The Tranquillity of Coffee, and the Impossibility of Chance

We are in a slightly alternate version of Brooklyn, on the first Tuesday of March 2021, in what seems to be a quaint plant-draped café.

The café is full of patrons, all mingling with each other as if it were March 2019. In one corner, right next to the coffee machines and a profusion of potted and trailing plants, hides one relatively unremarkable girl.

We drift on into her head.

Sounds of quiet chatter fill my left ear, the clink of forks on plates laced with overlapping scents of fresh bacon, expertly brewed coffee and just a hint of greenery. All I can see is the dark red of the inside of my eyelids, with the occasional peek of the plant-draped counter that makes this my perfect seat.

The headphone in my right ear delivers a steady drip of healing sound therapy, helping the rest of the world fade away until all that exists is this moment here. This wonderful, sane, kind moment. In front of me is my usual latte and BLT, lightly toasted and dressed with dijon vinaigrette. All around me are people going on with their days. Well, on two sides anyway, since I am tucked into the most isolated corner of the place.

Why I’m sitting in a café with my eyes closed, trying to meditate, you might wonder. Any sane person would wonder what I was doing here, spending my last few dollars on a latte and a BLT that I wasn’t even eating. But then a sane person wouldn’t have found herself in this mess in the first place.

A sane person wouldn’t have gone into business by herself in New York. Let alone started an events business only months before the biggest pandemic so far in the 21st Century hit. To be fair, I couldn’t possibly have planned for a pandemic. But I’m not being fair.

Fair belongs to Before.

Before, I put on the meanest parties and the hippest picnic adventures this side of Brooklyn. Magical birthdays, sensational weddings and hit social gatherings, I was your girl. Have a problem being social? Don’t know how to cook? Scared of another party failure? Call me, and I’d work miracles for you. I bragged I could fix any social dynamic, no matter how complicated, to always turn out an A-Plus event.

And just three months after my first official event, it seemed I could deliver. My calendar was suddenly back-to-back, and I’d had to hire a receptionist to take the incoming calls so I could go and actually plan the events. Everything seemed to be going my way.

Even now, I’m smug about how good I was. I profiled my clients and coached them in the lead-up to the event, then planned, prepped and ran the day – or night – so they could focus on what mattered to them. And I could even do it with less than 3 days turnaround. Admittedly, that was my personal best, but I’d done it, hadn’t I? And they got their surprise wedding in Prospect Park, one that felt like a real wedding, complete with two complementary wedding dresses and swans swimming behind them as they kissed and cried on each other; but on the budget of a house-party. How’s that for a miracle?

That was in March 2020.

Fast forward almost a year, and my crowning achievement is that I’m 3 pages away from finishing the beautiful black Moleskine notebook that had been my congratulations gift to myself on making my first sale.

On the 4th last page, I’d done the sums – twice over because I couldn’t stand to believe they were true. I couldn’t afford to live in New York City anymore. But I had nowhere else to go. The same lack of personal life that made me so good at planning other people’s events had me trapped in an irreconcilable loop. Dead parents, no siblings, no living family, too busy for friends. The litany that I’d thought I’d laid to rest before starting on this path ran through my mind again.

I’d been so sure of my success that I’d jumped headfirst. I’d quit my job and taken this on full-time. And I’d done well enough in my first 3 months that I’d been able to pay myself for the full year ahead. A completely empty personal calendar made for a busy event calendar.

But an events specialist can’t sell events if no one can mingle for fear of killing each other.

The last of my money ran out today. My fridge was empty and clean. My apartment spotless, waiting for someone else to move in and claim the furniture I had picked out so carefully, because I couldn’t afford to move it. Explaining the situation to my landlady had bought me a few more weeks of time.

Now, I had no more time.

I’d handed her the keys and come straight here for my last meal.

A tear trickles down my cheek. Swiftly I brush it away, my eyes snapping open. I’m a mess. I swallow the tears and look down at the slowly-congealing mass that used to be a perfect sandwich before I let it get cold.

I take a sip of my coffee. And then another. Another tear trickles down my cheek, and this time I let it. What does it matter if someone sees me cry in public. I’ve exhausted every option I had.

Or maybe I haven’t. Maybe I got so lost in my wounds that I missed something obvious? Maybe I wasn’t looking in the right places? But it feels so final. So utterly daunting. I have everything that matters to me in one slightly overstuffed backpack at my feet, and the grand total of $1.12 in my bank account. I’d planned these last moments right down to the dollar, eking out my windfall as well as I could, all the while hoping that something would turn up.

That’s why I was here, right? Drinking my last latte, avoiding eating my last BLT, enjoying my last taste of the life I was accustomed to. Two more tears drip down my cheeks and I decide that I’ve had enough self-pity. I turn the volume up one bar and take a bite of my BLT. Despite everything, it tastes great. Of course it would.

That’s why I was here.

Munch, munch, munch. My sandwich is just crumbs and memories now. The latte will last me a little longer. As if it matters.

The thought drifts through my head again – “that’s why I’m here”.

It’s all come down to this last safe memory.

I’m here because I don’t know where to go. For the first time in my life, I don’t have a plan. I don’t have anywhere to go. I’m scared to leave, too scared to see what comes After.

All I have is right now.

That’s why I’m sitting in a café with my eyes closed, trying to meditate. Aren’t you sorry you wondered?

We’re knocked out of her head by a rough bump from the stunning girl taking the seat next to her. For a moment, we drift through the wall, and in our rush to correct, overcompensate, drifting right past her and on into the mind of the redhead girl.

Whispers of thought trickle past us, but something stops us from understanding this mind like we understand the others. Instead of the normal stream of consciousness in a human mind, there’s a sensation like eyes gleaming through parting mist, and a frisson of danger. A wolf stalks towards us and becomes the redhead, who glares directly at us, as if sensing our existence.

Suddenly, we’re back in the café, drifting into our girl’s mind, but dislocated somewhere into the very near-distant future.

God, it’s funny how everything can change in a moment. If only I’d known how it would turn out. An hour ago, I didn’t know that my future hinged on a chance encounter with a stranger. All I knew is that my perfect moment of Now had been thoroughly ruined by some bumbling f… [slow mental processing, quick double-take] – pardon me, some very, very beautiful bumbling fool – and now I had no choice but to face the cruel reality of After.

Of course, she immediately apologised, which meant she almost immediately noticed the tears on my cheeks, and then before I could even open my mouth, she’d enveloped me in a hug and ordered me another latte. Her - boyfriend? Possibly boyfriend. …The boy she’d been talking to – was telling her that it was rude to hug without asking, but I completely forgot to object because I was silently crying too hard to move.

We eventually sorted ourselves out. By which I mean: I put my face back on and apologised for ugly crying on a stranger; and she remarked that we were hardly strangers anymore, introducing herself as Rose. I got my second latte, and then by the time she had the full story out of me, I also had my first real friend. I’d give you the blow by blow, but she’ll be back from her phone call soon, and then we’ll have to move quickly. I’m taking the time to jot the important points of the last few hours on the 3rd last page of my notebook.

I’ve only got space for the important points, because I need the 2nd last page to start planning for my first client of 2021. We’re almost up to date, which is good because she’s outside right now, trying to organise a third seat for me on her flight to Whitehorse, leaving this afternoon.

Turns out, she had no idea she needed an events planner. But after I’d gotten through telling her my life story and explained what I did ‘Before’, she was convinced that the Universe had sent me her way. She was quick to see how my cunning business strategy could be adapted to the virtual world. And even quicker to offer me the chance of my lifetime – to bring my brand of social therapy to her new family.

To drop everything to travel to Canada with her, right now. As if I had anywhere else to go. To help her design a one-of-a-kind event for a multi-millionaire at his private facility. As if I‘d never had to worry about money. And, if I managed to pull it off successfully, to sign an exclusive agreement to keep doing it for the foreseeable future. As if it wasn’t all my dreams coming true at once.

I haven’t even gotten to the best bit yet. How I could know, in less than an hour, that I’d found a friend? Sometimes, you just know. Sometimes there’s something too true to ignore. And sometimes, you find people with the same scars as you. She’d been totally alone in the world before her new family gave her a place to call home. She would have helped me out for that reason alone.

What made us feel like home to each other was our ‘why’. We both wanted, more than anything, to help others beat the things that had defeated us. We both wanted to disrupt the status quo and create a ‘better world’ – whatever that really means. We had each other’s back, right from the get-go. Hey, sometimes true love isn’t romantic. Sometimes it’s just a friend who’s got your back.

There you go. All up to date, and just in time. She’s back, holding a slip of paper. Oh wait. That’s not paper.

That’s a cheque for $20,000.

The first payment upfront, she says. And there’s the last page of my little black book sorted, just waiting for my next set of sums.

We drift out of her head as she gathers her backpack and follows the redhead out of the café. Another day, another extraordinary journey. Thank you, reader, for joining me.