Why We Broke Up by Handler Daniel

Why We Broke Up by Handler Daniel

Author:Handler, Daniel [Handler, Daniel]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: JUV000000
ISBN: 9780316194587
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Published: 2011-12-27T06:00:00+00:00


And my umbrella, lost that day, where is it? I know I had it that morning. Give it back, Ed if you have it, I’m lost without it on rainy days, although it’s December now, so it’s they say snow, and an umbrella in a snowstorm is ridiculous, a seat belt if you’re not in a car, a helmet if you’re not on a bike, like a fish needs a bicycle or however they say it, like coffee needs to be black, like a virgin needs a boyfriend. So many things I’ll never get back.

By now I’m sure you are wondering, how long does it take to get to you? Is Al driving his father’s shop’s truck to Bolivia and then turning around and coming back, all these pages for a simple trip, even in traffic? And the answer, Ed, is Leopardi’s. I never took you to Leopardi’s, which is my first-favorite coffee place, the best one, a crumbling Italian palace with bright red walls unpeeling their paint and photographs hung crooked of dark-skinned men with their hair in great slick stylish curves and the kindhearted smirks they give to their mistresses and an espresso machine like a shiny mad-scientist castle, steaming and gleaming and spouts everywhere curving down and out in a writhing metallic nest underneath a stern brass eagle perched on top like it’s looking for prey. It takes that whole machine, dials and releases and a stack of square white towels the staff uses expertly, to make tiny, tiny cups of coffee as deep and dark as the first three Malero films that make the world angled and blinky. Goddamn I love that coffee. If I put in extra cream, three sugars, the eagle would fly down and talon my throat open before I had a sip, but you know what, Ed? That’s not the real magic of the place, the Leopardi’s enchantment from the first time Al showed it to me when his cousin worked there when we were in eighth grade. It’s the utter silence of the tall room, the thinky meditation uninterrupted by anything but great hissing clouds of steam and the jangling change on the counter. They leave you alone, they let you mutter or laugh or read or argue or whatnot in any corner where you’re sitting. They don’t clear your table, they don’t clear their throats, they don’t say a word to you except prego, you’re welcome, if you say thank you, grazie. They don’t notice or they pretend not to notice, even if you finish the last drips of your coffee and then slam down your cup at something your ex-boyfriend did, just the thought of it. You can crack the saucer in half, but they don’t say anything. They figure, at Leopardi’s, you have trouble enough. They should teach my mother, everybody’s mother, how to leave people alone. It was the perfect place Al could take me, when we were getting close to your house with this letter nowhere



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