shsbooks.com

May’s Café, on a quiet afternoon in the city in late November, bespells like a mother’s sitting room, where the familiar smells of holiday cooking sit heavy on happy eyelids, and the kettle’s always on warm.      

On the Kowloon side of a city known to the world as Hong Kong, there exists a small shop of unadorned red brick. The ground floor of a five story walk up, she’s tucked away between two monolithic, glass and steel skyscrapers. Her storefront is of an unassuming character, with small windows, a creaking wooden door, and lamppost sign trimmed with white chalk. Inside there is little rhyme or reason to the styling. The furniture, an odd assortment of sofas, tables, and chairs, made to fit the rectangular sitting room as best as geometrically possible given their competing shapes, angles, and sizes, appear like orphans assembled together, one abandoned piece at a time, into a hodgepodge family of strays.

It is a place of refuge for the office weary; for the dreamers in cubicles and board rooms, for mailroom interns of ambition, for the bleary-eyed student stumbling from lectures and labs; a pit stop along the endless walkways of commerce, education, and modernity of expectation in a city of 8 million people- a single city the size of many small countries. It is a place with warm yellows and soft reds, where the naked flickering of candlelight dances unabashedly across green ivy, exposed brick, and grey stone that is cool to the touch even in summer. Lamplight plays along the high sheened polish surface of mahogany tables, and shining brass buttons sit sunken in cotton-stuffed olive cushions like swirling drain plugs in overflowing puddles of fabric. It is a place for reflection, for philosophizing, for students of form and prose and for stenciling classics from the pages of tabletop books.

Every chair is full, and contentment abounds among the quiet, softly chattering patrons. To study the place from a still photograph you might dismiss May’s Café as any number of quirky teatime establishments that pepper the trendy districts of cities around the globe. But in the flesh, it is anything but run of the mill. It is transformative place: an alchemical laboratory of steam wands and pressure spigots, glass vessels, dripper cups and goosenecked dispensers, her concoctions like elixirs of wear, her ambiance itself like the shores of a fragrant waterfall, where those who partake in her waters feel themselves refreshed in body and spirit. Even the mice are content, never taking more than they need, nibbling conscientiously, and the flies, treating its coffee laden trays as of holy paten, crumbs as crusts of consecrated bread much too highly esteemed for the attentions of their searching buzz, live on diets of dust and air.

As the seasons turn from summer to fall to winter the spirit within the walls comes into her own.

Paul Steinhart, of the New York Steinharts, is not consciously aware of the soft, comforting influences convalescing within the walls of May’s Café; though they are affecting him, as they do all visitors, through every mysteriously cinnamon-tinged taste of his black coffee, the tinkle of the doorstop chimes as others come and go, the restrained laughter of his neighbors, and the subtle inspiration knit on every determined brow of would-be poets bent over pencil and paper in plush corner chairs and under hanging planter baskets. In fact, these influences have slipped our Paul into something of a somber daze, with eyes open but mind miles away; a daze which has descended on him and stayed for the better part of a quarter of an hour, absentmindedly sipping along from his mug between daydreams, and where he is to remain, presumably forever, until a voice, high and sweet, pinging off his ears like an errant bellhop’s call three or four times before he registers that it may be directed toward him, snaps him from his sleepy, contented stupor.   

“I adore this song, I really do…” the voice says, with the intonation of speech given when already midway into conversation.  

Paul, coming out of his dream, slowly, addresses his conversationalist before taking account of who he is speaking to, with the exclamation, “I’m sorry?”  

“Oh,” she replies in a puff of air.

The voice, the bell that called him back from the petering depths, belongs to a woman. He can tell from its tone, and from the shape of the lips that have formed the word. That is all Paul has made out so far, the lips, and the tone. Blinking, he is starting to take in the rest of the face, the whole mouth, with its lines of expression, a small chin, a button nose, when the voice continues.

“I was thinking out loud, I suppose. Don’t know what’s gotten into me. It’s this place, I think. It feels so… dreamlike? I know how that must sound. I’m rambling, now.”  

“Not in the least bit,” Paul replies. “There is something odd about this café.” He nods affirmatively. “Something very odd.”

“It’s just, I know this song so well, yet I can’t recall a thing about it. Only the melody is very familiar. I must have heard it in my childhood, but the details are lost in the past.”

Paul tilts his head, hearing the music for the first time, mulling it over like a reluctant sommelier at his decanter.

“It’s from the Romantic period,” he says. Then, lighting up. “The Hungarian composer, Liszt. Liebestraum or Dreams of Love, number 3 in A-flat major. 1850. A very technical piece.”

“Wow.” She has come fully aside now, startled by the precision of this stranger’s reply. They are seated very close together, with their cups sharing a small table between them, (high and round topped, hardly more than a nightstand and unsuitable for any sort of work, which neither of them appear to be doing, for she has only a small bag, and he nothing at all save the contents of his trouser pockets) pressed against the ivy strewn, leftmost wall of the café. The armrests of their chairs are touching, and Paul had been unconsciously leaning on his elbow to create space. “You are an expert?”   

“Not me,” he replies. “My father.”

“He loves classical music?”

“More than life itself. The man lived and breathed the stuff. I must have picked up a lot just hanging around his shop. Like osmosis.”

“Children are little sponges. I say so all the time.”

“They are.”

Paul notes her appearance. She has an aloof, unassuming prettiness, without a touch of formality to her dress, but with a natural grace and intelligent care to style and color. Her hair is pushed back behind small ears with sparkling, pin-drop jewels in each lobe. A soft, black-woolen, flat-crowned Parisian hat sits delicately on her head. She has a kind, gentle face, with curiosity in the eyes, and a slightly rounded nose tip just wondrously imperfect enough to inspire a sense of the unique. Taking in the whole picture, he cannot imagine, now that he sees her, how she had so slipped his notice up to then.

“I remember,” he begins to reminisce, “I would sit on the floor, under his tools and instruments, and make piles of sawdust, like little mountains of wood chips, to play around with my plastic figurines. I’d conduct whole worlds around those mounds of splinters and dust. Sometimes my father would give me a coin, and I would hide it underneath one of the piles, like a pirate’s treasure, and beg him to guess which pile concealed the coin.”  

“Did he guess correctly?”

“You know, I can’t remember. Actually, I cannot recall a single time he actually looked for the coin. He rarely listened to me, or anyone for that matter, especially back then.”

“Parents should listen to their children more often,” she nods.

He laughs. “Well, that was rather personal, wasn’t it?” Paul remarks, fully surfacing now. “I don’t know what came over me.”

“The best conversations are personal. And I was the one who spoke to you first.”

“It is a beautiful arrangement,” he says. “The music, I mean.”

“It’s strange, I was sitting here, listening, and it brought me back to my own childhood, thinking about my family Christmas with such a clarity. I could almost taste the sweetness of the cakes, the coolness of milk on my lips.”  

“Maybe there is something nostalgic about this place, this café. For the both of us.”

“I think there must be. Though I have never been here before.”

“Neither have I.”

They are looking at each other, with a gaze that sells affection. His eyes, hidden behind glasses, sparkle with wonderment at such a meeting, in such a place.

“Do you work nearby?” She asks, motioning with a stray finger to his outfit, a navy blue suit, vest, and tie, over her mug.

“I do, and don’t. We’ve an office on the island, but there is a property over here we are speculating on. I am to meet some people. It’s all rather boring, I’m afraid.”

“It sounds exciting. Though it is a Saturday, you know.”

“Really?” he asks, with some gravity. “Honestly, I hadn’t noticed. The days all seem to blur together.”

“You work too hard.”

“No, no. It’s necessary, really.”

“You do. I can tell.”

“Is it that obvious?” He touches the skin around his eyes, prodding and palpitating with fingertips.

“Not in that way. You look very young. Too young, maybe, for this type of work. I picture you as a student, in university. Maybe an art school, even. Or theater. Not wearing an expensive suit, chasing taxis for business meetings across town.”

“I do chase a lot of taxis.”

“It’s not good for your health. Running behind cars, sucking up those fumes. It’s bad for the lungs. Maybe that is why you forgot that it is Saturday. Carbon Monoxide poisoning,” she chastises him, grinning through her sarcasm.  

“You’ve figured me out with one look. Should I give you my palm; tell me my future?”

“Oh no,” she says. “I don’t believe in palm readings.”

“You don’t? Why not?”

“You really want to know?”

“I’m all ears.”

She clears her throat. “Our future is not written in the lines of our hands, in an old book, or in the stars. There is only one place where our future can be told for certain. In our choices. We determine our fate, our fate does not determine us. That is what I believe, at least.”

“A valid observation on free will. So you’re a philosopher?”

“Not usually. But I think there is something in this coffee that has gotten me drunk.”

“A wise drunk.”

“Sometimes.”

Paul swirls the dregs of his coffee, breaking up the sediment at the bottom of the cup.

“You remind me of my students,” she says. “Always wanting to go, go, go. But have you ever heard the saying: slow is steady, steady is smooth, and smooth is fast?”  

“I have heard something to that affect. Your students must be very lucky, receiving little nuggets of wisdom like that.”

She smiles wide, hiding her grin behind another sip from her mug. “I’m not sure how well they understand the lesson. I teach Kindergarten.”

They both laugh.

“You’d be surprised,” Paul interjects. “Kids are generally a lot more receptive than we give them credit for.”

“I think so too,” she replies. They are quiet for a moment, the aperture filled with the steady pencil scratches from a half dozen sketchbooks.

“What’re they all sketching, you reckon?” He asks, leaning to one side, looking intently at a neighbor’s dark pencil marks on a sheet of drawing paper. “Oh, wow.”

“What is it?” She asks.

He looks to her, to the paper, and back to her, framing his fingers into a square around her head. “I do believe he is drawing a portrait.”

“No,” she answers.

“Yes, a portrait. And I do believe, if I am not mistaken, that it’s meant to be you.”

“Oh my God,” she laughs.

“Very tasteful,” he goes on, “though I wouldn’t have chosen to go full nude, if I were the artist. Not this time of year. Bit too chilly.”

“Okay,” her laugh has evolved into a near snort. “Enough. What is it really?”

“Can’t tell, honestly. A bunch of black lines. Could be a spider’s web. Or a volcanic eruption.”

“Oh god,” she says again. “You are nuts, you know that?”

“I’m usually a bore. No humor at all, actually. Ask anyone who knows me.”

“Mr. Business, in his three piece suit?”

“Precisely. That’s my type, down to a T.”

“I’m disappointed,” she replies.

“So am I.”

The equatorial sun, having long since left its midday cradle, has descended below the artificial horizons of the harbourfront’s great buildings, banishing the café from the natural splendor of the cosmos, into the inevitably quotidian glow of electric lamplight. Their corner of the café, that was before bathed in natural light, is now in shadow, and an attendant is coming around to the different areas of the restaurant to switch on previously dormant bulbs that hang on walls, sit in gaudily beaded shades, or swing bare from the ceiling. These actions remind Paul of the passing of time, which the sleepy interior of May’s Café had done her best to conceal. He checks his watch, much to his dismay, as the hour has advanced well beyond his estimation. But the sudden prospect of departing, of setting his cup aside and leaving the warmth of his chair, fills him with a dread out of proportion to the act.

“You have to go,” the woman says.

“I do, though I don’t want to.”

“It is nice here.”

‘It is, but that’s not why I want to stay,’ he yearns to say, but doesn’t.

“I never asked your name,” she adds.

“Paul. And yours?”

“Celeste,” she says, offering her hand across the table. He takes her fingers within his own, feels their warmth spread across his palm.

“I’ve enjoyed our time together, Celeste.”

“I have too.”

“It’s strange, us having a conversation like this. Talking about… our childhoods, of all things. Two strangers, I mean. I never do this.”

“Neither do I.”

He gets up now, facing the door with his body while straining his neck to take in her face one last time.

“Hopefully we will see each other again,” he bumbles, awkwardly hiding his great dismay. “Sometime.”

“If the fates align?” She asks, smiling, tongue between her teeth.

If the fates align.