Espresso Shot

Two

Walk down almost any of my neighborhood’s narrow, tree-lined streets, and you’ll see three centuries of architectural history, from Federal, Greek Revival, and Italianate town houses to early twentieth-century apartment buildings. Almost everyone I know has applauded the saving of these landmarks and cried over the treasures that were lost before the historic district was sanctioned. But no one cried hard enough, it seemed to me, over losing the guts of these places.

While the buildings around the Village Blend were now preserved by law, the businesses inside them weren’t, and every year that ticked by, more of my neighborhood’s legendary establishments folded, their storefronts replaced with the sort of trade you’d find in upscale suburban malls. What made Greenwich Village Greenwich Village was drifting away faster than Al Gore’s ice caps.

That’s the main reason I valued the White Horse. Like my Village Blend, the landmark tavern stubbornly refused to let go of its moorings. Since Welsh poet Dylan Thomas tossed back eighteen fatal shots in its paneled back room fifty years ago, the White Horse has been hyped as the watering hole of literary legends.

True, Norman Mailer used the joint as a second living room, mainly because, as he so graciously put it, “If you invited people to your house, it was not that easy to get rid of them...” But I’d also been impressed with the building itself, which was one of the few wood-frame constructions remaining in Manhattan. The ground-level storefront originally housed a bookshop. Then the James Dean Oyster Bar took over the space, and in 1880, the White Horse opened its doors.

For the next five decades or so, the tavern poured whiskey for longshoremen working the nearby West Side docks. Then the Village became a magnet for struggling writers and artists, and bohemians began to gather there. Today’s clientele lived a lot farther up the socioeconomic ladder.

With NYU now owning half the real estate in my picturesque Village, the college crowd was constantly ringing the bar’s register. Pub-crawling tourists frequented the place, too, along with well-paid or well-subsidized neighborhood regulars who craved good burgers, great onion rings, and ice-cold beers. (Local real estate being what it was, authentically bohemian writers had long ago retrenched in other neighborhoods, but sometimes even they returned to the tavern, drawn by the legends as much as the tourists.)

This evening, the century-old tavern looked as casually inviting as ever with its upper stories painted summer-sky blue and its stately white horse chess-piece emblems stenciled above the tall front windows.

The manager had gamely put out the café umbrellas, but April was still early in the season for sidewalk seating, and only one of the wooden picnic tables was occupied, despite the mild spring weather.

After an easy stroll under Hudson’s glowing streetlamps, Matt and I entered the softly lit front room to find Koa Waipuna sitting at the magnificent mirror-backed mahogany bar (the original one, circa the nineteenth century). I hadn’t seen Koa in years, but there was no way to miss the man. He was big. And exotic didn’t begin to describe him.

Along with his name, Koa had inherited his deep olive complexion and black, expressive eyes from his native Hawaiian father. His frame was heavily muscled, yet he had the delicate facial structure of his Japanese mother. Fluent in Japanese as well as his native Hawaiian, he still wore his long black hair in a samurai-style topknot, an offbeat crowning to preppie khakis, an aquamarine Izod, and polished loafers.

Koa spotted Matt first and grinned. Then he shifted his gaze to me.

“Clare!” He stood and wrapped his beefy arms around me in an enthusiastic hug only slightly less forceful than a boa constrictor’s. “I wasn’t expecting to see you tonight!”

I’d visited the Waipunas’ farm only once in my life, years earlier, when Matteo converted a Kona buying trip into our hastily planned but spectacularly romantic Hawaiian honeymoon. Back then, Koa had been a wild young teenager who refused to wear a shirt, bristled at farm work, and was constantly surrounded by his five giggling sisters. Today he was in his thirties, married with children, and responsible for the coffee farm’s day-to-day operations. He was serious as a heart attack, according to Matt, until he set foot off the estate. Then his wild streak returned with a vengeance.

“Come with me,” Koa said. Grinning wide, he led us toward the bar’s back room. “The gang’s all here.”

Matt shot Koa a confused look. “The gang? What gang?”

“Oh, uh... I just meant that I brought Mr. Koto and Mr. Takahashi along. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not,” Matt said. “I haven’t seen Junro since my trip to Malaysia last year.”

Matt had mentioned that Koa was working on a business deal with a Japanese company—a plan to host special tours of his estate since Kona-drinking had become pretty popular in Japan.

I was about to ask Koa about it, but I never got the chance. He opened a thin wooden door, and a dozen male voices shouted Matt’s name. That’s when I saw the hanging banner:

Clipped to the banner was the poster of a blown-up photo, obviously doctored. Matt was on all fours with a ball and chain on his foot and a rope around his neck; his beautiful bride-to-be was dressed to the nines in a floor-length burgundy gown, dripping in diamonds, holding one end of Matt’s rope like a pet leash.

“Surprised?” Koa yelled over the din.

“Am I ever,” Matt replied.

Oh, God. I could see the muscles in Matt’s face had frozen. He’d gone slightly pale, and sweat was starting to bead his upper lip. He glanced at me and then behind him, clearly in a panic about Randall Knox’s stalking gossip column photographer.

I looked behind us, but there were no paparazzi in sight. Then I glanced around the crowded party room. Apart from the embarrassing poster of Matt and Breanne, there was nothing here to warrant tabloid scandal. Sure, Matt’s friends had gotten a good head start on the consumption of alcohol. But it was a tavern, after all.

Two of Matt’s buddies thrust a mug of beer into his hand, pounded his back, and led him farther into the back room—the same one where Dylan Thomas purportedly drank himself to death (not a good omen).

“I should go,” I told Koa, turning to do just that.

“No, Clare, stay!” Koa pulled me back. “Have a drink at least, and say hello to the guys. You know a lot of them—look!”

I did, actually. Some of them were now smiling at me, waving me over.

“This part of the party’s going to be tame, anyway,” Koa confided.

“This part of the party?” I frowned. “Sorry, I need a little more.”

Koa pointed toward Matt, now chugging his mug of beer in front of the room’s giant portrait of Dylan Thomas. (Actually, the entire room was a makeshift shrine to the dead Welsh poet, with pictures of his home, framed newspaper clippings, and a special plaque.)

“Once Matt gets drunk enough”—Koa paused to give me a meaningful wink—“we’re taking him to Scores.”

“The yuppie strip joint?”

“Gentlemen’s club.”

Okay, I thought instantly, I’m definitely staying.

What Matt did with women—fully clothed or otherwise—was no longer my business. What he did with his credit cards, however, was another matter. And I’d never forget the front-page story of the idiot corporate executive who’d gotten so drunk with his clients at one of those “gentlemen’s” clubs that he couldn’t recall racking up seventy thousand dollars’ worth of champagne and lap dancing charges.

“Matt! Matt! Matt!”

The guys had started chanting for my ex to chug a second beer.

Good Lord, I thought. If Matt goes to Scores hammered, we may lose the Blend.

“Listen,” I told Koa, “Joy’s not making much money as a Paris line cook, and she’s depending on us. I don’t want Matt ‘treating’ his friends to the tune of personal bankruptcy. Got it?”

Koa laughed. “Tell you what. Stick around until we’re ready to take him uptown. I’ll get his wallet from him and hand it to you to hold. How’s that?”

“Fine, get me his wallet. Then you have my blessing to drag him off—as long as you make sure not to let anyone take any embarrassing photos of Matt. Breanne would kill him.”

Koa laughed again. “You worry too much!”

“You have no idea.”

He laughed once more and patted my back. I knew he meant it to be a light tap, but the force nearly sent me off my low-heeled boots.

“Trust me, Clare. We’ll be discreet.”

A strip club. Heavy drinking. And discretion? One of these things was not like the others. But then what choice did I have? In the end, Koa was probably right, I decided, and there was no need to worry.

Obviously, Randall Knox’s photographer had taken the night off, and Matt’s surprise bachelor party appeared totally harmless, anyway: a lot of men, some enthusiastic beer drinking, but that was all, really. In fact, I thought, as I calmed down to take a longer look at all the faces in the room, the gathering was kind of touching.

The men around me had flown here from Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Kenya, Ethiopia, the Arabian Peninsula, Indonesia, and the Caribbean, virtually every coffee-producing region of the world. Some represented small, family coffee farms. Others owned large estates, exported for cooperatives, or worked in Europe or New York as importers for roasters.

Koa handed me a mug of beer, and I watched as Matt’s friends, one after another, stood up and toasted him, sometimes in broken English, often with tears in their eyes.

It was then that I realized what was happening here, and it was more than just a bachelor party, because these guys weren’t simply my ex-husband’s buddies. They represented the thousand quests my business partner had made to keep alive a coffee trade his great-grandfather had started, a business that was still standing, like this tavern, despite the here-and-gone swells and eddies of the past hundred years.

I smiled, thinking, Madame should be here to see this...

It was Matt’s mother, after all, who’d provided the money for the smaller farm owners to even come to Saturday’s wedding, which would have proved far too costly for most of them to afford.

With an inspired spirit, I strolled through the crowded room, saying hello to the guys, many of whom I’d met in passing over the years. Suddenly, we were interrupted by some loud demands that the best man now propose a toast.

Matt’s closest friend since his youth was Ric Gostwick. Ric would have been Matt’s best man, but he was currently serving time in a penitentiary (which was an entirely different story), so Matt asked Roger Mbele to do the honors.

A prominent member of the Nairobi Coffee Exchange, Roger had been like a father to Matt for years. He was also a very old friend of Matt’s mother. Eminently dignified, the Kenyan was tall and lean, with craggy features, hair the color of snow, and skin the hue of an earthy French roast. Moving to the center of the room, Roger lifted his half-empty mug and began an eloquent tribute. That’s when I noticed the door to the back room opening.

I watched to see who was coming in so late to the party, but no one stepped across the threshold. Whoever had cracked the door appeared to be waiting just outside the room.

My nerves bristled, and I slipped quickly through the crowd of men, toward the door. When I got close enough, I finally glimpsed who was standing there, spying on the festivities. But it wasn’t what I feared—some photographer with a zoom lens.

It was worse.

A leggy blond in a business suit stood peering into the room. She wore expensive, rose-tinted sunglasses that shielded much of her face, but I would have recognized her anywhere. She appeared to be surveying the gathering, and she didn’t look happy. No surprise, given her focus on the hanging banner, the one with the unflattering poster of herself holding Matt’s leash.

Matt hadn’t yet seen her. He’d been distracted by Roger’s toast, so I waited for the best man to finish and the gang to raise their glasses. Then I maneuvered through the guys to the center of the room and tapped my half-drunk ex-husband on the arm.

“She’s here, Matt.”

“Who’s here?” He looked down at me, his eyes slightly glazed.

“The woman who threatened you with homicide if you had a bachelor party.” I pointed to the half-open door.

Matt paled, his mug of beer freezing halfway to his lips.

“I’m a dead man.”