Coffee In Franklin

Ajey Pandey

Come on, Ajey. Do it.

My parents had gone to some boring adult party. They had taken the SUV. The other car was right there. My little brother was eating lunch, so he wouldn’t need me for a good hour.

And I had my license.

I could just take the car and drive to the Starbucks a few miles down the road.

Come on, Ajey. Do it!

I did it. I put on a heather grey T-shirt, grabbed my wallet and the car keys, and I walked to the white Hyundai Genesis waiting in the driveway. I connected my phone to the car stereo and picked my music.

Apple Music Radio. Chill. I would be using my data plan for the music, but the hell do I care? Today was a splurge day. Filtered synths, echoing guitars, and slow, processed drums filled the cabin, coming not from the speakers but from the air itself.

I rolled down the front windows, opened the sunroof, and drove off. I looked to my right. Ever since I started driving, there had always been a parent there, watching over me. But now, there was simply a beige leather seat. I breathed in and let the air in my chest carry my weight for a moment.

Then I tensed up. What if I crash? What if I get pulled over? What would my parents say? Are the registration papers in the car? Do I know what I would say to the police officer?

But then I pulled into the main road, stepped on the gas pedal, and let the acceleration tear my worries from my shoulders. I laughed and sang in key with the not-quite-a-radio streaming from my more-than-just-a-phone. I decided I wouldn’t take the direct path for my unnecessary coffee. I took a left into a curvy forest road.

Even though the mid-July afternoon air rushed in and out of the car, the music hung in a neat bubble inside. If I stuck my head out the window, I would have heard nothing.

Time stopped. The air turned to liquid. The car lifted off the ground, now hovering over roads I had long driven on — under supervision, of course. I wondered how many teens had felt this before. Maybe the music came from a two-transistor radio instead of an iPhone. Maybe the car was an old Ford Falcon instead of an ’09 Hyundai. Maybe the destination was a dinner date instead of a solitary trip for overpriced coffee. Yet I felt a connection across time — the joy of freedom, the beauty of solitude, the thrill of knowing that your parents don’t know what you’re doing.

Last year, the Starbucks was a plot with two possibly abandoned houses, trapped between a state highway, an office building, and a physical therapy practice. Now it stands as a monument to what must be a growing millennial presence in what I hear is one of the best places to raise a family. Yesterday, Franklin was a charmingly boring city that pretended to be a small town. Tomorrow, could this place be…cool?

When I walked in, I was taken aback by the mass of people milling about. Were there really ten, fifteen people in line? No, they had already ordered; they were just waiting for their expensive thingachinos from the mad scientist’s lab behind the counter. In fact, there was only one person ahead of me in the actual line.

A glass display case to my right shined a halo on pastries and breakfast sandwiches with the calories of a McDonald’s Dollar Menu cheeseburger and triple the price. They looked so real that they looked fake.

“I can serve the next guest here!” one of the cashiers called.

Guest. Not customer. Not “Who’s next?” But guest.

I walked up to the cashier, who appeared to be the manager — she was the only employee clearly older than twenty-five.

I asked her how she was doing. She was doing great. I didn’t know what to get, but one board on the menu told me there were specialty coffees — “reserve” blends. They came from Vietnam and Brazil and Timbuktu and Shangri-La. I asked the cashier-manager what those were. Apparently they were fantastic, although the Kona special was out.

I asked her which one she would recommend. She said she would get the (new) Brazil, definitely. Her ice blue eyes somehow projected warmth. I took her advice in a grande with a chocolate croissant.

“Do you want that croissant toasted?”

Sure.

The cashier-manager floated into the back room. I could see racks of plastic-wrapped, “home-baked” pastries.

I joined the crowd of customers waiting for their thingachinos, and I let the indie-dream-pop-wave cafe music swirl around me — until I saw an old acquaintance.

I almost called her by the wrong name as I walked toward her. I asked her how she was doing. Work life, she replied. She worked at a nearby fast-food joint — which I remembered she had told me in some prior eon — and her shift was starting in ten minutes. Her dyed hair matched her work uniform. Maybe it wasn’t intentional, but was cool. I pointed that out. I think she found that amusing.

She asked how I was doing. I told her I had just gotten my license (after a hellish ordeal with the RMV) and that I was driving to Starbucks in celebration. I told her I was driving like I was Ice Cube — windows down and blasting the most profane rap music, and it was so great!

I don’t know why I lied about the music I was listening to while driving to Starbucks.

We kept chatting. She talked about a weeklong camping trip that started tomorrow that she still hadn’t packed for. I talked about how I loved the music here. The ‘80s are back! She pointed out that the name labels on Starbucks cups are typed now — she figured it was to reduce the classic how-badly-did-Starbucks-butcher-my-name thing. But that stuff was funny…why did they stop? She said she sometimes purposely gets people’s names wrong at the fast-food joint, just because she can. I talked about how I so wanted a barista machine in my dorm room — “Hey, you want a latte? I got you covered!” I said in a fake announcer voice.

Then her order came up: a vanilla bean smoothie with a cotton candy flavor shot. “Oh, man, that’s so cool!” I said to her. She bid me goodbye — her shift was starting five minutes ago.

I may never see her again.

My exotic Brazilian coffee wasn’t ready yet. In fact, none of the baristas had started on it yet. I couldn’t blame them. The place was busy, after all — they even had to manage a drive-thru. Finally, I saw one of the baristas take out a cup and a cylinder of coffee beans with “Brazil” scribbled in silver Sharpie. The cylinder was almost empty, so she took a colorful bag from the display shelf next to her to refill it. The bag looked like something I could buy off that very shelf. I asked myself why I needed to go to Starbucks for this coffee if I could just make in myself. She ground up a cup’s worth of coffee beans and placed it in what looked like the DeLorean of coffee machines. On the back, it said “Clover.”

Oh, this is the Clover machine. I heard it cost thousands of dollars. When I first heard about it, I imagined it was a steampunk behemoth that would put Rube Goldberg to shame. But no — it was small. From afar, it didn’t look like much at all. Yet upon observation, it looked like it was imported from 2025.

I said — half to myself — “That thing looks so sci-fi.” The man next to me responded in agreement. The barista joined the conversation. I forgot what we talked about. I think we talked about the Clover machine. The barista was cute. I would have complimented her, but I couldn’t think of a way that wouldn’t sound creepy.

With a little whole milk, my exotic Brazilian coffee tasted splendid. My nose had predicted a gut punch of bitter, yet it tasted light and even a bit sweet, even though I added no sugar.

I took a seat with my coffee and toasted chocolate croissant. I let the coffee slow down time and the butter in the croissant lift me off the ground. “1979” by Smashing Pumpkins played in the background.

I closed my eyes for a moment.

A man on the other side of the table whistled along to the song. He had a graying beard, spiky blond hair, a black T-shirt of some band, and four bagels that he was buttering. I didn’t know why.

I moved to his side of the table, hoping to start a conversation about the music — we both clearly knew the song. But I never got around to it. I went back to my coffee and croissant.

I looked again, and saw he had somehow melted the butter in the bagels. For whatever reason, I found that fascinating, and I unconsciously asked,

“Wow, you melted the butter?”

He responded, “Yeah! I put the butter in between the bagels. It’s the only way,” as he continued spreading bricks of butter on the bagels. They were for his kids, who were two, five, six, and eight, and were waiting for him outside.

A woman with an aqua shirt and white leather bag jumped into the conversation: “Oh, I’ve seen you around here before!” Turns out the man with the bagels was a regular. “Your kids are beautiful.”

I wondered if Starbucks really was the best place for bagels. Maybe I should try next time.

The woman with the aqua shirt said the man reminded her of Jim Gaffigan who had a comedy show about having five kids. Apparently the wife and kids in the show were not Gaffigan’s real kids, but it was funny anyway. Both the man with the bagels and the woman with the aqua shirt loved that show.

I thought Gaffigan was some dude who was big in the ‘80s. I said, “I’m too young to know Jim Gaffigan.” I was too young to know the original Playstation, for that matter. But no, Gaffigan was still around.

I guess I don’t watch enough TV.

The man with the bagels got up to leave. I said goodbye to him. The woman with the aqua shirt said, “I might accidentally call you Jim at some point,” and said goodbye too.

I finished my coffee and croissant, got back in the car I drove in (it isn’t really my car), and drove home, listening to a Beats 1 faux-radio show hosted by Jaden Smith. I took a different back road home.

I touched 50 on one slight corner.

A few hours later, my parents came back from the boring party they had gone to. They asked how my day was. I said it was good.

It’s been perhaps three months. As I post this, they still don’t know.

Shoutout to Indigo Dawn (https://medium.com/@indigo.dawn.dacosta) for his suggestions on this piece.