Coffee table book

Year ago, during a late-night shift I got the chance to meet an extremely ambitious young man in the office.

We’ve been working on the same project for a couple of months, taking calls, fixing issues, and counting the days.  As with every colleague I had there were some moments where we disagreed on how to perform some troubleshooting, but I guess that’s normal in every workplace. I don’t know how passionate we are about the job we did, but we both had bills to pay and food to put on the table. As a popular meme at the time used to say, “it ain’t much, but it’s honest work”.

That night we had some free time and got to talking about our aspirations, goals, and dreams.

He was the adventurous type. If I’m not mistaken, his passport had more stamps that number of pages. He mostly worked and traveled without settling in one place for too much time. But he did love something. Coffee! Especially making it. He wowed me more with stories about the cups of coffee he had that the places he’s been. His dream was to open a coffee shop and make coffee all day.

When it was my turn, I told him about my love for stories, hearing them and writing them. I do love a good story. Even if it’s a small story by your standards, in my eyes it can be the most marvelous thing I ever heard. At that point, the only thing to show for my writing career was locked in the archives of a university I never attended and probably never heard of me. My dream was to publish a book. That was all I wanted.

As we both left the office, we were joking about what would be the chances that sometime in the future, someone would be drinking a cup of coffee at his coffee place while reading my book. We were both laughing, but the spark in his eyes told me it wasn’t a joke for him. It was not a joke for neither of us. At that point, that was the plan.

Months passed and we both moved on from that small office.

I went on the same career path as before, writing in my spare time and he got a job at a coffee company as a “traveling barista”. He would travel to promote different varieties of coffee and in his spare time he would experiment with brewing technics. At one point, while away for a training seminar, we met in an airport lounge. We started to reminisce about the old times and about “the plan” from that night. We still laughed about it. After that we swapped our most recent creations. I don’t remember the exact blend and technique he told me he used, but it was the best cup of coffee I ever tasted. When I showed him my short humorous story about the door to door traveling sales clown it did tickle his funny bone. Even if we took different steps, we both knew that the plan was still in play.

Some years later we meet again at a mom-and-pop coffee shop.

At that point I had left my last job when I was about to be prompted for a job at a small publishing company in the hops of pursuing writing more full-time. I was with my laptop working on a manuscript for what I hoped would be my first published book. He was there working there as a barista. Apparently, he left the coffee company under the same situation. He needed to get reconnected to his roots, his main dream. Making coffee.

We would meet 2-3 times a week at the same coffee shop. Me working on my novel, running some of the pages by him, and him taste testing some of his crazy combinations on me before he would present them to the owners to put on the menu. At one point he mentioned in passing that he wanted to buy the shop. The owners were getting old and didn’t have any kids to continue running the place.

Two years later he was able to get a loan from the bank and buy the little coffee place. In order to encourage him, I told all my colleagues to try his coffee. The place became extremely popular in such short time. At that point I was still trying to get my manuscript published with no luck in sight. In return, he made Friday night the official story and poetry night. You would sign up and for 10 minutes you would stand on a small makeshift stage, in front of a microphone and read a short story or a poem. He always insisted I should be the guest of honor every Friday and read something that would not be related to my manuscript, something new to “cleanse my pallet” as he would put it. Friday night was always a big hit with people. Strangely enough it was also what I needed. I abandoned my finished manuscript and started developing one of the stories that I created for one of the nights at the coffee shop. I took a gamble and sent my manuscript to a big publisher that is known of rejecting a lot of them if they don’t capture the attention of the editors from the first 5 pages.

I still remember when I got the call. I was on stage, in the middle of a story about a mime working in a call center.  Everyone heard the news that I was going to get my first book published. That night he insisted I go on the stage again and read the short story that inspired all.

A few days later I had to move near the publisher to work closely with them. I went for one last time in the coffee shop to say my goodbyes.

He had his coffee shop, I was going to have a book published. The plan was in its endgame now.

Years passed and we sort of lost touch with one another.

The Friday story and poetry nights were such a hit he had to open another location and soon enough he ended up with a chain of coffee shops. I saw some of his interviews on the TV. I was on track on releasing my 7^th book and about to sign the contract for the next 3 novels. I had my share of interviews, but never at the same with him. We were both following our dreams and living them.

During my last book tour, I was in the same town the first coffee shop was in, so I went in to get myself a cup for the good old days. To my surprise, he was there making and serving coffee with his employees. I order a cappuccino and the smile on his face when he was me was priceless. We hugged and started to catch up about all those years. After a while, someone came in to order a cup of regular coffee. He promptly made a fresh cup. After they received the cup, they stood at the bar and started to read my first book while sipping the coffee. We both stopped what we were doing and looked joyfully at them.

– What are the chances someone would drink my coffee in my coffee shop while reading your book?

– If you dream big, the chances are high, my friend.