Friends, many of you who know me or who have interacted with me know that there are many times when my body clock resets itself to transform me into a night person. And how I just love coffee to awake me and boost my focus before I start on a task that demands my focus and attention.
And you also know that while I have just a few things I like, I pay a lot of attention to detail- and whether coffee OR tea OR food OR books OR interactions with people– I like it when someone has spent the time and energy to lovingly craft something with a lot of effort and spirit.
I hate it when someone serves me things that are made carelessly and without attention and care to make it good. And this applies to a lot of things- whether books OR whether coffee OR whether tea OR food OR drink OR even mobile apps and games.
SO, when I read a book that starts with one of the most awesome descriptions of urban life and cafe-culture I’ve ever seen- I could not resist sharing it. Infact, since “the proof of the pudding is in the eating”- I am copy pasting the first 2 pages of this book “Hard Way” – by Lee Child, for all of you to savour and enjoy.
Treat this as my positive review of this book- and the aspects of urban life it touches upon- and feel free to comment below and to share this post with whoever you think will like it.
—
JACK REACHER ORDERED espresso, double, no peel, no cube, foam cup, no china, and before it arrived at his table he saw a man’s life change forever. Not that the waiter was slow. Just that the move was slick. So slick, Reacher had no idea what he was watching. It was just an urban scene, repeated everywhere in the world a billion times a day: A guy unlocked a car and got in and drove away. That was all.
But that was enough.
The espresso had been close to perfect, so Reacher went back to the same cafe exactly twenty-four hours later. Two nights in the same place was unusual for Reacher, but he figured great coffee was worth a change in his routine. The cafe was on the west side of Sixth Avenue in New York City, in the middle of the block between Bleecker and Houston. It occupied the ground floor of an undistinguished four-story building. The upper stories looked like anonymous rental apartments. The cafe itself looked like a transplant from a back street in Rome. Inside it had low light and scarred wooden walls and a dented chrome machine as hot and long as a locomotive, and a counter. Outside there was a single line of metal tables on the sidewalk behind a low canvas screen. Reacher took the same end table he had used the night before and chose the same seat. He stretched out and got comfortable and tipped his chair up on two legs. That put his back against the cafe’s outside wall and left him looking east, across the sidewalk and the width of the avenue. He liked to sit outside in the summer, in New York City. Especially at night. He liked the electric darkness and the hot dirty air and the blasts of noise and traffic and the manic barking sirens and the crush of people. It helped a lonely man feel connected and isolated both at the same time.
He was served by the same waiter as the night before and ordered the same drink, double espresso in a foam cup, no sugar, no spoon. He paid for it as soon as it arrived and left his change on the table. That way he could leave exactly when he wanted to without insulting the waiter or bilking the owner or stealing the china. Reacher always arranged the smallest details in his life so he could move on at a split second’s notice. It was an obsessive habit. He owned nothing and carried nothing. Physically he was a big man, but he cast a small shadow and left very little in his wake.
—