I twisted the handle and let the wind do the rest of the work. The door flung open, and I slipped out onto the uneven cobblestone sidewalk. Negotiating my way through the mobbed crowd waiting at the bus stop, I made my way to the street corner and stopped to wait for the light to change. Shifting my gaze to the right and following the row of buildings to its end, I focused on the jagged crags towering over the city like a foreboding tsunami frozen in time. Squinting through rain punctuated with sleet, my eyes settled on the peak of Arthur’s Seat. From this distance, I could always see people standing at the peak of the dormant volcano; yet, from the city they were nothing more than anonymous shadows, obscurely waving side to side in the wind. Today the peak was empty, a rare sight. Perhaps the cold and sleet had given even the most daring tourists second thoughts about ascending to the summit.
Two women continued their conversation as they came to a halt next to me at the street corner. They were dressed in their finest arctic survival gear. “Christ it’s cold,” the first one exclaimed.
“Oh my God, I know,” the second confirmed. Standing to their right, I rolled my eyes.
As the green pedestrian light began to flash I made my way across the street while tightening the knotted scarf around my neck. I flipped up the collar of my shearling-lined wool jumper and buried my face in the bundle of warm fabric. I was always surprised at how intolerant the Scottish were of the cold. It was the middle of December and the first few snowflakes of the year were melting in puddles on the street. These people would never survive a winter in New England, I thought, feeling a swell of pride and a pang of longing for the corner of the world I grew up in.
I marched on down the same street I walked down every day since my arrival in Edinburgh, feeling the biting wind slice through my layers and sting my abdomen. The rumble of the double-decker city buses called attention to the dull thud against the front of my skull; the combination of a light hangover and a desperate internal cry for caffeine. The sidewalks were surprisingly empty, and the typical constant whir of bicycle wheels on the street was replaced with the subtle splash of rain colliding with puddles.
I felt the scrape of metal on concrete as I threw my shoulder into the large door standing between my bloodstream and a long black. Feeling the excessive blast of hot air pouring down the back of my neck, I turned to push the door all the way shut behind me. This particular door had a tendency to stick, and you could always tell someone was a regular if they remembered to push the door all the way into the frame.
“Welcome to your private cafe,” the familiar cheery voice exclaimed behind me. I turned to see the coffee shop completely empty with the exception of the barista. I usually had to fight for a seat here. After a scan of the room my eyes landed on the tattooed barista smiling at me from behind an espresso machine. Dammit, what’s this guy’s name? This man had made me countless coffees, and I had never asked his name. “Just a long black then?”
“And the smoked salmon, please,” I added, tearing off my scarf to silently hint at the absurd temperature on the thermostat. Learning his name at that point would have done me no good. I was leaving Edinburgh in a week, and this was most likely my last time in this coffee shop. I made my way to the back of the 20 seat cafe, and settled in at my favorite table; the one with the miniature loveseat instead of wooden chairs. I pulled a copy of Dubliners by James Joyce out of my bag and flipped open to where I had left off. Usually the chatter of a coffee shop provided the perfect level of background noise for me to escape into my reading; however, with the cafe empty I found myself focusing on the seemingly-deafening melody of The Killers deep tracks playing over the speakers. I needed noise to create silence. I struggled through a few pages, unable to fully break through the barrier between the paper and the story.
“And here’s your long black and smoked salmon, sir. Let me know if you need anything else,” the barista smiled again, revealing teeth stained yellow from the constant assault of black coffee and cigarettes. He vaguely sang along with Brandon Flowers as he returned to the counter.
“Thanks a lot…” Derick? Daniel? Evan?
I put down my book and swallowed down a greedy gulp of the magical liquid panacea sitting before me in a powder blue ceramic mug. The woodpecker that had been perched on top of my head flew off, and the clouds in my eyes began to dissipate. As I inhaled the perfect cocktail of smoked salmon, espresso, and water, the cafe had begun to fill in around me. Occasionally I would feel a waft of cold air float to the back of the room and hear, “would you mind closing the door, please?” The alarm system for a newcomer. Before diving back into St. Stephen’s Green and the quays of Dublin with James Joyce, I caught a glimpse of the menu on the table next to mine. A handful of items were sloppily scribbled over with pen. This coffee shop was always properly pristine to keep up with its stark industrial ambiance. It seemed strange that the menus would be adjusted with such disregard for their appearance.
That open table soon became the last one standing as the cafe filled up to its usual capacity. I could faintly hear an old Metallica song playing behind the murmur of gradually bubbling conversation. As I read on, the last table was claimed by a young woman, perhaps a graduate student, who appeared to be alone unintentionally. Her foot tapped the ground repeatedly as minutes passed and her patience began to waver. At this point, my eyes were merely skimming over Joyce’s words, and my attention was fully on the vacant seat across from the lonely girl. I grew angry with the man who was standing her up as she checked her phone compulsively for a message. At least have the decency to let her know, I thought to myself. The two of us stared toward the door in anticipation. The floor-to-ceiling windows had fogged over, reducing the passing cars and pedestrians to illuminated smudges anonymously floating by.
Thirty minutes after walking through the door, her wait came to an end. Another woman joined her at the table, and they hugged. Old friends catching up. “I am so sorry, I got hung up!” the latecomer began, “Can you believe how cold it is?”
“Oh, I know. It is absolutely frigid.”
I shuddered, and turned my attention back toward the book I had come here to read. After some time, the pages began to ripple, as a particularly strong gust of wind had traveled all the way to me in the back of the room. Looking across the now full cafe, I saw the door flung wide open, and a third young woman celebrating her entrance. She skipped toward the other two at the table next to me, who had apparently been awaiting her arrival. The three hugged and exclaimed how glad they were to finally all get back together.
“I absolutely love your scarf!” one of the initial women said to the newcomer.
“Thank you! I need it today. Can you believe how cold it is?” came the response. I wanted to throw up.
The barista (Sam? Rob?) made his way over to the table after a detour to the front to close the door. He asked the new woman what she wanted.
“I’ll take a chai latte, please.”
“I’m sorry, we’ve run out of chai. Won’t be getting any more in.”
“Oh no! I love the chai latte here. Are you taking it off the menu?”
“Actually today’s our last day open. Owner decided to close us down. So we’re slowly running out of the last of all our inventory.”
My mind snapped away from Grafton Street with such force that I nearly spilled my second cup of coffee. Closing? How? Why? This had been my favorite little coffee shop in a city full of little coffee shops. There was no way they could be closing. A sudden wave of change and sadness washed over me, like when someone leaves the door of a coffee shop open on a cold December day.
The initial shock gave way to sadness, which finally yielded to a comforting realization that I would never be returning to this coffee shop anyway. In a few days I was returning to America. I walked in expecting this to be my last trip to this cafe, but I never expected I would walk out and never be able to return. The inevitability of change had blindsided me. I had expected to visit months or years from now, and walk into this familiar coffee shop and fill … Kyle? Chris? … in on life back home as he whipped me up a long black. But that would be impossible. It was clear to me that when I left Edinburgh in a few days, I would never return to the same city.
After reading a few more chapters, I decided it was time to move on. I bundled back up, said goodbye, walked through the door, and pulled it firmly shut behind me. The fogged glass reduced the action inside the cafe to anonymous smudges, gently rocking and swaying. I turned around and faced the street, frozen in the sleet-flecked rain. For the first time since arriving in the city, I walked out of a doorway without knowing which one I would walk through next. A car parked along the sidewalk peeled out of its spot, and knocked an Irn Bru can into the roadway directly in front of me. A gust of wind struck just then, and set the can rolling to my left with a sense of purpose. Without thinking, I turned and followed the can, walking along side it as the wind continued to push it along the road. Before I knew it, I reached the entrance to my flat, and I instinctively opened the door. As I pocketed my key and stepped through the doorway, I heard the can rattling onward down the road behind me with the wind at its back.