Edited: Coffee with Balmer

Balmer overreacted and went inside a cafeteria down the alley into the shacks of anonymity. As he entered the cafe, a sudden aroma of mocha wafted through his nostrils into his enraged brain calming his workaholic pyramid nerves and easing out the kerfuffle irking inside. He began to feel the warmth of coffee being stewed and cheese cakes being baked.

He felt a need to smack his lips with a cup of cinnamon cappuccino and wipe its whipped caffeinic cream with his tongue. He didn't want any contamination of water or chocolate or ice or even ice-cream to ruin the perfect homogeneity of pure milk and coffee.

Gone high with chromatic caffeinic cravings in his belly, he reached the counter. He glanced at the printed menu on the board placed just above the counter. There were broadly hot coffee, cold coffee, ice-cream and cheese cake varieties with several individual options.

Behind the counter, a few strongly built agile Italian gentlemen, aged 30-35, dressed in freshly starched, neatly ironed, spotless blue cotton shirts and custom made black trousers with a recently bleached white corduroy apron neatly draped around their garments, were working in perfect coordination with each other; some were preparing the beverages and cake-concoctions while others were serving the drooling customers. Balmer got so lost in admiring their genteel sartorial get-up & daunting diligence while preparing the delicacies and extreme elegance while tending to all the customer classes, elite or poor, that he forgot to choose the coffee he would have liked to lick in.

One of the Italian workers, who was at the counter and who carried a diplomatic dimple tucked under the smile lines of his cheeks, broke the ice. He was beaming with confidence in the prime of his youth. He warmly asked Balmer to be comfortable and make the choice of coffee at ease without any hesitation to clarify the detailed description of each option. Balmer understood the mechanical perfunctory act of his advise and didn't mind his considering him as a diffident and ignorant coffee lover. Brushing the thoughts aside, he began cruising through the options idly. He wanted something hot. He wanted to close his eyes and savor the rich depths of dark coffee beans' aroma.

Amongst the available options under hot coffee banner were -

Mama Macchiato

Le Lavender Latte

Moto Mocha

Creme' Shot Espresso

Shocker Whiteout

Browny Breve

Kremlin Cappuccino

Every option was as distinct to him as the seven colours of VIBGYOR, for he could easily discern the very nuance of the flavour each preparation carried. He could easily discern their pleasant distinctive fragrance as they brushed past him while being served.

He chose Mama Macchiato for himself. The dimpled Italian counter-man took his order and asked him to be seated anywhere in the cafeteria at his leisure while his order was being readied in seven minutes. Balmer strolled in the narrow isle of cafeteria's dispersed inter table distances, carefully selecting the best place to sit in. He found himself getting attracted to the rather demure corner-most table of the cafe that his line of sight could spot. He sat there facing away from the crowd.

For him, this was one of the most important parts of his errand at any eatery. He was a perfect gourmet, he knew how the location of seat modifies the mood and hence the taste of a delicacy. If you sit near a loud lady nagging her husband & kids while making noises or any such overpowering sacrosanct, you can possibly die of their grandiloquence even before getting your order delivered onto your table. Even if you manage to eat, the food takes a distant corner of your mind instead of the precious core. The sour or sugary talks and even people's wry faces mix their unwanted flavors into your delicacy so that your sensory organs, which are obviously the degenerate interrupts whose live information telecast can keep the brain-network busy when you want to concentrate on your gustatory modality the most. For instance, your eyes can see the other people sitting around you, your nose has to smell them, especially when they are reeking and their abhorrent unwanted intrusive ideas and rants, which your ears transmit dynamically can occupy the central position of your sole brain and your dear tongue has to wait every second to buffer its info into a heavily preoccupied brain ensuing the attainment of sluggish as tortoise & disruptive as hare speed. Differential is the game. Keep the brain empty and receptive, thy taste buds shall load the info into the brain at the speed of light. Just like students gain much more knowledge in the class than when they are preoccupied or facing any distractions. When their mind is completely clean and devoted to the lessons being taught, ultimate enlightenment takes place, wherein a fire of hope, a fire of knowledge kindles inside them that allows them to perceive the greatest depths of knowledge and follow the path unaided with the zeal to endeavor and clear all the obstacles in a diligent and lucid way.

He grabbed the table and the seat like some priced possession conquered. He didn't look elsewhere. He was complacent. He inhaled a huge gulp of coffee smitten air and closed his eyes.

He recalled his experiences with the coffee's whipped cream.

...it dissolves at the bottom, as if existing in equilibrium with the realm of coffee. Just like the clouds infuse with the mountains, the misty interaction of whipped cream and coffee seemed to complement each other...

Suddenly, in his private, peaceful and happy time, Bonnito's face flashed in his mind, he couldn't take this unfair brutal barbarous blow of his subconscious mind and he opened his pitiful eyes.

The curse of the past roused the monster inside him for Bonnito killed his innocent friend in a heinous homicidal fiasco some 8 years ago. Mitochondrial troops burnt down the inventories of glucose and adipose tissues. The warm blood got warmer and began gushing like Japanese rails running on levitation, pouting a vein-web conspicuously out of his temples on either side. He sat there completely drained out. He recalled his deceased friend, Palero Zeeha just before she was mercilessly burnt to death.

He tried to cheer himself up. On a vapid whim, he directed his vitriolic feelings into an absurd abstract cauldron. He re-imagined Bonnito's face as a large coffee bean and himself carrying a heavy weight large steel head hammer in one hand and Bonnito's hair clutched mercilessly by the other hand. In this instant virulent reverie, he thrashed him, smashed him, relentlessly and vehemently, to crush Bonnito's pride into a finely ground reeking coffee powder which even pig refused to devour.

He was smug like a kid at his schizophrenic achievement.

Coolly, at his volition, he half opened his eyes, not his mind though.

He noticed the so-seemed corner of the cafe. To his amazement, this guile corner had a narrow, small extension allowing another two seater table to stuff in.

Therein sat a girl, a mysterious & an unusual girl.

1 inch wide tongue but only half as thick as an average tongue width of an adult, shaded with darker hues than the darkest pink of an Eskimo child's, multiple ulcers underneath, but, that wasn't all...it was a long tongue, longer than the height of the ice-cream jar she was trying to lick empty.

She squinted at his objectionable observance, yet remained calm and composed with an aim to slump back to reticent taciturnity and block her generic impulse to taste in public.

She knew she was different, mongoloid nose, eye balls protected inside an overtly protruded eye-cage with iris painted in different hue codes making left eye grey but the right one blue in color.

But she didn't know, her genetically different eyes were so familiar, so intimate and so dear to this gentleman though in another human form.

Her lips were without filtrum, they were pink with black outline and she had tongue of a size and strength to easily strangle a wrist. But the texture of her face was flawless, it was a smooth peachy olive span with little pinkish hues spread evenly over her eyelids and pinna. She was a big boned yet slim girl richly supplied with adipose tissues at right places. The off-shoulder neck-line of her top was glorifying the elegance of her gleaming broad shoulders yet exposing the vulnerability of her tender arms.

Below the table, below the shiny leather beige pants, lied her feet, those carried an extraordinary sex appeal that could turn even a clergy man on under the cloak of his morality. Her breath taking luminous, long & lean toes had a uniform length to width ratio along the thumb toe to little one's gradient, all sparkling with razor sharp scarlet enamel.

Her feet were as beautiful as a dove's wings. They were fair like almond milk, smooth like gel spread all over but they suddenly turned all white like skimmed milk. Nobody but a patron pays attention to a nuance like this, but this gentleman had the flair to turn this baby soft leaf and feel the feelings inside much like a hermit who knows the direction of heat flow inside a living being, to tell his mood, by merely reading the face. Our gentleman could tell the depths of her character that was flanked by sorrows of her life and intelligence of her sparkling mind. He could see the transfer of pinkish tinge from eyelids to peachy olive cherubic cheeks.

When she noticed his observance by her over vigilant subconscious sensors and when she politely & timidly ducked inside as an involuntary resistance at the breach of her privacy, she fortified her peptide bonds, she flexed her muscles internally to embolden herself and allow herself to go on with the flow of the moment of her own accord. She carried on the ice-cream licking process to preserve her dignity, that she could assert her right to freedom & right to be what she was, much the same way she respected the staring gentleman's freedom and feelings. This was the reason, she refused to cast cold looks at him even when she wanted him to stop staring and let her enjoy her privacy.

She abstained from throwing any sarcastic rude remarks, for it could only shatter their mutual peace of mind, the idea of being social as liked by extrovert people, the human instinct of casual inquisitiveness just like this gentleman possessed and the integrity of warm mellow environment of the cafe having a past record of making lovely stories in it. She neither rose nor floundered for she wasn't an escapist, she knew how to deal with a situation without causing any rampage, even when her super impulsive & short tempered mind was vying to kick the person who himself in quest of solace chose the so-seemed corner-most table but who failed to let the other person have his share of privacy. She wasn't a dogmatic bitch. She wasn't even a die hard loner. She could take any blow, yet be resilient enough to mold herself to a logically sound & benign settlement even when her impulse kept dragging her into the whirlpool of mundane madness...

Balmer's order arrived.

He forgot the girl for the coffee muchlike he forgot the latter for the former.

He stretched his tongue out, that was half the size of Dimantana Entpol's to taste the whipped cream. He dug his tongue more to scrub away the uppermost cream but the whipped cream stood like an iceberg in the cup, for it seemed superficially light and thin layer floating on the delectable liquid while it actually covered a whooping 3/5 of the cup, fortifying the even-more-delectable-now liquid moat with a non-breach-able dense yet soft fog leaving the only way to reach the real coffee by developing a huge negative pressure inside & slurping in the entire whipped cream in one or two goes according to the size of the throat.

Balmer did exactly the same in one go to get rid of it soon.

The whipped cream was as richly caffeinic as anticipated. But it was much more than that. It was a faintly fragrant smoke of cookies, muffins and cheese. It was as attractive as foams of bubble bath but at the same time, it was as sham as mocha-chocolate-alcohol-cake’s icing. No doubt, it was as irresistibly turning on as the aroma of just bathed rainy season soil but it was just some caffeinic steam trapped inside coffee milk’s little particles that made it neither liquid nor solid. He could lick it but without having his oral ways with it. It could touch him but he couldn't do the same for his tongue was prompted to dig deep in but failed to get a positive resistance, much like, when we see a beloved person, our hands are prompted to hold that person, but what if the person’s existence was a mirage; a long lost memory that had suddenly projected out at the time of remembrance? Our hands would surpass the mirage image and reach the other side! Here too, the best looking part of the coffee was nothing but a barely tangible fiasco…

Atlast his ordeal with the whipped cream was over. He brandished his tongue in the proud air of victory to finally embrace the prize of the battle, the rich mama machiato!

Its rude to kiss with your eyes open, for it not only seems forceful but also unrealistic. Only with eyes close, one could feel the ecstasy, one could really enjoy to the core of their hearts. Balmer, while drinking coffee, involuntarily closed his eyes so as to gulp in as much taste as possible. Its true, we eat food to stay alive, to feed the hungry wolf inside, but in this life where we are gifted with sophisticated tongue, eyes and nose, we are bound to become a gourmet. Anyone can be a gourmet, even a glutton can leave the extreme materialism and instead of shovelling the food in at the r.p.m of money counting machine's motor, he can sit back and savour the delicacy with his eyes vying for the rich colors and the nose amplifying the aroma of desire.

He suddenly looked at the girl as if half empty with her absence, who herself was looking at him with terrific amusement.

They both were sitting in that corner, she to save herself from glances while she ate and lolled and he to enjoy his meal time uninterrupted. They both were enjoying the breach of their very privacy.

He raised the toast to the girl and gave her a very true benign smile.

The girl intercepted the warm greetings and reverted with an acknowledging confident yet calm smile. This smile was not a restricted one to give unwanted signs to a person to buzz off nor it was an eager sheepish one to falsely portray her gratified relief at his acknowledgment of her appearance and personality. When she smiled, her twinkling differential eyes blinked once to capture the moment and to acknowledge the hailing gentleman, her lips made a second degree curve in which they smiled without over stretching the baggage of the jaws and without letting the fangs and in this case, the oversize tongue out. She raised the nearly empty jar in unison with the man's distant yet intimate allusive hand held out for friendship.