The Hip Drip
When you live close to people, you learn things about them. First you learn their faces; then their names, occupations, likes and dislikes, and everything else you think of when you consider the inhabitants of your microcosm. I knew Ella and Connor in that way and I wondered what made them different from people like Jade and Danny.
People don’t change all at once, either. It can take a cataclysm to open our eyes to what we’ve known all along from subtle clues that we did our best to ignore. But appearances, names, occupations, likes and dislikes, are the tip of the iceberg—a security blanket for people without close friends. Jade and Danny taught me that.
The Hip Drip hadn’t been repainted in years. From out on the covered wooden patio one could look across the busy street at the Starbucks; to the left lay second-hand shops; to the right lay expensive boutiques. I lived on the left, worked on the right, and sat in the middle when I wasn’t in class.
As summer came to a close, I suspected Ella of copying my drink orders to gain my approval, so I switched to Caramel Landslides with chocolate sprinkles on top. I walked out onto the patio after ordering my first one and tried to hide the whipped-cream sliding down from my mug like a sugar volcano.
“What the fuck, Adam? Is that from over there?” asked Ella, nodding towards Starbucks.
“No,” I said.
“Are those chocolate sprinkles on top?” She dipped her finger into my volcano for a little taste.
“Sprinkles are ‘the new,’” I replied, “have fun with your bitter-as-tits plain coffee,” and walked to my chair.
I had brushed away a few yellowed leaves from my bench, when I heard a voice slippery with permanent sarcasm. It was Jade, a few feet away. Her light skin softened her sharp features and contrasted her straight cobalt hair.
“Is that a Landslide?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Is it any good?”
I made a noncommittal moue.
“Can I try? I’ve never had the balls.”
I walked over and presented my mug.
She took a sip, and marbled brown foam mustached her lip. “Holy smokes.”
“Yeah,” I said.
Danny walked up the patio steps and sat with Jade, so I retreated back to my bench.
“Have fun with your sweet-as-tits fake coffee,” she called after me.
I had just gotten my hours cut again at Anthony’s when Ella sat next to me and tousled my hair. Connor introduced her to me at the start of summer, and she transformed from Ella with dirty blond hair and hemp jacket to Ella the part-time drug dealer who loved electronica and hated raw vegetables.
“You know, you could get food stamps.”
“Seems like a pain,” I muttered.
“I could feed you.”
I could starve.
I said, “I’ll manage.”
“You could get a job here,” she tried.
“I don’t shit where I eat,” I said.
“Keep whining, then.”
I took the invitation to complain about my uncertain future, and about the weather, which had gotten so bad, I said, that the wind blew away literally all of my motivation.
“You mean figuratively,” she replied. “And you’re, like, the smartest guy I know—I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
I had my first real conversation with Jade a couple weeks after my initial Caramel Landslide, as wet snow fell and melted on the pavement. Kelli, the half-Japanese barista with dreadlocks, confirmed at the counter inside of The Hip Drip that the medium Landslide was my new usual.
I turned to watch a chess game between a middle-schooler with a dinosaur shirt and an old guy with a gray felt bowler. Jade walked in from the patio, trailing sloppy snowflakes behind her. She looked at me and asked “Make it a large? I only have fifty cents.”
Kelli said “Fuckin’, like, really? I just started the medium.”
I gave Kelli a look.
“I could just add a shot, how about?” she tried.
I thanked her.
Jade and I didn’t talk as much as I’d hoped. For the rest of the day I thought of dozens of things that I could have said, and I decided to memorize some talk points for the next time.
I figured Landslides were my ticket to Jade, so I continued ordering them. “Another?” she asked by the counter one day when the rains had resumed their intermittent drum roll. Her hair was purple.
“Yep.”
“Not really the adventurous type.” she concluded.
“Au contraire,” I replied, setting down the chocolate and reaching for the nutmeg.
“Oh wow,” said Jade, “don’t hurt yourself.”
I took a leap: “So, what are you up to these days?”
“Just touching up some fast-food graphics. You probably wouldn’t be interested.”
She was right.
“Try me,” I said.
We took her scratched-up laptop out to the patio and looked at her designs, and she drank some of my Landslide. I forgot most of the talking points I memorized, but I still out that she was a summer arrival to the neighborhood, received her B.A. in art theory, and worked as a freelance graphic designer.
Her friends occasionally met at The Hip Drip, but they rarely talked when they sat together, opting instead to set up their laptops opposite each other like a group Battleship game. I knew them by appearance, and a few by name.
While I studied for my finals, Ella accosted the patrons across the street, and Danny convinced The Hip Drip’s owners to drop their internet service. After succeeding, he walked across the street, grabbed the “Enjoy your free WiFi courtesy of Starbucks” sign, and put it in The Hip Drip’s window. The signal was spotty, but it carried over for the most part.
Danny was my new hero.
Danny noticed that I’d been friendly with Jade and invited me to play pool with him at The Working Man, and we joked about their jobless clientele.
Danny was pretty quiet, but he loosened up after a few drinks. I looked at him through the greenish bar smoke as he racked up. His eyes were shadowed by the table lights and his sleeves were rolled up, revealing muscles I wouldn’t to tangle with in a bar fight.
“So, you’re friends with that blond girl that sells ecstasy?” he asked.
“Yeah. Well, sorta,” I said, happy to know Ella for the second time since I met her. The first time was before I found out how sycophantic she could get, and we shacked up for about a week until she threw my pants, shoes, and external hard drive with all my music out of her 6th-story apartment window because I told her she shouldn’t take another shot.
“Jade wants to try it, but we’re cheap-asses,” he hinted.
I had told Jade that Ella gave me discounts, and she must have told Danny.
“So do you think maybe you could help us out?” Danny continued.
“Sure, I guess. So, what are you guys about?”
“My friends and I? What do you mean?” Danny asked, screwing up his face.
“Like, how old are you guys? How’d you meet?”
Danny explained that they were in their mid-twenties, and they met in college, but he provided few details beyond that. “So what do you do?” he asked.
“I study philosophy.”
He studied my black hair, dark clothing, sparse piercings, and ex nihilo nihil fit tattoo. “Figures.”
I had a tough week with winter midterms following my first pool sessions with Danny, so I didn’t make it to The Hip Drip for several days. I was spending my Friday night in my apartment hiding from the rain, when I got a call from Jade, who explained that she got my number from Ella.
“So Danny said you’d get your discount from Ella for us. Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“By the way, you should get some for yourself and join us tomorrow night. There’ll be a few people you don’t know, but it’ll be cool.”
I agreed and called Connor to tell him that I was in with Jade.
“Ella’s gonna ask if she can come,” said Connor.
“Hope not.”
“What do you see in Jade, anyway?” he asked.
“I don’t know; she seems off-limits. Remember how quickly we discovered the ‘real’ Ella? I feel like I could hang out with Jade for a year without risking that, know what I mean? Anyway, I gotta call Ella to get what I need.” I was worried that Connor’s prediction would prove true; I didn’t want my past interfering with my future.
“Just let me come,” pleaded Ella over the phone.
I cursed Connor’s prescience under my breath and explained that I didn’t know Jade’s friends well enough to bring someone along to their house yet.
“Well if you want ecstasy then you have to be nicer to me. I go through a lot of trouble for you. I feel used.”
“Look, Ella, I’m sorry. They just wanted to take my mind off things for a night. Promise I’ll make it up to you. I’ll see you in a few.”
I was glad to leave the damp studio apartment that I rented for a little too much per month. I got to Ella’s house—the inside of which was decorated with Christmas lights and prayer flags—and picked up my introduction to Jade and Danny’s friends. I felt guilty, so I agreed to have a beer and cuddle up for a movie before returning home. It was a bad movie, but good beer, so one beer led to another, and the next thing I knew I was reassuring her for weeks afterward that it just happened, it didn’t make things weird, and I wasn’t looking for a relationship.
The next day I partied at Danny’s with Jade and friends. Danny’s roommates were out, and I tried to stick with the crowd for fear of getting lost in some expansive hallway; spending time at his place felt like hanging out in a mansion that substituted rock band posters for framed oil paintings.
I joined Jade on the deck for a cigarette.
“It’s weird that we saw each other every day at the coffee shop and never talked until I was broke,” she said.
“Well, we talk now,” I said.
“Yeah, but I don’t even know what you’re going to with your life. Friends know that kind of stuff, right?”
She said it almost like we were strangers—we had seen each other for months, and she knew my favorite bands, books, colors, and movies—but I said “If that’s what it takes,” and explained that my future was dissolving into an uncertain mess of graduate school and full-time employment.
“You really have no idea what to do?”
“With philosophy, I feel like the more I learn, the less I know. I would have picked a more useful major if I had anything figured out,” I said.
She smiled. “A lot of things are like that,” and finished her cigarette.
“So, are we friends now?” I asked.
She smiled, finished her cigarette, and gave me an impish shrug.
Later, in the massive oak kitchen, Danny said “You know, even when I’m feeling my absolute worst, nights like this always make me feel a little bit better.”
“Until the hangover,” I laughed.
“Until then,” he agreed.
I knew by that point that Danny was a model. I hadn’t seen anything of his, but I heard he’d been featured smoldering and topless for D&G, Louis Vuitton, and various colognes in a few big-name magazines.
“But you don’t really have anything to feel bad about anyway,” I said. “You date a model, you make more money than any of us, and you only work a couple hours a week.”
“I dunno. Sometimes I don’t see the point.”
“I’m still jealous,” I said.
“Yeah. I guess that’s what makes it so messed up.”
Over the next six weeks the snow stuck and I focused exclusively on school and Jade, and we spent a couple nights per week together. She and Danny were becoming more like friends and less like faces with names, and I wondered if I’d spend as much time with them when the mystery wore off, or if I’d go back to Connor and Ella.
I met them one night to drink beers at a playground, and we rocked on the swing set, which was uncomfortably low to the ground.
“I don’t think I’m going to go to grad school,” I said. “At least, not right away.”
“So, you want to turn out like us, then?” asked Jade.
“I guess,” I said. “I could work off loan debt, and in the meantime I’ve got you guys. I’m pretty happy with that.”
I remembered when Ella fell off the swing that Danny was in. She stormed around cursing for five minutes straight, until I started laughing, and she turned her vitriol to me.
“What would you guys do if you fell off the swing right now?” I asked.
“I might just leave,” said Jade. “And I’d avoid swings for a while.”
“I’d just lie down where I fell,” said Danny.
“You wouldn’t curse?” I asked.
“I would if you pushed me off,” Jade said. “What would you do?”
“I’m not sure.” I thought for a minute. “I think I’d just do something like what you guys would do.”
Finally, the snow melted and my spring term started. The constant rain showers were a comforting reassurance that some things never change. On the other hand, some things do change.
Kelli quit her job and moved to North Dakota with her boyfriend. I had held conversations with her almost daily for a year and never knew that she was dating anybody. After learning more about her in her absence, I wondered how many other people in The Hip Drip lived hidden lives, and I was surprised that she had never brought up her relationship; the whole shop felt a little less comfortable, like I had been living with strangers.
If the loss of my favorite barista wasn’t unsettling enough, they hired a new barista, and I had to give up my Landslides. Her name was Devin. She had spiky bleached hair and an adorable freckle pattern over her nose and cheeks. I ordered a Landslide from her on her first day, and she pleaded with me to order something easier to make, since she was still training.
Five minutes later, with latte in hand, I met Jade out on the patio. The air smelled like flower buds.
“Seen Danny lately?” I asked.
“Nah. He gets like this sometimes.” The now-red tips of her now-black hair flew around her shoulders.
I realized that I hadn’t known Danny long enough to follow long-term behavioral patterns. We talked about my spring term classes and I mentioned that I was looking for a job.
“You know how to work an espresso machine, right?” Jade asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well, get a job here,” she said.
I didn’t have the money or the heart to give her the same answer I gave Ella.
Ella walked up and asked to borrow me for a minute, and Jade obliged. “Let’s take a walk,” Ella said, and she dragged me down the sidewalk to the touristy section.
“You’ve been scarce,” Ella snipped, when we were about a block from the patio.
“I’ve been finishing winter term.You know, if you called once in a while—“
“Don’t put this on me, Adam. This is about you. I barely even know you anymore.”
I tried to explain that since Kelli left I felt the same about everybody.
“Whatever, dude, just go back to the shop. Jade’s there, waiting to not have sex with you.”
But Jade was gone when I got back, so I walked home, stopping at The Working Man to steal their newspaper for the “Help Wanted” section.
That night I noticed most of the available jobs conflicted with school or my qualifications, so I decided to look into shitting where I ate.
The next morning at The Hip Drip the owner saw me and explained that since she hired Devin she didn’t need any help, but that I should apply anyway, just in case. “Sorry, Adam. I hate to say this, but you could try Starbucks.”
I said Thanks and dropped by Starbucks on my way home.
The next week, Danny cancelled on a few pool sessions because he didn’t feel like going out. I turned in job applications to both coffee shops, and switched completely to lattes—less out of compassion for Devin and more because I liked coffee that didn’t taste like ice-cream toppings.
Both The Hip Drip and Starbucks asked me to answer questions at the end of the next week, after I’d finished my spring midterms.
Jade invited me over one night to ask for my input on her latest graphic designs. She decorated her house with oil paintings from her artistic friends. We checked out her work, got tipsy off cheap lagers, and finished well past my bedtime, so I spent the night to avoid the freezing walk home.
Sometime in the morning, and I’m not sure when—but it was still dark out—Jade’s phone buzzed ceaselessly. I nudged her awake and she picked it up, yawning “Hello?” into the receiver.
I watched her, listening to her concerned “Ohs” and “Is he okays?” The night light in the hall bathed her skin in a fey-blue glow.
I asked myself if I had found what it meant to know somebody—not in the way one grows accustomed to a face in a coffee shop, but in sharing the simple moments in life—devoid of observers, lust, everything—in which we are so aware of someone’s presence that it’s impossible to imagine anything else but that moment and that person. I touched her shoulder as she hung up.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
She brushed my hand off. “No. Everything is not okay. We have to go now. It’s a long walk.” Tears sparkled down her cheek.
Danny was in the hospital. The nurses let us visit him for a couple minutes, but he was still unconscious. We sat despondently on the gray plastic benches in the waiting room.
The hospital had already called Danny’s parents in California. Jade called Danny’s girlfriend and left a message. The hospital brought us free black coffee.
The sun’s first pink rays shined through the windows by the time a nurse built like a softball player came to us and said “I’m sure Danny’s thankful to you all for staying. We’re going to keep him for a little while, but we’ll let you know as soon as he’s ready.”
“What happened, exactly?” I asked.
“He took about a bottle of Vicodin,” the nurse explained. “We think he may have tried to hurt himself”
Jade stayed silent and gripped the seat of her bench until her knuckles turned white.
I didn’t get to talk about Danny much the next week, and I only saw him once when I dropped by the hospital to keep him company. The rain had relapsed, and instead of washing away my increasing feelings of alienation, I felt drowned.
I had brief interviews with both The Hip Drip and Starbucks, and their respective managers promised to get back to me.
Jade spent most of her time visiting Danny, since she didn’t have school. Nobody heard from Danny’s girlfriend until the day after my interviews, when Jade finally got a hold of her.
“She’s in New York. Apparently she’s been there for the last month,” Jade reported. “She said she was busy with a shoot and she’d call Danny when she could.”
Danny’s attempted suicide killed my perceptions of how I knew people. I realized that I had, to some extent, chosen not to recognize what he was going through. I doubted every hypothesis I made about my friends up to that point. I couldn’t understand how, while I wondered about how to live, Danny, whom I envied, wondered about whether to live at all.
Danny returned after a week at the hospital. A nurse told us we should spend time with him. I wasn’t sure what to do. I watched Jade, followed her lead, and filled in where I could. Care for Danny came more naturally to her than it did to me. For me, visiting Danny felt like hanging out with someone I used to know and had fallen out of touch with.
Danny met me for coffee one day, but I didn’t know what I wanted to drink anymore.
“If there’s one thing I’m learning,” said Danny, “you gotta stick with what you can handle.”
I wasn’t thirsty anyway.
I hung out with Ella and Connor the day after Jade finally got hold of Danny’s girlfriend. We grabbed some dollar beers at The Working Man and sat mostly in silence. Occasionally, they asked about Danny, and if I ever would have guessed that he was “the type.” I said “I’m not sure, but people can always surprise you.”
I wondered if any of my other friends were “the type,” and whether I’d know or not if they were.
I met Jade at the playground before spring finals.
“Look,” she said, “I know you started to figure things out, and I don’t mean to rain on your future, but Danny’s moving back to California with his parents. I don’t know what I’m doing. I might drive cross country, or get a second degree. I might go to France and stomp grapes. I can’t stay here, though. At least you’ll have Connor and Ella.”
“But they don’t know me the same way,” I argued.
“Whatever that means.” She hugged me, said “Everything’s different now,” and walked home, leaving me to look up at the stars from the bottom of the slide. They were so far away, but they never left.
Danny moved back home to California, and Starbucks called me the next morning to say they’d hire me, went over wages and hours, and gave me a couple days to think about it.
Later, at The Hip Drip, Devin said“I have an iced chai that some dude didn’t pick up, if you want something free,” before I could order. I took it.
The owner of The Hip Drip greeted me, and we went out to the sunny patio. She said she’d hire me, went over wages and hours, and gave me a couple days to think about it.
Ella visited me when summer break started. Warm air rushed in from the plate-glass door, giving me a short reprieve from the commercial java-shop smell. “I’ve never been in here,” she said, looking around the inside of Starbucks.
“Yeah,” I said. “Part of the beast. But they offered a better deal.”
“That’s okay,” she said, “I won’t hold it against you. How ‘bout you make me something? Anything. Surprise me. By the way, Connor and I were thinking about poker tonight.”
“Sounds good,” I said, and searched for unlikely flavors. Starbucks was more industrial than The Hip Drip; less comfortable, but there were fewer loiterers, and the tip jar saw more action. I handed the drink to her. “It’s on me.”
“What is it?”
I said “I don’t know,” and it didn’t bother her.
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