Holiday Grind

One

“What does Christmas taste like?” “What does Christmas taste like?”

That was the question I’d posed to my top baristas the night I discovered Alf Glockner’s body. Until I stumbled over the man’s remains, however, I hadn’t been thinking about murder or corpses or crime-scene evidence. My mood hadn’t plummeted; my worries hadn’t started; my buoyant holiday spirits hadn’t crashed through the floor.

I, Clare Cosi—single mother of a grown daughter and manager of the landmark Village Blend—still believed this was a season for celebrating. Which was why, on that particular December evening, my mind was not focused on clues or suspects or the riskier aspects of defying a cocky NYPD sergeant, but on the much simpler problem of my shop’s bottom line. Hence the question to my staff—

What does Christmas taste like?

“Well, nutmeg’s a must,” Tucker replied.

An itinerate actor-playwright and my most reliable employee, Tucker Burton was lanky as a floor lamp, his lean form topped by a defining shock of floppy brown hair. Sitting across from me in our empty coffeehouse, he tossed back the signature hair and added—

“Cloves. And cinnamon. Definitely cinnamon.”

“Festive spices all,” I agreed. “But we’ve got them covered—” Turning in my chair, I tipped my pen toward the chalkboard behind the espresso bar. “Our Eggnog Latte’s got the nutmeg; the Caramel Apple Pie is loaded with cinnamon; the Pumpkin Spice includes all three—”

And that was the problem.

Those drinks had been on the Village Blend’s seasonal menu for years now, and they were starting to feel tired. With the sluggish economy taking its toll on everyone’s wallets (mine included), I needed to accelerate the ringing of our registers before we rang in the New Year. And, yes, I had a strategy.

Later tonight, I was holding a private latte-tasting party; and first thing tomorrow I planned to place a new menu of tempting holiday coffee drinks on a sidewalk chalkboard in front of the coffeehouse. I even had an Excel spreadsheet ready to go. Come January, after the halls were no longer decked and Santa had sent his red velvet suit to the cleaners, I’d start analyzing our sales results to get a handle on the better-selling flavors for next year.

“What else tastes like Christmas?” I repeated. “Come on, people, think back to your childhoods!”

My own foodie memories were as treasured as that over-used reference to Proust’s madeleine—from my grandmother’s anisette-flavored biscotti to the candied orange peels in her panettone. And, of course, there was her traditional struffoli: I could still see those cellophane-wrapped plates lined up in Nonna’s little Pennsylvania grocery, the golden balls of honey-drenched dough mounded into tiny Italian Christmas trees (just waiting to help make me the chunky monkey I’d been until my midteens).

Unfortunately for me, Fried Dough Latte just didn’t sound like a winning menu item.

“What I remember is the pralines,” Tucker said.

“Pecan pralines?” I assumed, because he’d been raised in Louisiana.

“Of course. Every year, our next-door neighbor made them from scratch and gave them out as presents. Another woman on the block was German, and she made up these delicious gift tins of frosted gingerbread cookies—”

“Pfeffernüsse?” I asked. “Lebkuchen?”

“Gesundheit.” Tucker replied. “Of course, my own mama, being a former Hollywood film extra, was obsessed with Bing Crosby and White Christmas, so we had all that traditional Yankee Yule stuff—fruitcake, candy canes, sugar cookies. And, of course, bourbon.”

I smiled. “With my dad it was Sambuca shots.”

He poured them like water for the army of factory guys who dropped by to place bets during the Christmas season. (Among other things, my father ran a sports book in the back room of his mother’s grocery. I’m fairly sure the “other” things weren’t legal, either.)

“In my house, it was rum,” Gardner offered.

With a voice as smooth as his jazz playlists, Gardner Evans had the kind of mellow attitude any New York retail manager would value—and I did. No amount of customer crush could frazzle the young, African-American jazz musician, who seemed able to calm our most wired customers (especially the female variety) with little more than a wink.

“Rum?” Tucker said.

Gardner nodded. “Oh, yeah. If you’re talking taste of Christmas, you’ve got to have rum.”

Esther Best—zaftig grad student, local slam poetess, and latte artist extraordinaire—peered at Gardner through a pair of black rectangular frames. “What do you mean, rum? Like the stuff pirates drink?”

“Like hot buttered rum,” Gardner said, stroking his trimmed goatee. “Like the rum in mulled cider and spiked eggnog. Like the Jamaican rum in my auntie’s bread pudding and black cake. Ever have Caribbean black cake, Best Girl?”

“Haven’t had the pleasure.”

“Well, it’s a lot like you.”

“Like me?”

“Yeah.” Gardner’s smile flashed white against his mocha skin. “It’s dark and dense with powerful flav-ah.”

Narrowing her perpetually critical gaze, Esther replied, “I am not dense.”

“But you are dark,” Tucker pointed out. “Besides, the man said dense with flavor. Or are you too dense to understand Gardner’s derisive gangsta-rap inflection?”

“Bite me, Broadway Boy. My boyfriend’s the top Russian rapper in Brighton Beach. I think I can recognize the mocking of urban street slang when I hear it—” Esther held a palm up to Gardner. “And do not give me another musicology lecture. I know you’ve got a major grudge against gangsta rap.”

Gardner folded his arms, leaned back in his chair, and shrugged. “Whatever.”

“Anyway—” Esther turned to face me. “We can’t put rum in a latte. Right, boss? Rum is alcohol. And unless I missed the memo, you haven’t gotten a liquor license for this place, have you?”

“No duh,” said Tucker. “We can use rum syrup. Why do you think I used peppermint syrup for my Candy Cane Cappuccino? I would have used actual crème de menthe if it were legal!”

“Now that you’ve brought it up,” Esther said, “I think we should eighty-six Tucker’s Christmas Cap.” She held up one of the many paper cups holding the evening’s first round of samples. “His Candy Cane Cappuccino’s way too sweet. If we put this on the holiday menu, I guarantee two out of three customers will complain to have it remade—or just spew it back out.”

“A lovely holiday image,” Dante Silva called from behind the espresso bar. With his sleeves rolled up to show off his self-designed tattoos, the shaved-headed fine arts painter had just begun frothing up a fresh pitcher of milk.

“Are you serious?” Esther shouted from our table. “Or is that steam wand drowning out your sarcasm?”

“I can see it now,” Dante replied with a straight face, “a cobblestone street in the historic West Village, snow falling lightly on shingled rooftops, primary colors twinkling around the trunks of bared elms, and our customers spewing Tucker’s Candy Cane Cap all over their Ugg boots.”

Tucker smirked. “Now all Dante has to do is paint it for us. Hey, Dante! Why don’t you make it into a stencil for latte toppings? Or better yet, just tattoo it to your billiard-ball head!”

Dante’s reply was a hand gesture.

I sighed, wondering what the heck had happened to our holiday spirit. An hour earlier, when we’d been decorating the shop, things had gone so well I thought I’d been painted into a Currier and Ives print.

After closing early, my staff helped me pick out a New York white pine from the sidewalk vendor on Jane Street. As Tucker’s basso crooned “O Tannenbaum,” Dante and Gardner carried the tree back on their shoulders. Then I helped them set it up in the corner, we cut the bundling wires, and the tree’s springy branches unfurled, filling the entire first floor with the fresh, sharp smell of an evergreen forest.

Esther (actually cheerful for once) began affixing bright red ribbons to the deep green boughs, and I dug out the lovingly packed boxes of antique miniature coffee cups and tin pots that Madame—the Village Blend’s elderly owner—had collected over the years. Then Tucker replaced our shop dinger with jingle bells, and Dante laid out the big red and green welcome mat I’d purchased the week before—the one that said Merry Christmas in a dozen languages along with Happy Holidays! Happy Chanukah! and Happy Kwanzaa!

(Living in a city with as many cultural and religious differences as New York meant you were probably violating someone’s belief system just by breathing. Lofty words like diversity and understanding were often bandied about in hopes of fostering open-mindedness, but after living in this roiling mini-UN for the past two decades, I was convinced that the way to universal harmony lay in a more practical philosophy. A diversity of cultures meant a diversity of foods. Eat with tolerance, I say.)

For a full hour, we continued decorating the coffeehouse, stringing white lights around the French doors, hanging fresh spruce wreaths against the casement windows. Finally, we put up quilted stockings over the hearth’s stone mantel, where one of Madame’s silver menorahs already stood, waiting for the Festival of Lights to begin.

Peace on earth had actually been in play, until we all began judging each other’s coffee creations...

Now, checking my watch, I tensed. Our guests would be arriving soon to sample our new holiday coffee drinks, and we were nowhere near ready.

“Okay, that’s it!” I announced in a tone I hadn’t used since my daughter was in grade school. “No more bickering! Everyone behind the espresso bar! I want Christmas in a cup, and I want it ASAP!”

Forty-five minutes later, two dozen bottles of sweet syrups were lined up on our blue marble espresso bar; stainless steel milk-frothing pitchers stood on the work counter behind it; and I was reviewing our hastily scribbled tasting menu.

Tucker’s offerings included Butter Pecan Praline, Candy Cane (easy on the syrup), Iced Gingersnap, and Old-Fashioned Sugar Cookie. Dante’s flavors were Eggnog Cheesecake, Spiked Fruitcake, White Chocolate Tiramisu, and Toasted Marshmallow Snowflake. Gardner’s Christmas memories brought us Rum Raisin, Mocha-Coconut Macaroon, and Caribbean Black Cake. And from my own beloved Nonna’s Christmases: Candied Orange Panettone, Maple-Kissed Gingerbread, and Glazed Roasted Chestnut.

Esther also had contributions: Apricot-Cinnamon Rugelach and Raspberry Jelly Doughnut because, as she quite rightly put it, “Chanukah has its own flavors.” For Esther, this also included Key Lime Pie because, as she noted, “Every December my family fled to Florida.”

The invited guests of our latte tasting were now mingling near the crackling logs of the store’s hearth, waiting for us to whip up the samples.

Tucker was entertaining his current boyfriend, a Hispanic Broadway dancer who went by the single name Punch. Gardner was playing host to Theo, Ronny, and Chick, the three other members of his jazz ensemble Four on the Floor. And Dante had invited his two aspiring-artist roommates: a pierced platinum-blond pixie named Kiki and a raven-haired girl of East Indian heritage named Banhi.

Checking my watch, I decided to give our missing guests another ten minutes to show. Esther’s boyfriend—Boris the assistant-baker-slash-Russian-rapper—was performing at a Brooklyn club tonight. Since he couldn’t make it, she’d invited another taster, a friend named Vicki Glockner.

Earlier in the year, Vicki had worked as a barista for me. She’d loved experimenting with our Italian syrups, and I knew she’d make a good taster, but I had mixed feelings about seeing her again because she and I hadn’t parted on the best of terms.

My friend was late, too—although he’d phoned to apologize and warn that he might not make it at all. I couldn’t blame him. Since I began seeing Mike Quinn, I’d had to accept that a NYPD detective’s work was never done.

My other tasting party guinea pig was now smacking his knuckles against the beveled glass of the Blend’s front door. I moved to unlock it and realized the night had grown colder and the snow higher. Fat flakes had been falling steadily for the last hour. Now they layered the sidewalk and street with several inches of crystalline frosting. As I pulled the door wide, the newly installed jingle bells sounded above, and a chilly wind gust sent a flurry of ice diamonds into my dark brown hair.

“You actually made it?” I said with a shiver as Matteo Allegro stepped inside.