I just read everything Wes Lee wrote about the café and the deadline this winter and most of it’s true. He’s got some stretchers in there, but most of it’s as true as anything else you’ll read in this world. For starters, take Jimmy “Donuts.” First of all, we just call him Jimmy and he’s been off donuts for weeks now.  Says he’s dropped 10 lbs., but no one in the café can tell the difference. And no one really cares because Jimmy found true love for the first time in his life, even though Lydia (her real name) is a White Sox fan. You get the picture.  Like Wes told me yesterday, that’s why …

“Skilling says it’s going to be cold and rainy on Saturday. Not the best weather for the Great Evanston Coffee and Barista Challenge, you know—“ the Whittler said to no one in particular, waving the Chicago Tribune in one hand as he pushed open the café door early Friday morning. The Whittler was probably the only café regular who still read the Trib. Sergei and Jimmy D read the Sun Times, but everyone else scanned the alphabet soup (CNN, MSNBC, BBC, NPR) on their laptops, Kindles or iPads. The Professor read the New York Times, but not the Whittler. If you asked him, he’d tell you he never …

“What the fridge are all of you doing here?” the professor bellowed, looking up from his bed on Saturday morning to survey the faces of the café regulars and his students gathered there in his room in Northwestern’s University Health Services. “For that matter, what the helicopter am I doing here?” he added. Everyone clapped as the nurse rolled in the professor’s breakfast. “Just what the doctor ordered,” she cooed, winking to the folks nearby, who were in on the joke, “It’s the new ‘Professor Emeritus Special’: one hard-boiled egg, crusty toast, and a little honey on the side!” Lissa tried …

Brian, or “Dr. Dollar” as Hank called him, Professor of Finance at Kellogg with a head for numbers and a fondness for Chai Lattes, folded the leather screen cover back over his thin new black Apple iPad 2 as though he were a physician pulling a blanket back over a patient in an Intensive Care Unit.  “Right, well then, things are starting to look better, Hank. Not good, not yet. But better.” Hank nodded like an ICU patient hearing the first words of hope and wished that once, just once, the good “doctor” might allow himself to utter a few more positive words of encouragement. Surely even the …

It was one of the best weekends Hank had had in a very long while. As long as he could remember. Ok, so the Cubs lost on Friday, but after the game, he and Lissa took the El up to Davis Street, picked up a bottle of New Zealand Shiraz at Evanston’s First and three slices of pizza at Gigio’s and went back to her place, which, to Hank, the few times he’d been there, always seemed like home. There was something about the pillows everywhere—all sizes and shapes, tassled and no tassles—and the thick red blanket thrown over the sofa and her things hanging up to dry on a wooden clothes rack in the …

The door to the café closed behind him and Hank walked through the rain over to meet Lissa at the Davis Street El station. “Crummy weather. You still want to go?” Hank asked as he hugged her. “It’s ok. I mean, what do you expect for April?" Lissa said.  "Besides, it weeds out the wannabees from the real fans."  She reached into her pocket and pulled out the tickets. “And anyways, there’s no way I’m giving up these box seats.” They rode the Purple Line down to Wrigley barely talking. All Hank could think of was the big movie star who’d given Lissa the tickets. And all Lissa could think about …

Jimmy D called the café mid-morning for his drive-through quickie and when he rolled up in the side alley, Hank was already waiting there with a jelly donut and the cuppa Joe on the Go, one sugar, splash of milk, lidded and the no-skid coffee condom keeping it all warm. “Some weather, you know?” Jimmy said as the window slid open. “How could I miss it, Jimmy? I’m out here standing in it. The date says spring, but I’m not feeling it.” “Lissa get those tickets?” “Like Sergei says, ‘You wouldn’t believe.’ Box seats behind the Cubs dugout.” “How the fridge’d she get ‘em?” This was the part Hank …

Helen liked to leave a short break between her readings in the café. Of course, this respected each client’s need for a certain amount of discretion, as much as one could find in the back of a busy café. But more importantly for Helen, it gave her a bit of time to close her eyes, release the departing client’s energies, and make room for the next guest, as she liked to think of them. Today, when Helen opened her eyes, she felt something unusual, a strange new sensation that caused her to hold up a hand to her forehead, palm facing outward, as though it were a small satellite dish, picking up …

 A still, small voice way in the back of Hank’s mind told him that something powerful had him in its grip, but he had this overwhelming urge to take Sherman out for a walk on Dog Beach on Saturday. He’d woken up early, still thinking about seeing Sherman all stretched out there on his old couch every night, a hairy mountain of pure cat-ness, opening up one eye every now and then to watch the flickering light of whatever crap Hank was watching on the tube just to take his mind off the countdown and everything else that was happening or not happening in his soon-to-be-middle-aged-life. The cat …

By day’s end last Monday, everyone was on board in the café and all over Evanston.  The fix was in. Not as in this or that café had a lock on the winner or that there was an odds on favorite, not yet, at least. But everyone had a fix on the target,and the target was Yada Yada Java and the man from somewhere out west. With the tan he had, there was no way he was from Portland or Seattle.  More like Malibu. Yada Yada’d done the impossible and brought together all the other cafés and baristas of Evanston—like so many circled up Conestoga wagons. By Thursday, they even had friends and followers, …

 Every now and then Jimmy stopped by the café for a “cuppa joe on the go.”  On these occasions, there wasn’t much time for chat.  But once in a while the campus cop would drop what Hank called “a little conversation bomb”—like the time he said, “Funniest damned thing happened last night around 2 a.m.  This head pops up out of a manhole and it’s this skinny old professor with a flashlight and about ten students from Willard Res College. We cuff him and he then he says…”, and Jimmy would look at his wrist watch (there were so many gizmos on it, it took him a minute to find the actual clock with…

Hank and the Rolex guy, Steve, emerged from the court room. Steve was smiling, Hank looked as numb as he felt. “Vitamin C,“ Steve said, patting Hank on the back. “Always helps.” Hank quizzed him with a look. “As in ‘Connections.’  Ahhh, you think I mean political? The machine?” Steve laughed, “Hank, relax.  The judge and I go back a long way. He and I really like what you’re doing for Evanston. Like that deal you made with the cops for free coffee and donuts…brilliant, Hank. And that ‘Overnighter’ you called it? Like I said in court—you kept those out of town folks safe and off the road. …

 It looked like one of those circus scenes where the clowns keep coming out of a tiny car.  On Saturday, just as Hank was starting to think about closing up, one after another, four men and one woman stepped out of an old VW van. They were dressed in jeans and country-style shirts sprinkled with sequins and one or two neckerchiefs and each of them was carrying a case. By the time the van pulled away, they were standing in front of the café, having a smoke and laughing. The woman, blond, had a fire engine red mini-skirt with enough poofy crinoline to warrant a second look. The skinny guy …

 Helen’s jazzy new poster announcing reduced fees worked like a charm.  The café regulars and a few newbies lined up for “Psychic Services, Aura Adjustments, and Special Readings of Tea Leaves and Coffee Grounds.”  Hank caught Lissa looking over to the new seer-in-residence and said, “You ask me, it’s a complete crock.” He moved his hands like a magician over an imaginary glass ball, “Oo, oo, you’re going to meet a dark and handsome man.” Lissa faced Hank and said, “What you don’t know--” “Oh, I know, I know.” “No you don’t. Helen has a real gift.   Anyway, buddy boy, you’re up next.  I made …

After closing up on Friday, Hank told Lissa about the new café countdown someone had written on Mrs. Worthley’s greeting card. Then his face froze in what Lissa called that “I must go down to the sea again” look. She tried her usual remedy of waving a hand in front of his face with a  “Hey, snap out of it, buddy.” But this time, nothing doing.  “This is serious, Lissa. Really.” “I know it is, Hank. Don’t think I don’t know. But you’ve got to focus on the essentials, the things you can control, the things you know, the things you’re good at, the things you love.” “Like what?” Lissa thought a …

Jimmy woke up slowly into the warmth and hum and sparkling chrome and clean linen smells of a private room in Evanston Hospital. He looked down the bed to his toes and wiggled them, then counted his fingers. Last thing he remembered was people shouting at him in the ambulance, trying to wake him up. Sensing a presence in the room with him and not trusting to any quick motion owing to the stiffness in his neck and the beeping heart monitors stuck all over his chest like leeches, he scanned his eyes to the left and saw a blonde woman on a chair next to his bed immersed in some story on her …

Jimmy spent his lunch hour with Sam, Oakey’s engineering student, on his laptop in the back room, checking out clues, dates, symbolic numbers and numerological meanings. He thanked the kid, who said, “Anytime, man.”  Then Jimmy tipped his cap to Lissa behind the counter and left the café, his head swimming with a fish bowl of ideas that went nowhere and a case that had gone cold. Nothing made any sense. And Clash Gordon had come up empty, too. Said he needed special Fed Ex security clearance to get into the system and check the sender’s name. “Anyway,” Clash added as a consolation, “how many …

 Like African meerkats standing sentry near their tunnels, the café patrons sitting at the windows watched the old red VW beetle lurch the wrong way down Sherman Avenue.  Just as the driver, who the patrons could now see was a woman with a wild head of hair tied up in a swirly bun, closed in on an empty parking space, they saw that a man in a Lexus had designs on the same spot. Oakey asked who the hell the wrong way lady was, and the Whittler said, “That’d be Helen, the psychic.” Helen backed up, then did a slow sweeping K-turn and nosed her Bug inches past the waiting Lexus.  Then she got …

“YOU ARE THE SUNSHINE IN MY LIFE…” Jeez, who writes this stuff? Hank moved to the section “Valentines for a Life Partner.”  Might be less sappy. “WE’RE SOUL MATES, I KNEW THAT WHEN WE MET…” Soul…Seoul.  Ok, this one works for Oakey.  Now one for Lissa. “LIFE IS A JOURNEY…” “Press the button,” said a young woman, whose muffled voice sounded conspiratorial, her face masked by a balaclava and a thick scarf.   Hank pushed the button.  Enya!  Sounds like a Swiss yodeler on quaaludes. He checked his watch.  6:35!  He needed to get to the café and open up, but he also needed a card.   “HONEYPIE…” …

“Card? What card?” Hank was lost in thought and bobbing up to the surface like a pearl diver.  “What are you talking about?” Oakey thought he was joking at first, but she could see the strain in his eyes.   True, there hadn’t been a deadline note for almost a week now.  But the citation from the city delivered in the afterglow of the overnighter was obviously weighing heavily on her boss.   Still… “Sorry Hank, but I was just wondering if you’d gotten a card for Lissy.” “Jeez, Oakey.  What kind of a card? I mean, I see her every day, well, almost every day. What are you talking about?”  All …