Coffee Shop Adultery..

"Anyway, my coffee's cold and I'm getting told
that I gotta get back to work
So when the sun goes low
and you're home all alone
think of me and try not to laugh..."
- Rod Stewart, You Wear It Well

By Patrick Alcatraz
Editor

McALLEN, Texas - Maybe it was the overcast sky and the coolness of the morning, that late-in-the-year feeling that comes over you when something new is in the air. Who really ever knows? I was out for my morning coffee and there, to my right as I motored down N. 10th Street here, stood a new coffee joint - Ambrosia. It's an old refurbished frame house of the sort you see everywhere in the Rio Grande Valley - no great shakes, in other words. So, I stumbled in and grabbed a cup of regular and drove back to the house, disdaining, for one morning, my stop at Starbucks, where I am somewhat known.

I thought of it all this morning when I returned to Starbucks and was greeted by Jessi, my always-happy barista. "It's good to see you," she threw at me in one of those Nights in Rodanthe voices. I smiled and said, "It's been too long, I know..."

The coffee - my beloved dark roast - was brewing, so I walked over to my usual seat and waited on it. Marco, a new friend who talks too much about the problems in nearby Mexico, sat alongside, reading the morning edition of The McAllen Monitor.

Shortly, one of the girls behind the counter walked up with my coffee.

"Well, that's a new one," Marco said next. "I've never seen them bring coffee out to a customer."

You should know the rest of the story, I went on, beginning a sip. There's a moral to pretty much everydamnedthing under the sun, and the one for this tale is simple: you have to drink your coffee where they like you. I haven't exactly felt that come over me since my winter days in Santa Fe...

- 30 -