Earl
Grey, Hot
A
few days after Victrola's most incompetent barista told me that he
couldn’t sell me any tea unless it was steeped, and in a cup, I was
shot down at PCC by the manager, following a search through their tea
stockpile. She'd caught up with me in the check out line and
explained that her earlier hopeful guess at having our favored
variety back in stock might have been wrong as they'd already been
out for at least ten days. With two failed attempts tucked in my
belt, I knew that it was time to use a little logic for finding some
loose leaf, Earl Grey tea to constitute a part of my darling's
birthday present. I decided to search the internet and call ahead.
Holly
picked up the call and said “hello.” Momentarily taken aback at
the lack of a company identifier, and hoping the number I'd dug out
of Google hadn't changed hands, I asked “is this Necessitea?”
She said “oh, yes.” Without giving her time to breathe, I
immediately cut to the important question. “Do you sell loose leaf
teas?” She answered “yes, I do.” I was elated. “Do you have
Earl Grey?” Her affirmative response made me sit up straight. “What
time are you open until?” I asked. “I could be there in a few
minutes. I'm just on the other side of the West Seattle Bridge from
you.” She hemmed and hawed a little, and told me that she does most
of her business through the mail, that parking was impossible near
her house, and asked if I would meet her at Cafe Luna. As I was
starving by this point, I told her that would be OK by me. She asked
me how many ounces I wanted and I asked how many portions I could
divvy an ounce up into. After she told me that an ounce could be
broken up into about twenty to twenty five
splits, the
feeling of deja vu, that was engulfing me, took only a short time to
be recognized as an actual memory, or several recollections. “Holly,”
I said, “this sounds just like a conversation I could have had,
years ago, about a different substance.” A moment of silence and
both of us started laughing.
On
my way out of the door, I ran into Robert. “Are you hungry” I
asked, still chuckling as I recounted my phone call to him. His first
response was, “are you sure you were talking about tea?” I told
him I was certain but he said that he didn't think he'd want to be
there for that. I imagined visions of potential, unintended, yet
still botched drug deals playing out in his head.
As
I sat down at at the counter at Cafe Luna only a few minutes later, a
girl at the end of the bar counter, and the woman across the counter
from her, halted their conversation, and the woman walked away.
Finding myself at the point of hunger where forgetting to call Holly
and trying to maintain focus on the menu was only natural, my eyes
and mind wandered all around this visually pungent, intentionally
kitschy place. The woman behind the bar returned to her conversation
with the pink haired girl and, very openly, handed her a
fat-in-the-middle kind of joint, followed by the words “I'm sorry,
I know it's supposed to be more of a cone, but that's all I got”. I
was stunned and the first thought to pop into my head was “don't be
Holly.” The next two, almost simultaneously, were a hurt feeling at the possibility of my being a cop being so obviously, and immediately discounted, and “Shit, forgot to call.” I was relieved when the
ringing stopped and the voice to answer was not hooked to the woman
behind the bar. The real Holly showed up a moment after I ordered a
tuna melt. She was easy to spot by the bag clutched in her left hand as she walked in the
door. We extended our right hands toward each other and I'd
already placed the money we discussed in mine. After we shook, I
squeezed the folded bills into the palm of hers as I pulled mine
away. It took a couple of seconds for her to notice that I'd left
something there. When she did, she laughed.
Black
Tea: 2–3 minutes at 99 °C (210 °F), good for 2-3 infusions
Later that day, I cropped
my coiffe more closely than any curmudgeonly cop's new crew cut.
