A HIDDEN CAFE'

     The wonder of the Secret Garden Cafe' is that it is undiscovered by the creeping gentry invading my territory.  It sits up against massive boulders protecting the shore from the rages of a tyrant lake that is at once the charm and the challenge of the setting.

     Nothing about this cafe' is welcoming.  Its tables are scarred with bursting bubbles of paint exposing festering rust.  Scattered about the cracked cement patio are the watersoaked, ketchup- and mustard-smeared paper napkins from previous patrons, a paper plate or two and the leaves and pods from overhanging trees.  Pigeons visit for the crumbs left, and leave their own contributions.  The sole attraction is the food.  Hidden away in the waterfront bistro is a Greek cook fresh out of his mother's kitchen where dishes to please yayas, thios, sons and daughters, family, friends and neighbors had been served up for years.

     Except for him, busy in his enclosed kitchen, I sit alone and relish the solitude.  Until it is broken by a couple well aware of the privacy this cafe' offers.  They sit across the patio.  He, unshaven, his hair in sodden masses brushing the collar of his limp shirt.  She, tones of blond hair pulled neatly to the nape of her neck and caught in a thick heavy braid laying between her exposed shoulder blades.  Her bronzed body ends at her glossy, golden rose toes, punctuating the long tanned line of stately neck, trim torso and smooth, exfoliated leg.  Soft, rolled leather sandals hang from those toes.  How many cultural boundaries have they crossed to be with each other today.  He murmurs to her and she giggles and purrs.  It's poetry.  It's Keats.  I remember when shaggy men murmured poetry to me -- Chesterton and Joyce -- to my giggles and purrs.  It was the key to my soul.  It is most likely his to hers.

     The wind shifts, swelling the waves to impressive dimensions where they smash against the boulders and send fractured droplets through the air into my face.  The dank summer air surrounding my table now gives into the smell of the lake and its murky seaweed and dead or dying alewives.

     The cook beckons me.  My meal is ready.  No table service here.  I rise to walk to the pass-through, claim and pay for my food.  As I approach the kitchen window I enter a warzone where the heavy, onrushing smells of heating olive oil, sauteeing onions, lemon and lime, garlic and basil battle with the lake breeze to conquer a space.  Neither dilutes the other. Neither mingles.  They push at, layering over and butting against each other.  I breathe them in as a prelude to my feasting.

     The food fulfills the promises the aroma of the kitchen offers.  I have ordered a Tomato Carprese.  Lightly melted buffalo mozzarella cheese slices smother Roma tomatoes, resting on mixed greens in a French roll.  It is delicate fare, the cheese lightly melted, enough to form a thin burnished crust that pops as my fork pierces it and releases the fluid cheese to dribble over the bright red tomato slices.  Flashing past my nose as the breeze carries it beyond my table is the piquant smell of freshly crushed basil and balsamic vinaigrette.  The once-steaming coffee has cooled and I am able to bring it to my lips now where the concentrated smell jolts my nostrils. If the breezy atmosphere had lulled me, the coffee brings me back.

     The French roll demands my concentration.  Its crusty shell resists my attacks but when I finally pull it apart it releases its imprisoned yeasty smell.  I spread the softened butter over the webby dough and watch it sink into the depths only to spurt out in my mouth as my teeth close in.

     From a distance soft jazz circles around the building.  A saxophone purls a classic melody that will stay in my brain through the evening.  I will be humming it as I leave and probably as I turn into bed.

     The meal is consumed.  There is no need to linger.  No bearded face mouths poetic lines of love inspiring me to stay.  The coffee outlasts the meal and its strident aftertaste is all I bring with me as I follow the path from the patio to the street -- to its exhaust fumes, its pounding rubber on asphalt, its pulsating radio music, its occasional horn blasts and the inevitable urgent siren overriding it all, stopping it all, as it screams past me.