Eating as I Go: Scenes from America and Abroad

HAPPY MARKET

242 Leonia,฀New฀Jersey,฀2004 Pete, my plumber, stares glumly at his coffee. He is in what I think of as his office at the corner table of Happy Market, angled toward the front door. Next to him, two Latino day workers remove freshly made fried egg sandwiches from tinfoil and settle into their breakfast. I hesitate before approaching Pete. His body language signals that he’s still half in the sack. However, the half that’s up and running sends what passes for a welcoming glance in my direction. He waits, his long torso slumped over the small round coffee bar, for my opening sally. I stand tall but feel like slumping. With the election only a month away, the polls show Bush’s lead widening over Kerry. The details, including ugly Republican pronouncements that electing a war hero turned war critic is an invitation to terrorist attacks, sit like spoiled eggs in my stomach. I won’t lay my anguish on Pete, who probably doesn’t lose sleep over electoral politics. Fifty now, Pete was too young to be sent to Vietnam. When his generation argued over the war, he stayed silent and stoned. At least that’s what I’ve been led to believe. “Open for business?” I ask. “Yeah—got a problem?” he responds. Sure, I’ve got a problem, but it’s not in Pete’s line of work. I’m so restless some mornings I could scream. EvenTrader Joe’s French roast, my usual home brew, tastes bitter in the predawn darkness. Like Pete, I crave distraction. Happy Market rewards me with a choice of six coffees for ninety-nine cents a cup and nonstop small dramas for free. I watch a landscaper check his watch and pull down his baseball cap before pouring himself a giant-sized hazelnut coffee . I watch a Korean man in a white shirt pick up a Korean-language newspaper and a yogurt before heading into the city. I watch a lean, redheaded runner still breathing hard as she examines the packaged sushi. And I watch Jinny sing out “Good morning” as each customer arrives while ringing up sales at the front register . My mind starts to work, and I berate myself for not bringing my notebook. Pete tells me he’s leaving Leonia. I wonder whether his move is connected to the return to town of his ex-wife. Fifteen years ago, she moved out, leaving him and two small boys. I’m sure she had her reasons. Recently I ran into her at the nail salon. “It takes two,” she said, referring to their failed marriage. HAPPY฀MARKET฀ HAPPY MARKET 243 Since selling his three-story house, Pete has been camping with his parents. Happy Market is his salvation. He says his parents are making him nuts. “Each morning my father puts out three coffee cups and waits for me to tell him where I’m going and when I’ll be home for dinner. The only way to survive,” Pete says, “is to get out before he’s down in the kitchen with the coffee, waiting.” Even before returning to his boyhood bedroom, Pete had the Happy Market habit. For years, customers have been hunting him down before 8:00 a.m. here at the convenience store in the middle of town. No day goes by, he says, without a clogged second-floor toilet. Volunteer firefighters with a furnace in trouble find Pete easily during his office hours. So do his pals in the ambulance corps. I know. I’ve lined up more than once to get my kitchen sink on his schedule. I know because I am developing the Happy Market habit. A couple of times a month, sometime between 6:00 and 7:00 a.m., the NewYorkTimes fails me. It’s not about whether the front page reveals or hides the latest count of the world’s damaged and dead or whether there’s a breakthrough in funding AIDS victims in Africa. The news, hopeful or awful, can’t provide what I need. After Eli died I joined the “Early Birds” at my tennis club. Monday through Friday at 5:45 a.m., I’d be among the first of our middle-aged gang to arrive. “Use the coffeepot on the left,” Mary would instruct me from her command post behind the front desk. “Let me know if it’s strong enough.” “It’s...