Even if you plan to never visit White Haven, you can still enjoy a Main Street Coffee Works. Have your aunt or husband or sister-in-law make a phone call or visit the world wide web and order this cafe for your town!
You believe now that it would be cool merely to have a place to visit on weekend nights, now that the Bear Cone across the street has been shut down, but have you imagined the perks in such a situation being so close to the ownership? Could Free bagels - each individually sheathed in plastic wrap with a layer of cream cheese already injected - and cocoachinos - a mutated cousin of coffee, containing less than 1% of its body as that beverage - give you that necessary edge over your friends in your endeavour to win the affections of the cutest AFI fan in White Haven with a car?
The fan in question, Marc, will wait at the counter while you and Bree jockey for positions at the table which will enable you - or her - to be the one to sit beside him. After selecting his microwavable bagel, however, Marc will sit at a table separate from you and Bree, so he won’t have to make a choice about which of you should be in the closest seat.
Once your aunt finishes blending sugar, chocolate-flavoured syrup crushed ice, 4% milk, and coffee extract she will pour 32 ounces of it into a styrofoam cup and call Bree up to the counter. While they engage in an awkward exchange to establish that the drink is not on the house, you will have your opportunity to move to a chair at Marc’s table. This will be your last chance to mention the possibility of arranging a rendezvous at Antonio’s Pizza at a time you know Bree will be busy at Videomania - enabling you to have a few moments to only yourselves.
However, only seconds after you move to Marc’s table, you will be mortified when an electronic tone will sound the placement of your dad’s foot upon a rubber welcome mat as he and his firefighter buddy bring your younger sister into the Coffee Works.
“We can’t get away from you!” your dad will joke.
His shit-eating grin will belie his ignorance of the depth to which the irony of those words will sear you. No matter how many of this cow town’s strip malls you visit, you never will be able to avoid this man. You are bound to encounter him by the limited prospects of living in North Bumble.
You will perceive increased tension in Marc as his desire for flight increases. Will you notice a glance shared by him and Bree; will she slyly smirk? Will Marc dare to trade off the privilege of free Coffee Works with you for nights of free video rental and popcorn with Bree? Will you lose your only leverage in this triangle?
The deal will be sealed as your dad audaciously sends your younger sister to your table whilst he buys for her a brown, blended ice beverage which is topped with black syrup from a plastic tube and whipped cream released from storage under high pressure within a steel canister and served under a transparent plastic dome. She will pull up a chair between you and Marc; he and Bree simultaneously will look through the window to his Cavalier.
Will you escape the stifling bounds of this ville? Or will you toil in its confines, with every day ending as had the day before it, until you are covered with the same dirt of White Haven on which you have trodden through all of your bleak life?
poured in: Pennsylvania, White Haven
April 17th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
[…] I am completely aware that one of the policies of Cafe Tableaux is to not review establishments whose sole focus is to serve food. I am also aware that many of these policies are potentially dooming the site to failure, not that one in particular, so I am using an executive privilege to register kudos to a well-deserving establishment that merits being recognized in all forums that could even tangetially apply to it. In fact, there is a provision in the posting guidelines which stipulates that you may review a food based establishment if said food can only be consumed whilst drinking coffee. I am also aware of the historical relationship between coffee and donuts which is probably documented in one of the coffee tomes that Thos. continually reads. However, this relationship for me has now become thouroughly personal, for someone who stopped eating lardy donuts about 4 years before I began drinking coffee, I must declare that there would be no higher purpose for coffee to serve than to accompany these delectable glazed doughy gems! […]