Sketch № 10: A Cold Café’s Call to Action
When there are too few customers inside the Café Confictura, the air changes. What were cool breezes of relief rolling off the Housatonic River through the windows turned into cold, whistling winds inside the café after the first few days of low turnout. The weather’s been fairly temperate in little Applewood, Connecticut, for the past few weeks, almost like a salve from Mother Nature after the mysterious 7.2 earthquake that gashed the town over two months ago. But Mrs. Creaverton hasn’t been able to open the windows for almost two weeks now, because that just makes it colder in here. After Nessie set up Mrs. C to make it seem like she and her friends — myself included — vandalized Our Lord of the Ascension church, traffic in the café, Mrs. Creaverton’s pride and joy, slowed to a crawl, the warmth of its usual bustle seeping away so that no matter how mild it is outside, once you walk in, the goose bumps rise.
After two weeks of the chill, we’re trying to get the heat going again.
This morning, Roscoe, Mrs. C, Violet, and I camped out at a table in the Fireplace Room, where Mrs. C actually did light a fire in the huge gray hickory hearth. It was sixty degrees outside, but inside we could practically see our breath. The table we were at was tucked away in one of the room’s alcoves. Violet pulled sweater sleeves over her hands and crunched her knees up to her chest, and Roscoe held his cup of peppermint tea close.
“If business doesn’t pick back up again,” said Mrs. C, “I’m going to have to start cutting my baristas’ hours.”
Violet, her head cashier and barista, looked up sharply.
“Don’t worry,” Mrs. C rushed to tell her. “Your hours are safe as long as we stay in business.”
“Yes,” said Violet in her French accent. “But who will get me my lattes and scone if you are laying off all the help?”
Roscoe said,
“Maybe we should gather a few people, loyal customers, and have a brainstorming session to figure out how best to counteract the damage of Nessie’s rumors.
I’m sure the literary salon would offer their help . . . such as it is, bless their hearts.” The writing salon that Roscoe leads have all been afflicted with a brain fog that seems to have settled over them in the aftermath of the Quake.
“Do I have any loyal customers left?” said Mrs. C. “Where have they been?”
To be fair, it’s not like the café has turned into a ghost town overnight. Regulars do still come in, and Roscoe’s writing salon has met here as usual for the past couple weeks. But I heard what Mrs. C meant. Confictura is hurting.
When I first came to this town to cover the Quake, and then I chose to stay to blog about the strange goings-on, it was Mrs. Phillipa Creaverton who gave me my entrée to the world of Applewood. With her white hair, plump figure, and smile, she was like a grandmother. She still is, though the plump figure has started to slim down, a byproduct of the plant-based diet Doc Graham put her on to treat her case of Syndrome 43 — another Quake-related illness.
I said, “There’s a reason Café Confictura is the only building in town that wasn’t affected by the rot that started eating away at all the other homes and businesses. It’s because it’s special. Don’t you think your customers know that? The whole town knows it. They’ve sought refuge here over the past two months because it’s a safe haven from all the strange occurrences everywhere else. They’ll come back again.”
Roscoe jumped in and said, “But Confictura is not untouchable. Phillipa is the café, and she contracted this Syndrome 43 to which a number of others in town have also fallen victim.”
“The writing salon lives here because they have no other life,” said Violet, and she ignored Roscoe’s frown. “And they are the only ones with the brain fog.”
“And what’s with this ridiculous cold?” said Mrs. C with a shiver. She got up and crossed over to the roaring fire, rubbing her arms. “I turn the heat up and it doesn’t do any good. I’ve never had that happen here before, so is this another mystery of the Quake?”
“My point,” I said, getting us back on track, “is that because you and the café have been so good to this town, more people than you think may be willing to help out business if they know there’s a problem. Maybe we just need to ask them.”
A glow came over Mrs. C’s face then, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t because of the flickering fire. She shook her finger thoughtfully at me. “You know, Mr. Creaverton said something very much like that when we first opened almost forty years ago.”
This was the first time I’d ever heard her mention Mr. Creaverton. I’ve never met him. Since I’ve been here, his name has popped up fewer times than any of the numbers I ever pick for the lotto.
Mrs. C came back over to our table. “Confictura flailed for our first few months. All of Beech Street back then was under construction, a big renovation to turn this whole section of overgrown, unused land into the business district it is now. Mr. Creaverton bought the first lot, right here, because I always wanted to run a café and live above it. He made it happen for me.”
Her eyes got a little misty. “When he was dying” — aha, the mystery of what happened to Mr. C is solved, I thought — “I promised him I would keep Confictura full of life just like he had when we opened. You see, he turned everything around after those first few months. Just by asking for a little help.”
Roscoe said, “You’ve always been stubborn about asking for help.” He said it quickly, the way someone speaks up when they want credit for landing on the same idea but are beaten to the punch when actually communicating it. I noticed he sat up a little straighter when Mr. Creaverton entered the conversation.
“Mr. Creaverton had a way with people,” Mrs. C continued, gazing dreamily into space. “So easygoing.”
Now Roscoe slumped a little.
“He went in person to our neighbors, other businesses across town, he listened to their ideas about what they wanted in a neighborhood café, and he charmed them into giving us a chance,” she said.
“How long has it been since Mr. Creaverton passed?” I said.
Roscoe replied, “Going on ten years.”
Mrs. C said, “I think you’re right, Roscoe. I think calling on our neighbors for a few ideas could work again. They jumpstarted the café in the beginning. Maybe they can help jumpstart us again. I’ll confer with Mr. Creaverton about this.”
For a moment, I wasn’t sure I heard that last part right.
Violet and Roscoe gave no indication that there was anything strange about Mrs. C conferring with the deceased Mr. C.
I put a pin in this for the time being.
(And there’s something else I began noticing about one particular person’s behavior. At least, I think I noticed it, unless it’s my rather fertile imagination laying an egg. More observation is needed, for if I speak too soon, feelings could be hurt, relationships strained. Stay tuned.)
Mrs. C reached across the table and cupped her hand over Roscoe’s. “Thank you for the brainstorming idea.”
He smiled and swallowed, his hand unmoving under hers, and said, “I’ll call the writing salon. And a few other people I know.”
Violet sighed. “I can call my Fastionista clients,” she said, speaking of her side business as a style consultant to Applewoodians, helping them put together fashionable outfits fast. She added, “But please do not make me talk to random other people. They are so . . . random.”
I said, “I’m writing a blog post on this. Hopefully people will read it and help out.”
As a man of letters, Roscoe thinks bloggers like me are almost unbearable. The only reason he tolerates me is because I’ve helped out around here a few times since I came to Applewood. But he was still quick to tell me, “I presume you know the word ‘hopefully’ has quite the troubled past, and your use of it just then is rather dubious.”
“Well, I always did like to run with the bad kids,” I said with a grin that went unanswered.
Mrs. C looked at each of us in turn. “Thank you all,” she said. “Let’s just hope this works.”
So, Applewoodians, if you’re reading this and you love your Confictura, your neighborhood café that has been there for you for forty years, through good times and bad, through Little League wins and broken heart losses, through your celebrations and your pick-me-ups, through this most recent catastrophe of the Quake and its fallout, if you love Applewood’s own beacon on a hill, please come to the Café Confictura this Wednesday, June 12, at 5:30 p.m. and bring your thinking caps.
We’ve got some work to do.
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This and any related blog posts are works of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Any reference to living or dead public figures, entities, places, events, and the like, are of a fictional, opinioned, and/or parodic nature. No healthcare professionals have been consulted in writing this. Any advice given or inferred is anecdotal and used at your own risk. Consult your doctor in all healthcare matters.
Clarissa J. Markiewicz is the author of Christmas In Whimsy — a heartwarming, fun novel readers compare to Hallmark Christmas movies, and recipient of Readers’ Favorite 5-star Seal — and the genre-bending new-age mystery The Paramour Pawn.
