By six the next morning, the lantern was on again. The “OPEN” sign buzzed faintly in the window as I turned the key and stepped into the dark, quiet café. For a few minutes, Golden Mornings belonged just to me and the sound of the grinder warming up.
I flipped on the overheads one by one, the old fluorescents flickering before settling, the newer warm track lights humming to life. The espresso machine hissed awake, a dragon in stainless steel. I ground the first batch of beans and breathed in.
Coffee and yesterday’s baked goods and the faint ghost of Harold’s aftershave. It had been a month since the memorial and there were still mornings I half expected to hear him mutter, “Don’t overfill the grinder, Claire-bear,” from behind me. The first person in, as always, was Mrs.
Patterson. She appeared at 6:15 on the dot, purple coat, red lipstick, pocketbook clutched in her left hand like a sidekick. “Good morning, sweet girl,” she called, her voice cutting through the steam.
“Morning, Mrs. P,” I answered, already reaching for the decaf beans. “Two sugars, one apology for the weather.”
“You can keep the apology,” she sniffed, hanging her coat on its hook.
“Talk to your landlord upstairs about rain instead.”
We chatted about her doctor’s appointment and the state of the subway as I slid her cup across. She patted my hand. “You look tired,” she said, softening.
“Tired is honest on you. But don’t you forget you’re allowed to be happy, too.”
I tucked that sentence away the way I’d learned to tuck away all the tiny pieces of wisdom this place handed me in exchange for eight ounces of coffee. The day moved in its familiar rhythm.
A nurse from NYU Langone in navy scrubs whose name I still didn’t know but whose order I could make in my sleep. The construction guys who joked loud enough to disguise how kind they were, insisting on paying for the teenager’s muffin behind them. The writer in horn-rimmed glasses who camped in the back corner with headphones and a laptop, ritualistically chewing pens.
“Is the Wi-Fi faster today?” he asked, hopeful. “As fast as it’s going to be in a building built during Carter’s presidency,” I said. By nine, the line reached the door.
We’d gotten busier since the guardianship hearing, since the neighborhood rally, since a food blogger with 250,000 followers wrote, “If you want to taste what New York used to feel like before it turned into a showroom, go to Golden Mornings.” People came with their phones already out, but most of them put them away once the cup hit their hands. “Ten minutes off-screen,” I told a young couple from Brooklyn who were taking pictures of their lattes like they were on safari. “House rule.”
They blinked at me, then laughed and slid their phones into their pockets.
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