BRUNCH AT STARBUCKS

 

I had set my glasses on the bedside table beside my Kindle reader and  overnight they vanished. I hunted everywhere, felt through every drawer, every corner, every crevice, they must have fallen down behind the bed and I could not reach my fat hands down far enough to search. Without them I could not see the numbers on the phone or read a menu.

 Julinda at the lobby desk suggested I buy a replacement at Walgreens and the concierge wrote directions in very big writing,

EXIT LEFT

FIRST TURN RIGHT

WALK TWO BLOCKS

WALGREENS ON LEFT

            I followed the directions and found Wallgreens, an enormous market which seemed to sell everything, bananas at $1 each baby goods, toiletries, souvenirs, and every kind of eye glass known to man, rimless, horn rimmed, coloured frame,  sunglasses, driving glasses, ski goggles,. I tried on reading glasses and for $32 bought a pair that put my world into focus.

            Wirh my restored vision I walked out and saw a Starbucks sign next door. I got into line behind three slender young women in breast hugging sweat shirts and jeans with sequins all over the back pockets.  Their main expression to each other was ‘Oh my Gahd, He/she or they didn’t!!!” as we moved slowly towards the counter.

I ordered latte with a breakfast bun, a large cinnamon pin wheel. Simple? No, what size latte did I want;, l, what kind of milk; full cream, fat free or soy?. Did I want my bun warmed, butter or margarine? The young Latino man at the counter could give the police lessons in interrogation.. He wrote my name on a cardboard coffee cup, whizzed my bun through the microwave and waved me on to the coffee area.

 I joined the crowd watching a Scandinavian goddess, high priestess of the coffee machine. Her performance would have looked good on stage with the Bolshoi as she ,ground  coffee, transferred the grounds into a tiny wire basket so gracefully that not a grain was lost. She tamped down the grounds, swung the basket under the appropriate spout on the machine, As the coffee gurgles into a cup with someone’s name on it the ballerina/high priestess poured milk into a jug, offe3red it to the frother, then united coffee  and froth in the paper cup, anointed it with a plastic lid and called the name written on the cup. I was strongly tempted to applaud, shout bravo. Instead I studied the advertising around the walls. with my Walgreen’s glasses.; frappochino showed a gondolier in Venice, a neatly chalked blackboard invited us to a free tasting of brewed clover next Thursday between 2 and 3 p.m.

 The high priestess called my name, I collected my coffee sipped it as I ate my bun sitting at a tiny table in the sun.

Back at the hotel, room maid Peggy had located my glasses. They had fallen into a gap behind the bedhead.