stimulant in the world—”
Tucker waved his hand. “I read that piece, too. Ninety percent of Americans ingest it daily, but they don’t just get it in coffee. Soda, tea, chocolate—they all have caffeine, and—”
“My point, if you’d let me make it, is that caffeinated coffee stimulates frontal lobe activity in the brain, so working memory is improved. It also lights up the anterior cingulum, which controls your ability to focus attention, so I’m not dumping it anytime soon.” Esther pushed up her black glasses. She tapped her wristwatch. “Boss, how long is this going to take? I’m giving a reading in ninety minutes, and I need to change.”
“Aw, Best girl,” Gardner winked. “Don’t ever change.”
Esther smirked. “Don’t pull my chain, Bird man.”
Gardner laughed.
Esther’s impatience couldn’t be blamed totally on her overstimulated anterior cingulum. Her shift had ended twenty minutes ago, and I’d asked her to hang around until Matt showed.
I reached beneath my blue Village Blend apron and felt for the cell phone in my jeans pocket. I pulled it out, flipped it open.
No messages.
My annoyance was changing to worry. Matt was over an hour late now. Had something happened to him? Why hadn’t he called? I pushed the speed dial for his cell and reached his voicemail.
With a sigh, I went ahead with the tasting preparations. As I set up a second burr grinder beside our espresso machine, I made the quality-control point to my staff that when properly preparing decaf for service (as we were about to do again) one grinder should be used for caffeinated beans and a second for decaffeinated beans.