“Can I get you something?” the clerk asked.

You could tell by the clever way he articulated each word, carefully crafted to sound casual and “used to all of this,” trying to blend in.

“Um, no. Thanks. Just looking.”

He could tell too. From behind the Machine, the center of it all, he knew they were out of their element. The kid. Especially the kid. Couldn’t be more than 18 or so, at the most. The girl with him . . . both really had no clue. Even as he worked, he could tell they were stuck. Too embarrassed to order. Too embarrassed to leave. Stuck they were. In limbo. He bailed them out.

“Have you got a minute? Come on over here. Just over to the side here, where we can talk. It’s slow for now. Let me show you what I do here.”

They came. Hesitatingly. Nor really sure. Was it safe? They had never really been in a shop like this before, much less being behind the Machine. Or at least near its side, with the operator. The Barista. He laughed at their faces when they looked at it all. The steam wands, the grinders, the steaming pitchers, the pour pitchers. The wipe rag. The coffee grounds on the bar. The bottles of syrup. The chocolate. The smell of it. That wonderful aroma. The noise. The look of sensory overload. The look of a first timer. The look of newbys at a coffee bar.

He kicked into his spiel. The one about what it was he was doing. They just sort of nodded assent at the questions he nudged them with.

“Do you like coffee? You know how they make drip coffee, right? They pour hot water over the grounds and it drips out the bottom, hence the name, right? The coffee we serve here is different. Its called espresso. I knew you knew that. Not eXpresso, but eSpresso. Don’t say eXpresso. It makes you look like you don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, okay?”

As he got an order, he continued to talk while he made the drink. Grinding the coffee, steaming the milk. Tamping the hand tamper, a quick twist and another tap. Slamming the portafilter filled with the coffee grounds home. Punching the button, and watching the slow lazy pour of the shot. Not over-extracted. Not too much. Not too fast. One ounce per. He rolled the chocolate sauce in, then the shot. Then came the cascade of velvety milk. He put it on the counter and called it out.

“Tall single skinny whipless mocha on a leash!”

The order left with a guy in a suit. Followed by others, in varying order, in everything from Levis to leather; bikers to businesswomen. He explained what the orders meant as he made the drinks. The tall part is a 12 ounce drink. The short is an 8 ounce. The grande is the 16. A venti is 20. Venti’s 20 in Italian. The single or double, or triple, is for how many shots of espresso. Skinny means skim milk. Whipless means no whipped cream. Mocha means it has chocolate. On a Leash means that it’s “to go.” A brevecappuccino means adding foamed milk to the espresso. A latte means adding steamed milk, with more liquid. If you add a flavored syrup, it’s a flavored latte. On the orders and comments went. means using steamed Half & Half instead of milk. A

By now they were looking more relaxed. More than that. They were enjoying it. They were part of the scene. Not just onlookers anymore. Now they knew what the lingo meant. Now they knew.

But not everything. They still had to order. For the first time. They still had to do that. They looked from the clerk back to him. Indecision was the key to flexibility.

“What’s good?” they asked.

“Do you like chocolate and caramel? How about vanilla?”

The girl nodded and grinned at the chocolate part. He thought the vanilla was okay, but not great.

“Let me make you a Milky Way,” he said to her. “It’s real chocolate and caramel sauce. As for you, how about a Vanilla Silk Latte. It’s vanilla with a hint of caramel syrup. Sort of a 2-to-1 ratio.”

They nodded, and the Machine sprang back to life. Hissing steam in the milk. The grinder roaring. The tamper banging. The smooth golden brown Crema on the espresso. The pouring liquid. The whipped cream gliding and climbing onto the Milky Way. He handed them the drinks on the counter. They picked them up and tasted. Sort-of. Hesitantly.

“Careful. Those are really hot”, he warned. The McDonald’s warning. They nodded, as they sipped more. And more. And smiled. Big.

He asked the kid why he had come into the coffee bar in the first place.

“It’s the place to be. You know. Starbucks and all. Everyone talks about it. It’s where people like to hang out, get a buzz, and all. My brother is in college and he goes to one all the time to meet friends, hang out, talk, listen to music and to stay awake for class. It was awesome the way he talked about it. I wanted to be part of that too. I was kinda intrigued, and then when we saw this place, we just decided to come in.”

“This coffee house thing is pretty cool, you know,” he said to him later. “I mean, like to have all this here. Who thought this up, anyway?”

“Well, here in the U.S., it started in the Pacific Northwest. Might have been the rainy weather. The “aficionados” of coffee started roasting their own, and a coffee cart opened in Seattle. They blossomed from there, and today there are hundreds of carts and shops around Seattle. An old gas station was converted into an espresso drive-through, called “Espresso Lanes,” and the drive-through espresso stand came to being. But in Europe, it goes back a lot longer than that. Hundreds of year, even.”

“You mean like Italy?”

Sure. Coffee houses became popular almost 450 years ago, when two opened in Constantinople. They were so successful that in a few years the city was full of them. They were known as “schools of wisdom” as they were frequented by the cultured and well-educated. In 1645, coffee houses appeared in Venice, where coffee was off-loaded from ships from Yemen. And by 1759 there were 205 shops in Venice alone. In Vienna the first coffee house was the Blue Flask. It opened in 1687. Lloyd’s of London started as Edward Lloyd’s coffee house and became a center for business transactions. By 1850 Paris was one large coffee house, with over 3000 in the city.”

“You’re kidding! 3000 in one city?”

“Sure. In Italy today, there are over 200,000 coffee bars. In a country as big as Vermont.”

“No way!”

“Better believe it. And what you liked about this place is what drew students to coffee houses when they first opened hundreds of years ago. The stimulating effect of the coffee, as well as the opportunity to discuss ideas, made coffee houses a hotbed of political and social unrest. Imagine that: coffee houses were places to discuss social issues, meet artists, and draw up contracts. The spreading and stimulation of politics, culture and the economy of Europe was in coffee houses. You might have heard of the phrase “Penny University.” That comes from the idea that you could go to a coffee house, buy coffee for a penny, then learn from all that was being discussed and taught.”

“But students weren’t the only coffee house occupants. Voltaire, one of the leaders of the Age of Reason, reportedly drank 50 cups of coffee a day. Pope Clement VIII was a coffee lover and baptized it in holy water, giving it his blessing. There’s a lot of history in this coffee house that you didn’t see when you came in.”

Before they left, the kid asked him the question that had been bugging him for an hour. “Do you drink a lot coffee too? You know, being in here and working with it all the time? I mean, do you still like it?”

Of course. I don’t drink it all the time, but at least several a day. My favorite is a Double Short Cappuccino, extra hot. What do you think? Do you like the coffee house? How does it compare to what your brother talked about?”

“I love it! It’s great, even on the surface. I mean, it’s cool and all. And knowing how to order and how it’s made is even better. But knowing where it came from, and how exciting it is to be a student in a coffee house and “continuing the coffee revolution tradition” is just awesome! This is a perfect thing to do a research paper on in school. Of course I’ll have to come in all the time to research it. I wonder if my class could come here from some group research . . . ?