Coffee Shop Inspirations

“And God said, ‘Let there be light.’”

A field of white illumination filled his vision, but the muttered words of original invention failed to summon an answering almighty creative ability in the mind of the young man who’d uttered them. Staring at the blank expanse of new document spread across his laptop screen, D’Angelo heaved a sigh. With a sharp inhalation, he recalled the breath and settled his fingers upon the keyboard, producing a clacking glissando of determination.

D’Angelo’s index finger tapped the “F” key in time with the blinking vertical dash at the top of the page, waiting for his brain to send a flow of thoughts and images it could translate into:

“Words, words, words,”

but the Shakespearean mantra similarly failed to conjure the remaining days of the Genesis parade into D’Angelo’s imagination. Only a single word stepped into the void of his mind. D’Angelo typed in the word, stared at it, then punched backspace four times to clear the document again.

His oversized t-shirt slouched in defeat as his frame deflated with another sigh. D’Angelo leaned to tug at the zipper of his backpack and pull out a slim silver can. The coffee shop probably prohibited outside food and drink, and definitely wouldn’t appreciate him taking up a table without buying anything, but D’Angelo refused on principle – the principle of having rent money at the end of the week – to pay their price for a can of Red Bull.

Covering the top with his hand, he popped the lid and opened the container with a muffled burst. D’Angelo’s eyes flicked over the café. The shop’s customers all remained locked in their own private worlds, hyper-focused on their various objectives.

After a hurried swig of his energy drink, D’Angelo straightened and repositioned his hands on the keyboard. Lowering his brow into a studious expression, he began striking letters at random, straining to give the impression that a twenty-something who worked the register at a fast-food joint actually had something worthwhile to say.

As his fingers pumped out gibberish, a briefcase passing on its way to the ordering counter drew D’Angelo’s attention. The old-fashioned satchel seemed to exist to inspire stories, like something an adventurer might carry into exotic bazaars and secret libraries. Unlike modern reproductions people bought to cosplay as adventurers, the scratched brown leather and worn flaps had obviously seen real use. This bag couldn’t belong to any poseur, but to an honest-to-goodness … someone.

The feet alongside the carrycase were shod in thick-soled black shoes. They matched the black belt crowning a pair of high-waisted trousers that cinched a buttoned-up flannel shirt. A protruding belly was the only element missing to complete the grandfatherly ensemble, but the face above the plaid collar, the implication of a Mediterranean descent strengthened by the man’s dark hair and complexion, suggested its wearer hadn’t yet aged enough to achieve dad-bod status.

The man answered the barista’s suggestive selling with a cantankerous snap suited to telling children to get off his lawn.

“No, I don’t want a damn frappe. Did Pope drink frappes? Did Hemingway or Kerouac?” The flustered girl turned to the blackboard on the wall behind her to see if that was the trivia of the day. It wasn’t. “Just give me a damn black coffee, and make it strong enough to fend off death.”

Shaking his head, “Girl’s just trying to do her job, man,” D’Angelo muttered to no one in particular. The poor barista scampered to fill the man’s order.

He reminded D’Angelo of the senior citizens who came into his work on slow weekday afternoons to hold one-sided conversations with the service staff. Being among the few workers who would listen patiently, D’Angelo was popular with that set. Most of the seniors simply had no folk left of their own, and he found their stories colorful and amusing, but there were some who just seemed to enjoy grousing to a captive audience. Despite his relative youth – probably not much older than D’Angelo – the crotchety customer’s mannerisms held the same sense of entitlement as the geezers who unironically expected D’Angelo to smilingly listen to indictments about how his generation was ruining the world.

The man’s eyes flicked up and met D’Angelo’s. D’Angelo quickly dropped his gaze to his laptop screen.

The first light of creation no longer stood as an empty field, having been populated by crawling red squiggles underlining a plague of gobbledygook. Not well pleased by his handiwork, D’Angelo flooded the screen with the selection tool, but paused with his finger stretched toward the delete button as someone addressed him.

“You don’t seem to belong here.”

It was the incongruous man with the adventurer satchel.

With a flush of indignation and embarrassment warming his temples, “What do you mean?” D’Angelo asked, struggling to keep his cool.

“You know you’re in a coffee shop?” The man took a sip from his cup and nodded at D’Angelo’s Red Bull.

This weird guy was ribbing him, D’Angelo realized.

Off-balance by the exchange, D’Angelo chuckled obligingly. “Yeah, man.”

Hopefully that would be the end of it. D’Angelo started tapping out more pseudo-words on his laptop, but the strange customer didn’t take the hint.

“You’re a writer?”

“Aspiring.”

“Aspiring.” Laughing as if they’d shared some inside joke, “Mind if I sit?” the man asked.

D’Angelo did mind, and would have said as much if only he could have found his mind, but as he searched for a polite objection his thoughts mirrored the gibberish on his screen.

The man set his coffee cup on the table. “Now they can’t kick you out for not making a purchase.”

D’Angelo’s mouth snapped shut on the lame excuse that had been about to issue from it. Instead, “Sure,” he muttered in belated answer. “Thanks.”

Seating himself in the chair across from D’Angelo, the man started unbuckling the straps of his adventurer satchel. D’Angelo watched with unabashed interest. Though put off by him initially, the writer in D’Angelo couldn’t resist a curious anticipation at what surprises the stranger would produce next.

The man withdrew an assortment of worn notebooks from his leather case and slapped the stack on the table. Tossing a scattering of pens atop the hoard, “I, too, am aspiring,” he revealed with an abasing half smile.

The item the man removed next was exactly the sort of thing D’Angelo would expect to be contained within such a briefcase: a statuette of a seated bull holding a sun between its horns. He set it next to his coffee.

“That your little writing mascot?” D’Angelo asked, grinning.

“It’s a reminder of the days when mankind worshiped things that represented life. Like the calf to ancient man, the Story is my idol.” He laughed again. “So, you see, I, too, have a bull as my totem.”

D’Angelo raised his Red Bull in acknowledging toast and took a swig. The stranger’s near-worshipful reverence for the idea of the Story struck a chord with D’Angelo. Though the young man had never devoted specific thought to the subject, in his bones he felt the same connection. It was why he couldn’t give up on his writing, no matter what difficulties he faced.

“If you don’t drink coffee,” the stranger began sorting through his notebooks, “why come here?”

“I heard this is where writers go to find inspiration.”

“And are you inspired?”

D’Angelo turned his laptop to reveal the gibberish-filled document. The man chuckled.

“I do actually have stuff written,” D’Angelo said, swiveling the computer back toward himself. He cleared the screen. “I was almost done with my first book, but the ending wasn’t working out. I decided to start over.”

“Why not simply end your story, if you’ve taken it that far? Make something up and finish it?”

“It can’t be some stupid, arbitrary ending. It has to be perfect,” D’Angelo said, passion adding heat to his voice. “The whole thing has got to be perfect.”

Rather than take offense at the tone, the man nodded enthusiastically, as if the question had been a test D’Angelo had just passed.

“You’re right. The true author must never settle for less than perfection.” A jaded quality suddenly appeared in the set of the stranger’s dark eyes that aged him more than his attire. “Most so-called authors are nothing but pathetic wordsmiths, slapping words on a page, bandying character and plot around willy-nilly. A Story deserves more respect.”

D’Angelo nodded. “It’s a big task though, right? Sometimes I go to write and I’m paralyzed. Like, with fear, I guess.”

“Of course. Fear is a natural reaction to one aspiring to godhood.”

“I’m only trying to be a writer,” D’Angelo laughed, “not a god or anything.”

“All who pour out their being onto the page to bring forth worlds and people as reflections of themselves are attempting to render themselves divine.” A feverish glint lit the man’s eyes. “Don’t you see? From the hand of its creator, the Story comes forth out of nothing to form a universe, and the author lives forever in its pages, ‘now hidden, now apparent,’ as Woolf put it.”

D’Angelo fell into thoughtful silence at the end of the stranger’s tirade, filled with a newfound sense of the grandeur of his ambitions. His goal of authorship seemed more daunting and far off than ever, but D’Angelo choked down on a surge of apprehension. He would get this story right, no matter how long that took.

D’Angelo gazed upon the white light of his blank document. The type prompt blinked back at him.

“Hey, what’s your story about?” he asked his new friend. The other man, unconscious of the impact of his words on the would-be writer across from him, began to leaf through one of his notebooks, occasionally taking down notes in another pad.

“A man who sells his soul to the devil and gains immortality. My ending is mapped out, at least, but the middle is proving troublesome,” The man answered absently frowning at his handwritten pages. “The advice is always to write what you know, but there can be a problem in knowing too much.”

“How long you been working on it?”

“Eight hundred years,” the man muttered. “Ish.”

D’Angelo laughed. The scowling stranger scratched a line through a phrase he’d just penned. D’Angelo frowned. He must have misheard.

“I have to go. I’ve got a shift starting soon.” The other man, absorbed in his work, scarcely noticed as D’Angelo shoved his laptop in his tattered backpack. “Thanks. And, uh, good luck.”

Perhaps, D’Angelo considered with a last backward glance at the would-be writer, his pride was the source of his fear. His book didn’t have to be perfect because the story was sacred; D’Angelo didn’t want to face potential criticism. Perhaps, if he accepted the limits of his writing, he could move forward with it.

In the few minutes before his shift started, D’Angelo sat in his car and wrote until he had used up every scrap of paper he could find, including the back of fast-food receipts. At home afterward, he pulled out a notebook from high school and wrote until he filled up every yellowed sheet. He despised every word he wrote, and loathed himself as he was writing them, but whenever he was tempted to stop, he thought about the man in the coffee shop. By the time he finished his first draft, D’Angelo was miserable, exhausted in mind, body, and spirit; still, he had finished. And when he went back and read the draft over, it wasn’t as bad as he’d imagined. He hadn’t written the perfect ending, but it was the best D’Angelo could do for now. He’d try for better on the next one.