The Incredible Shrinking Coffee Shop of Paris

It really was a hidden gem—so hidden, in fact, that Hannah walked past the coffee shop three times before she realized it was there.

Birch was in one of the little picturesque side streets lost between the Rue de Rivoli and Opera, perfectly located for Hannah to visit before her 4:30 ticket time at the Museum of Decorative Arts. It was un coffee shop even in French, which meant that, unlike un café, it had more matcha and bubble tea than actual coffee, except the agonizingly slow Vietnam drip coffee that the barista would explain to you as you nodded knowingly, really clueless.

When Hannah finally spotted birch, whispered in pale script on a pale wood panel above a doorway, she pushed the door open. She walked up the narrow aisle between the stone walls lined with wooden benches, instinctively sucking in her breath, feeling like a bride or a criminal at a courthouse. All the eyes of the people packed along the benches were on her as she brushed against their coat sleeves and stepped over their backpacks. 

This gallery-style seating area had no chairs, not even the rattly bistro ones from a café, and no stools either, not even the ratty carpeted ones from a pub. But then the end of the aisle opened into a wide and bizarrely modern counter area that looked like a UFO, with six baristas in white caps bustling inside a glowing neon circle. 

One paused scooping boba balls to toss Hannah the menu, and Hannah, who’d been expecting a QR code, was surprised to find six laminated pages flapping from a metal ring so large she could have worn it as a bracelet. Coffee, iced coffee, tea, iced tea, milk tea, fruit tea, boba, infusions, add-ons, syrups…She turned the pages around the big ring helplessly until she realized she’d been through the menu twice, then called out an order at random, the top choice on the page she was on. A tattooed barista fiercely whisking matcha nodded, and a girl with big gold hexagonal glasses tapped her card and handed her a heavy buzzer almost the size of a frisbee, with red lights circling around it.

There was a narrow slice of bench on the right side of the shop, and Hannah squeezed herself into it. A young guy in an oversized hoodie made room for her, and she crossed her legs tightly under the skinny tin table in front of the bench. When she set the buzzer down, the table nearly tipped under its weight, so Hannah stared in amazement at the girl to her left who had managed to balance her phone, her laptop, and a large boba tea with tapioca balls like eyeballs on the same sized table, and who was typing calmly within the zen calm of her Lo-Fi Girl headphones. How did she do it?

Hannah was American. That had to be the problem. But she wasn’t that American! She had never craved howling prairies and tumbleweeds, never admired the Grand Canyon or yawning deserts of Utah. She had worn skinny jeans, slept in a single bed, never needed bumper alleys in a bowling alley. She was an East Coast girl, from a town whose only landmark was a historical property called “the Skinny House,” and she had been happy there, and even happier in the cramped coach seat of the sleek jet that had propelled her to an even tinier and tighter-packed continent. 

Now she felt overstuffed and suffocated. Struggling out of her coat, she elbowed both the hoodie boy and the laptop girl, who gave a calm smile and continued typing. Hannah rolled her coat into a ball on her lap, balanced her purse on top of her coat and the buzzer, still red, on top of her purse. Like the toppling tower of teacups from Alice in Wonderland. Two remarkably tall hikers with overstuffed backpacks strolled into the coffee shop and headed to the counter to browse the plasticky menu. A Great Dane leading a girl with a high ponytail came in next, and they joined the couple at the counter to peruse the matcha options. 

She wasn’t comfortable anywhere here! It was time for Hannah to admit it. She had struggled with skinny shop aisles and spiral staircases, elevators like rattling coffins, rented clown cars and studio apartments cramped with dollhouse furniture. How romantic it had once seemed to her when the couple in L’Auberge Espagnole kissed on the narrowest street in Paris with the man’s sneakers tipping off the curb edge. Now she had no desire to bump noses with anyone in that cobblestone alley.

She wanted to breathe. The longer she sat with the buzzer’s red lights circling her tightly crossed knees with her legs going numb, her elbows clamped to her sides, the more she craved it. Oh, how she wanted the prairie, great sweeping wheat fields she had never known, wide and wild enough for a tornado…

The buzzer roared to life, lights flashing green. It slid off her purse and clunked to the floor, and the purse and coat followed it. Her tower was toppled. The buzzer growled angrily against the metal pole of the table, drowning out the quiet conversations around her, and she dropped to the floor with her cheeks hot to grab it. When she looked up, she saw that the laptop girl had bent down to help her, and was holding out her purse.

“Are you okay?” The girl asked in English, tugging her headphones down to her neck.

“Oh—yeah—thanks.” Hannah grabbed the purse and coat and stuffed them on the bench, then promptly bashed her head on the metal table when she tried to stand up. 

Straightening the table, she hurried back to the counter to dispose of the violent buzzer and find out what in the world she had ordered. It was alien purple, topped with a cloud of foam, in a heavy ceramic mug like half a volleyball. She stared at it so long that the barista in the gold glasses frowned.

“Vous avez bien pris le ube, non?”

Ube. Yes. Definitely.

Hannah placed one palm under the flimsy rectangular tray and cupped her palm around the mug, which had no handle, balancing it carefully as she made her way back to her slot. Her hips bumped on both sides this time-- people must have pushed their tin tables out—and she found herself stepping over chunky sneakers as well as those big hiking packs, and the panting Great Dane stretched out at a metal water bowl. She was so relieved to reach her own table safely that she set the heavy mug down too hard and a purple wave sloshed over the side, flooding the tray. Much more gingerly, she picked up her coat and purse and backed herself into her slot on the bench. Then, after rolling the coat and restacking her lap pile again, she managed to take her first tentative sip.

“C’est bon, l’ube, non?” The hoodie boy turned to smile at her.

“Oui, tres bon,” she lied, and faked a smile.

She was OLD. That was an even more depressing realization than being American. Look at these kids! In their chunky white grandpa sneakers and baggy sweater vests, when she at their age had worn low-slung Brazilian jeans to look like Christina Aguliera. Everything they wore now was three sizes too big, including the hoodies and headphones—and when had Parisians started wearing puffy coats? Hannah had been so sure the wool pea coat rolled in her lap would be the right thing for Europe, but now she was surrounded by overstuffed black down jackets, and, what’s more, the people were comfortable in them.

Hannah was less comfortable than ever. The next time she lifted the heavy mug, she was forced to keep her elbows pinned tightly to her sides. Her friendly neighbors on the bench must have scooted closer to make room for all the newcomers streaming through the narrow doorway. Come in! The more, the merrier!

She still couldn’t say if she liked the ube or not, or how it was supposed to taste, or if she should have gotten rice milk instead—if she should say it “wasn’t too sweet,” which seemed to be a compliment these days. Weren’t lattes supposed to be sweet? And weren’t cafes supposed to be comfortable? How else had those Viennese philosophers lounged and smoked and plotted their revolutions? Hannah was not in a position to plan or lounge, not with the stones of the wall digging into her spine and the bench under her so narrow now that she tipped forward, her tailbone just balanced on the sharp edge. 

But others were chatting. The laptop girl was still typing, maybe writing a Gen Z masterpiece about love in an elevator, and someone across the aisle was so relaxed they’d stretched their legs all the way across the aisle, which was otherwise completely occupied by the Great Dane, bookended by the two hiking packs. Hannah couldn’t do it. She was old, she was American—she could admit both now—and she could never belong here. She belonged in a wide leather booth at a midwestern Denny’s. She belonged back in her grandfather’s ancient Plymouth, rattling to the beach with the windows open and rolling in the backseat without a seatbelt. She wanted—needed—to sprawl, and saw so clearly now that she always had: the strain of tiptoes to stretch herself taller, all the snow angels and cartwheels, a whole year in third grade learning the splits, spreading, pulling, reaching—

Her elbow, reaching without her meaning to, knocked the metal table. The flimsy tray slid, the heavy mug tipped the table, and she grabbed with both hands to right it, but too late. The table clattered to the floor, the mug cracked in half, and an ocean of foaming ube flooded the coffee shop. The Great Dane yelped and leaped to her long legs as Hannah flung herself down, her palms in the spreading purple lake. Her coat and purse had tumbled into it, too, but she couldn’t worry about those, not when she had to stop the flood, not when she was scooping too-hot latte into her cupped palms with nowhere to put it. 

Ruined! Her panicked thoughts raced. The coffee shop floor would be ruined, and its reputation, too. This place used to be a hidden gem—she could already see the online reviews—and now it’s just American tourists. MIDDLE-AGED American tourists.

Her tiny square napkin flashed white surrender, soaked, and sank. Her tray was sailing away. The purple foam was surging towards the backpacks, towards the chunky sneakers which were all bright spotless white, and she was helpless to stop it. 

Then she turned and saw help. The laptop girl was kneeling beside her, with Hannah’s wool coat draped over her legs. She had saved it from the spill and was pressing a larger napkin to the stain as tenderly as if it were a wound, soaking the purple away and reassuring her:

“I think it will wash out.”

Hannah turned the other way to see the boy in the hoodie carefully picking the cracked porcelain shards of the mug out of the purple foam. 

“Be careful,” he said in French. “Don’t cut yourself.”

And others were helping – everyone was helping, the young hipsters squatting in the spill, careless of their white sneakers, the hikers pulling rags and towels from their packs to sop up the latte.

“Now she’ll finally have to toss that smelly old tee-shirt,” the hiking guy joked with Hannah in French. “Thank you for that!”

The Great Dane, over the shock of the spill, was now licking happily at the edges of the foam and Hannah, blinking in bewilderment, offered up her cupped hands to be licked, too. 

Even the floating UFO of the counter hovered closer now, glowing right above her, and the benevolent aliens had brought high-tech help. The hexagon glasses girl started hoovering up the spill, while the Great Dane barked in indignation and tried to lick it up first. All the young people were laughing. The laptop girl had her warm shoulder pressed to Hannah’s, so close Hannah could hear the music in her tugged-down headphones, and it was an old song she knew.

“Would you like another drink?” Gold Glasses asked Hannah when she had finished vacuuming. “Maybe a regular latte?”

Hannah nodded. A foaming surge rose inside her—happiness, belonging—and her heart was a heavy, brimming cup. The floor was shining, cleaner than before, and all of them were still squatting around the shining spot like it was a campfire. 

And the stone walls curved to hug them all closer.