“Cafe Customers”

“My favorite customers were the cliques of intellectuals and writers and their fringes of lovers, admirers, and imitators. These groups often occupied several tables pushed together and filled with a picturesquely wide assortment of espresso cups, latte glasses, cake and dinner plates. There were mugs still foaming with draft beer, balloon wine glasses designed to preserve the bouquet of their contents, narrower white-wine glasses and champagne flutes, brandy snifters holding small, precious quantities of honey-colored nectar, highball, sherry, old-fashion, and margarita glasses. The glasses contained differing levels of rich, ruby-, cherry-, and raspberry-colored wines: some were nearly full and some showed only dregs. Cordial glasses sparkled; one aperitif had layered colors, red-grapefruit on the bottom and pure orange atop, another, the hue of kiwi fruit, and a third, that of ripe cherries. A Pernod, with its milky yellow and ash-gray mixture, evoked French cafés. Jovial champagne bubbled continuously up through its flute to the delight of its sipper. Plates of pasta steamed with succulent vapors as the diners made stabbing gestures with their forks at one another’s plates. Delicate artist-model creatures pecked at small forkfuls of espresso cake. Fat-bellied, Rabelaisian characters with red berets dumped raw oysters down their gullets after sprinkling them with lemon juice. Everything at the tables was chaos. Passion and loud voices revealed the collective mood. Threads of a discussion raveled sotto voce until a moment came when one of the participants violently disagreed with what had just been said, then everyone else at the table as well as the other stunned patrons heard an exclamatory eruption, a shout of denial and saw a spreading out of palms in visual stoppage, a violent shaking of the head.”