The Last Regular

The Last Regular

Herr Novak liked his Melange with the foam exactly the height of his index finger, and he liked it at 18:30 on a Friday, not a minute before the bells of St. Ulrich finished their damp tolling into the street. For thirty-two years I poured it for him. I knew the way his coat hung — always slightly damp at the shoulders, as if he carried a private drizzle with him — and the precise, obsessive way he adjusted his glasses before unfolding the Presse.

He was not a man of great conversation. He was a man of great consistency, which in this city is the only form of immortality we truly respect.

When he stopped coming last November, I kept setting his table anyway.

The corner behind the flaking imitation marble pillar remains laid: linen napkin, silver spoon at the correct angle, small glass of water balanced on top. The other regulars have stopped asking. The tourists have not.

Sometimes they try to sit. I tell them the gentleman is delayed by the trams. The delay, I say, can be considerable.

Yesterday the foam on the Melange was particularly fine. The light from the chandelier turned the bubbles into a shimmering, topographical map of a place I will never visit. I stood there a long time, tray in hand, waiting for the familiar squeak of his rubber-soled shoes.

I leaned down slightly and whispered, “The traffic is terrible tonight, isn’t it, Herr Novak?”

The coffee went cold. A young couple with glowing phones eventually sat down. They laughed loudly, moved the spoon, crumpled the napkin. Within twenty minutes they were gone.

I cleared the table in silence. I wiped the crumbs. I straightened the chair until it stood exactly as he had always left it, tucked into the shadow of the pillar where nobody really looks.

For a second the dust in the light seemed to settle into the shape of a shoulder, a bowed head. Then the door opened. Cold winter air rushed in, and the silhouette dissolved.

I drank the cold Melange myself later in the kitchen. It was bitter the way he liked it.

Outside, the streetlamps flickered to life in the damp dark of the city.