The Rock of the Day
There is a couple from Madison that comes here every year. They spend the week after thanksgiving sitting quietly side by side in the Pfister café, health the wife with an unidentified electronic contraption, the husband with a book of games to solve. It is a docile, wintry afternoon, one in which everyone notices everyone else, but mostly keep to themselves. “He has the face for a story,” one woman murmurs to me. She has ordered mocha, medicine and has noticed the couple as she waits for her drink to be prepared. I agree, he does. But they also appear to be in a state of introverted meditation bliss like everyone else this afternoon. Like the rock of the day.
Meet the rock:
Rock of the day
Brittany, the barista has started to bring in a different rock to work with her every day. As Brittany puts it, “I have so many rocks, I might as well put ‘em out for show and tell.” I ask how many rocks she thinks she owns and she estimates “over a couple hundred.” As with most collections, Brittany owned one or two rocks that she liked and then two years ago everyone assumed that she was really into rocks and started giving her a lumpen geode every holiday and birthday.
Barista Brittany
Today’s rock is of an unknown variety. Yesterday, the rock was a bismuth, I’m told that is the kind of rock that is usually grown in a lab so that it develops “crazy crystals.” The day before that Brittany brought in a jasper. When she first held her jasper she lost her grip and it cracked in half on the floor. It turned out to be fortuitous, since the inside of the jasper is “super crystally.” She has also brought in a green tourmaline that is cross-hatched with quartz. Thursday’s rock is scheduled to be a six pound agate. Soon to come will be red citrine, green citrine and “a rock that looks like a peacock.”
Most people do not notice the rock of the day, but the taxi drivers who come in for their coffees almost always do. They tell Brittany, “We have these in my home country.”
The Madison couple that sat side by side in a booth have now moved to the leather easy chairs. The wife tells the husband, “That’s the only sweater you own that would match that chair.” The husband looks up from his crossword and replies, “I clad myself accordingly.”
His drink matches the chair as well.