crepes

It was cold outside, and I closed my front door gently, gloved hands fumbling with the lock. I trod down the stairs and climbed over the frame of my bicycle, sliding my tired Adidas sneakers into the steel toe clips. My left foot pushed off and the right settled in the cycle of pedaling, cutting through the frigid January wind. My bicycle galloped over each pothole as I raced through the city, building up speed to wrestle each hill ahead.

I arrived at the cafe and pulled my cable lock off my wrist, twisting it through the rear spokes and around the seat tube of the frame. I linked it to a tree, the wheels clanging against wrought iron fence behind. With a careful tug, I tested its security, then headed towards the entrance to the shop.

In the dimmed lighting of the small old building, coffee seemed to float through the air and calm the senses. People chatted in concerned voices, carefully maintaining volume just above a whisper. The dull murmur of the shop, quietly bustling at lunchtime, warmed my cold ears.

I didn’t drink coffee, I never have. But a cafe has little competition for hours of studying and esteemed procrastinating at a higher than bedroom level. I spotted my friends, occupying the only table utilized beyond a coaster and a laptop, whispering behind stacks of binders and textbooks that stood out in the barren dining room of the Coffee Exchange. It was not difficult to catch annoyed glances and disapproving glares from the regulars around them, professionals of the art of looking productive and hammering away at backlit Macbook keys. I walked over and joined them, dragging an unused chair from a table occupied by a plantlike woman sipping a cappuccino. We tried to study but the laws of physics and calculus slipped out from behind the blue text bubbles of our iPhones and we became a part of the overgrowth of the stalling and noble loitering of the cafe.

After breaking the tip of my last #2 pencil sketching a skewed diagram of a parallel circuit on a napkin, I gave in to the warming urges of the room and walked to the counter to order a drink. Following several minutes of financial regret, I seized my five dollar hot chocolate from a tattooed barista, scantily clenching the searing ceramic mug. Almost spilling onto the hardwood below, I rushed it back to our corner and set it down, rubbing my tender fingers and inhaling the steam of the liquid resting on the table.

-     -     -

The palm of my left hand still burned from the cloud of steam that had scathed it thirty minutes earlier. It was carelessness, the result of lazily smearing butter onto the griddle while my brain drifted to the music emanating from the speaker system. We played what we wanted, so long as the owner wasn’t around to grimace at rap and frown at overdriven guitars. Direct customer complaints were rare - a sneer or scowl was generally the extent of our problems, even during Mikey’s targeting of young families and awkward Tinder dates with repugnant ‘00s hip-hop and demonic metal.

He always called them pancakes, fucking pancakes. We worked the pancake shack in the alley. Mikey hated it, and the sounds of Fugazi and Rush’s 2112 just barely got him through. Every Friday night we listened to the students bark orders at us and I flipped, filled, and folded bucket after bucket of off-white batter until they all finally left. There were no breaks, just a start and an end and moments between rushes when a guilty run for a burrito was worth the risk of the other’s hardship.

Somewhere at the end of the tunnel, there was counting of the drawer, and sweeping and mopping and a hit the lights as we finally stumbled out the door. After six hours of hot food from the grille we were invincible to any temperature, glad to be free of the haze that steadily browning crepe batter creates, fogging up windows and planting its odor deep into our clothes. The comfort of a summer night after a shift was unparalleled, and minutes rushed by, our minds drifting as we reclined on the hard steel top tubes of our fixed gear bikes. We'd twist the handlebars just right so that they’d stay put with our weight resting between the saddle and the stem, with the front tire wedged into one of the many cracks in the old asphalt of the street. We were perched off the sidewalk with just enough space for an SUV to slip through, usually a Cadillac with half-drunk, coming-down university students swearing and shaking their fists at their now extinguished hope for a past-midnight floppy, Nutella-slathered snack. Mikey would stop his rambling and eye them, every time, as I waited for him to snap, to yell and jeer at them and their privileged bullshit, but somehow he never did. They would disappear, the pancake shack in the alley soon to be a distant memory, and we would resume our exchange.

Our luminescent faces stared out into the streets, our phones casting shadows as we talked. We jabbered on about attempts to put bands together and existential theories, mental illness and vintage guitar gear. From twelve-thirty to quarter of two, spokes rolled back and forth on the pavement and our Notes apps became full with recommendations and stuff to check out. It all blurred together, our minds flowing as if we were alone, letting parallel universes mash together with Gibson Les Pauls and domestic violence with Kendrick Lamar. News, Facebook posts and media pooled together in discussions and debates of no clear order as we drifted into conversations to our liking. Mikey’s lens was cut from the same pane as my own, just filtered with tattoos and fistfights and family problems that he was twenty years closer to understanding than I. Pop culture stretched and twisted around our burn-laden hands and we resisted it all, the two of us rooted firmly to our bicycles, leather jackets protecting us from the onslaught of bullshit the world had to offer.

Sometime around two, Mikey conceded to his girlfriend’s green bubbles materializing on the cracked glass of his phone and with a nod we set off, across Thayer Street and through the mouth of the bus tunnel. The ground was smooth, damp asphalt isolated from the inescapable potholes of Providence. Steel frame clinched between my legs, I skidded my back tire, sliding between the dotted line and skirting around Mikey, barreling down the tunnel. My Motobecane’s orange frame was dulled under the yellow light, just bright enough to make out the curvature of the walls and streetlamps off in the distance. We emerged at the other end and with a wave, set off in opposite directions, pedaling back home to music, showers, and sleep.

© 2017