HIGHLY COMMENDED
Expresso
Nick Farrer, Manchester Grammar School
“Expresso. Double.”
“It’s pronounced espresso, Jack. It’s Italian.”
“A double expresso.”
“My contract prevents me from saying anything offensive to you, but if we stop having this conversation every day I might
consider my life less of an embarrassment.”
The trouble, I find, with being better than everyone else is that the whole world thinks they have something to prove.
Creighton, the barista (or ‘coffee artist’ as his nametag read) stared across, eyes slightly more weary, hair slightly more
receding, and stubble slightly less attractive than the day before, and all the other days before that.
“Look,” he started, “I’m getting tired of this.“
Creighton, of course, was tired of everything. Tired of his job, this building, people in general,
“I’m getting tired of you staring into space whenever I talk to you about anything.”
“Excuse you, Creighton?”
“Fine. Really. I’ll stop. What are you having?”
“A double expresso.”
And Creighton got the message. And I drank it – I could taste the tears of the establishment in the coffee. First, the anarchocapitalist Starbucks in town where I sit – then, when I write my novel, the world. My father taught me that it was important
to have goals, so from an early age I settled on a total dismantling of Britain as we know it. Outside the window, on
Manchester’s streets, shoppers meandered between department stores, like a two-way sewage pipe; their hands full of bags,
produce, merchandise, and other tragedies of consumerism. Buskers conquered the noise of the vacuous, contented
laughter. Some came with brass, some came with drums, some came with rat masks for an unknown but probably artistic
reason. They all had something to bring, but the flotsam and driftwood ended up here, stranded from the flow, looking out
below.
“Pfft. Fascists.”
I might have muttered my disapproval a bit loudly, but Creighton’s glare meant it wasn’t lost on anyone. Leaning back from
that window, sipping from the finest coffee pressed from the finest tea leaves, I was content. It really was difficult loving
coffee (or as they say in Italian, uno coca- cola, per favore) as much as me. Whilst some people have accused my knowledge
of coffee to be ‘totally incorrect’, or ‘baseless’, or ‘intellectually insulting’, I know in reality they just haven’t spent as long on
Wikipedia as I have. Yet here I am, enjoying the light dancing on Creighton’s forehead and the counter – I know the world is
my oyster. By the time the lights dimmed and Creighton announced with restrained agony that I would have to leave, I knew
I had made a difference in the world.
In the dawn, the flowers smelled sweeter. I fell into the rhythm of tired footsteps, soft rain, and the coarse shouts of men
selling umbrellas in the streets. It was never enough to just appreciate the wash of the rain, for some people. They become
detached in the bubble of routine for the most mundane, insipid reasons. This being said, the rainwater on my head was
quickly reaching critical mass so I went to the café again to prevent it ruining my hair any further. Inside, however, things
were wrong. Creighton was six inches shorter, his hair and expression made him look like a startled kitten, he had purple
nails and long eyelashes, and was a girl, and actually, was definitely not Creighton. So I asked,
“Hey. Sorry, is... isn’t Creighton working today?”
“Erm, no. I think he said something about stomach ulcers, or... being too old, or... something? Sorry,” she replied.
“I swear that man is only twenty-eight.”
She didn’t know how to respond. I didn’t know how to respond to her not knowing how to respond. I took a deep breath and
knew that everything would be alright.
Everything was not alright. Where would Holmes be without his Watson, Fry without his Laurie, Blackadder without his
Baldric? Where would I be without my Creighton? I mean this quite literally, because in my grief, I’m getting lost. My legs are
moving forward while my head looks behind me, and I can’t recognise the pavement I stand on or where I started walking
from.
It smells faintly of acrylic and booze, and that’s wonderful. Without bearings, I don’t have much choice but to look around.
Even the bloated excesses of economic materialism look attractive in the right light. I settle down into a nice art café hidden
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opposite a vinyl shop and through a set of twisting steps, rewarding anyone intrepid enough to see how far the rabbit hole
goes. Inside, like the street, there were posters for bands I didn’t know existed, appealing to cliques I thought were made up.
The paints, design, and (god-forbid) art on the walls shone brighter than the towering glass façades of the main streets I
remember. Sitting down, I hear the faint tones of some Canadian indie prog-psyche krautrock-inspired electro music from the
radio. I’m not terribly aware of the logistics of the situation, but at some point I become aware that I am very comfortable
here.
The strange thing, though, was him. In this little Mecca independent of corporate control, contentedly sipping on some sort of
drink, wearing his practically ancien régime suit. He’s the type who would appear in old Pathé films twirling his moustache and
tying someone to the tracks of Western imperialist expansion so they can be crushed by something steam-powered and
symbolic. Oh my god, the paper he’s reading isn’t even The Guardian. The Financial Times can’t tell you how to be a good
person, ass. Now he’s looking at me like I’m the strange one for staring at him. So I stand up, and I walk to where he’s sitting,
and I sit down, and he’s looking at me, and I say to him, boldly and loudly and assertively, “You’ve caught my attention.”
He squints. Shuffles. Looks a bit uncomfortable.
“Pardon?” He asks. Now, don’t doubt my confidence or my tone, there was zero chance he misheard and I knew him to be
mocking me, so I retorted, “You’ve, uh, caught my attention.”
“Oh! Ah. Yes, yes. That is unfortunate.”
“So I want to know why you’re here.”
“Well, it’s warmer in here than out there, for a start.”
While I knew he wasn’t wrong, I knew it unsettled me.
“But,” I began, “aren’t you worried that this isn’t really your type of scene?”
“I’m more worried about how I’m going to afford going to cafés most days of the week.”
“Surely that can’t matter much to you as it would to me?”
“Well,” he said, leaning back, probably thinking mildly and probably realising how odd having this conversation is, “I don’t
think a lot of things matter.”
“ There are a lot of important things that matter.”
“They’d matter more to me if people didn’t use them as excuses to judge people and act superior.”
“But some things are impor-“
“For example, not letting old men finish their drinks.”
I’m not entirely sure what I should do at this point, so I walk away thinking maybe I should have handled that better.
In my dreams, old men in suits stood as sentries at the garden of Eden, and a trap door swung open. I don’t even believe in
Eden or trap doors.
Defaulting to my normal routine in the morning, I went like a ghost to my usual haunt. The people seemed less offensively
political on the streets. For whatever reason, Creighton was back managing the front today. I asked if he had some sort of
stomach ulcer, and he laughed and said Lucy actually believed that, like it was a surprise to him. Lucy was the girl who was
there the other day, Creighton asserted, and she secretly had “the hots” for pseudo-intellectuals who read political books in
public so that everyone can see what they’re reading. He winked at me like someone was paying him to.
“Creighton, what should I do if someone said something that’s really messing with my head?”
Creighton stepped back and stopped for a moment. He said, “I think you shouldn’t get a frappuccino. Because that isn’t coffee,
it’s an excuse to have whipped cream in the morning.”
So I stopped a little, too.
“Creighton, I’ll have an espresso. Single.”
“Single espresso, coming right up.”
And despite the name, it didn’t taste any different.
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