A Rainy Morning on Nassau Street
Fat drops rain down in flurries. Without the biting cold to ease the weight of the humidity.
I enter, the little bell above the threshold rings, announcing my arrival. I sit on one of the faded, red striped chairs and drape my soaking raincoat on it; breathless. With my back to the wall, I have found the optimum spot to observe the comings and goings of the cafe.
I order freshly ground coffee and a salmon omelette with capers (the Bernard).
The whooshing sound of the espresso machine jumbled with the deliciously familiar sound of Spanish is the white noise to my typing.
A student, probably a junior, sits in the opposite corner to me, deeply engrossed in his studies. Computer in front of him, a coffee on the side. Great minds think alike, friend.
In front of him, three men sit: one, probably a senior at Princeton, the other looks like someone who could be his dad, and the third, some sort of white-haired adviser from India. He looks wise. (Is it the silver hair? It’s probably the silver hair.)
“If I wasn’t such an intellectual, I would have found Vienna boring” the dad loudly proclaims as he sits with his cohorts, leading the polite round of chuckles. I smile wryly. The dad speaks with the booming, confident voice of The American Man. He’s kind of like the Wiener Melange coffee of the group: black shot of espresso topped with a milk foam that is trying too hard to prove its intellect to the rest of the cafe.
The sage adviser is more of a pure espresso shot: underrated, strong, and without all of the bells and whistles.
The younger student, on the other hand, is definitely a cappuccino: milky, quiet, and a lighter version of his father’s melange.
My interest is suddenly piqued by the man who walks in. I’m not the only one.
All of the cafe workers smile at him, waving; they say “Mornin’ Ralph” as if following the script of a New York movie from the fifties.
“Ralph” sits down diagonal from the hard-working junior. He is the spitting image of Kurt Vonnegut. Wild, unruly curls; stiff bristly mustache; jewel green button-down tucked into pale khakis; snakeskin belt. Over his Hasidic nose and seventies-style glasses, he reads his rain-stained newspaper, the little plate that comes with his coffee placed delicately on top of his mug (to keep it warm, I’m assuming?)
Self-proclaimed “philosophy nerd”, the Melange dad on the other table continues to dominate the conversation, regaling his buddies with colourful stories of his days at Dartmouth and the “freshman fifteen” of the many ex-girlfriends at his alma mater. The more the former financial analyst (another word for “sellout” here at Princeton) speaks, the less the younger version of him does.
What is this meeting for? It doesn’t seem like a friendly rendez-vous…more like a career meeting faintly shrouded in the facade of a friendly meeting. Is he trying to help his son secure a job in finance?
Back to Ralph. He’s taken a pen out and is now intently working on some sort of crossword puzzle (or maybe Sudoku). He crinkles his nose and rests his glasses on the table.
A lady has now joined our motley crew of Cafe Vienna customers. Sitting parallel to Ralph, she has a short cropped do (she doesn’t seem the type to have the time for fussy hair), horn-rimmed black glasses, a no-nonsense navy cardigan over a checkered button-down top and oh, fashion points for the trendy duck boots. Today is definitely a day to wear duck boots; the rain seems as persistent as the Melange dad is talkative.
She, too, peers at her newspaper over sips from her cafe Americano. Hmmm. She’s basically a younger, female version of Ralph.
You know, I wonder, how many geniuses have sat at this very cafe? Was this cafe even open when Einstein, Nash, Oppenheimer and the like wandered these very streets?
Mmm a quick Google search reveals the cafe opened in 2014. How disappointing. Here I was imagining the vivid conversations of John Von Neumann; the fervent scribblings of Fitzgerald on a coffee-stained napkin.
Nonetheless, as my brother likes to point out, cafes have always been the centerpieces of intellectual stimulation. Much like Audrey Hepburn’s character, Jo Stockton, was undeniably attracted to the philosophical fodder found in dim-lit, underground cafes in Paris, there is something about the intoxicating smell of coffee and wonderfully cramped tables that seems to inspire. Or maybe it’s the lighting. I’ve noticed that in the brightness of light people tend to talk about the world, about other people, the superficialities of quotidian life. In the cocoon of dusk, however, in the solace of a sole burning candle, people begin to dig deeper. They bare their souls. They share their innermost feelings, and thoughts, and chew on difficult, existential ideas.
Perhaps that’s why, many millennia ago, our ancestors seemed to be wiser. All they had was a campfire and a starry night to entertain themselves with.
The dad makes his buddies laugh with a Schrodinger and Freud meme. He’s redeeming himself. The man from India congratulates the younger apprentice on “his work” and they formally exchange goodbyes. Definitely a career meeting.
Ralph returns his coffee cup and plate to the man behind the counter and takes his leave, satchel and newspaper in hand.
It is just me, the mysterious Ralphian lady, and the original student now.
I should really get back to work.
Fin