// Toriv

Café Vanellas sits in the middle of a bustling side street just off downtown Montréal. Normally I’d tell you exactly where — we have to do all our own advertising, you know — but right now my dad is worried just the simple fact of me writing this will attract the wrong kind of attention. Yes, I can see him worrying from here. So here I am, telling you about this café of ours while unhelpfully keeping the location somewhat secret, hoping that by the end of this I’ll have intrigued you enough for you to put the effort into actually finding the place on your own.

In the spirit of thwarted but persistent advertising, here’s an interesting factoid: café Vanellas is staffed entirely by elves. Now before you start crying about the evils of overbearing political correctness, I should tell you we don’t consider ourselves particularly political. I mean I vote and everything, but that’s really all I, personally, have to do with this great country’s politics.

I don’t mean to sound super sarcastic about it. Canada really isn’t so bad, but I’ve lived here my entire life, so honestly what do I know. My parents have lived here all their lives too, though they didn’t always live in the city. But that’s not really important right now.

As I’m writing, I’m starting to realize that I don’t really know what is important, really. To be honest, this whole Toriv-sitting-down-during-his-break-and-writing-about-his-life thing is still a new idea. A work-in-progress, if you will. In-progress enough that my old man over there (I can see him from here, he’s looking at me out the corner of his eye in that way he has, like he suspects I’m doing something naughty) is still capable of being worried about it. But my dad’s always been leery of new ideas. He’s someone who likes to get all nice and comfy in a routine: work, wife, kid, friends. The occasional vacation in the country, when he and my mom get too sick of all the smog. Otherwise, routine, routine, routine. Sometimes I have no idea how we’re related.

I’ve only written a few paragraphs and I’ve already said way too much about my father. Freud would have something to say about that, probably. Ah yes, he would say, stroking his chin and speaking in the kind of thick Austrian accent you only hear in movies, ze subject, he has daddy issues zat stem from childhood. Something something sexual repression something. I don’t really read, so you’d probably know Freud better than me.

For your information, I have never had a single moment of sexual repression in my life, unless you count the one or two times I’ve had to escape through a window because someone’s parents came home early. But I would argue that such occasions were technically brought on by the opposite of sexual repression. Therefore, ergo, etc, etc.

So what have I written about so far? The café, my dad, sex. Yeesh. What would Freud have to say about that, I wonder.

Since I’m sitting in the café right now, I guess I should talk about it some more. Technically, it’s mine. I mean, it’s ours: mine, my parents’, my friends’, because we all built it from the ground up together. But technically it is mine since it’s in my name, and since it was my idea in the first place. You could say I have both physical and intellectual ownership over this place, which I think sounds pretty cool. Toriv Vanellas, owner and manager of café Vanellas, of a certain number on a certain street, Montréal, Quebec, Canada, North America, the World.

I named it café Vanellas because clan Vanellas is my family, and I want everyone who comes in here to feel like they’re among family too. I mean the good kind of family, the kind that smiles when you walk in and actually wants to know how you are. The kind that’ll fix you a hot drink (or a cold one in summer; we do those too, take note) just the way you like it and hand it off with another smile and a “see you later”, like they can’t wait to see you again. The kind of family I’ve always had, because I’ve been lucky.

Because yeah, as much as I like to complain about my dad and sometimes my mom and occasionally about the nerds I call friends, I wouldn’t be here, in this chair, in this café, in this city, if it wasn’t for them. So I guess this coffee shop in the middle of town is my way of giving back.

That, and I’ve always wanted to be the cute barista people come in to secretly fawn over. That’s my idea of corny urban romance.

My dad just looked at me again. How does he know when I’m being vain inside my own head? What kind of freaky dad senses is he possessed of? Just one of the many questions about my parentals I’ve been trying to solve for years, without a whole lot of success. But I guess that’s parents for you. They’ve been through so much you’ll just never know all of it.

Turns out Dad was looking at me because my break was over ten minutes ago, and he was wondering what was taking so long for me to get my ass back into gear. Which just goes to show, you can own your damn business and still have your father get all up in it.

Back to the grind! (That was a coffee joke. I made myself laugh over it. Genius.)

// Mahendra

To begin, I’ll admit that I do not frequent coffee shops all that much. Mostly it’s because I normally drink tea. Horrifically British of me, I know, but there’s no changing where one comes from.

That being said, I have begun to frequent them a little more often. I’ve discovered that the white noise of coffee grinders and steaming wands and conversation helps me concentrate while I’m grading. I’m sure the caffeine does as well, as long as there isn’t too much of it.

There’s a place I’ve discovered recently, just a few blocks from my apartment complex: a café Vanellas, a little place whose plain exterior belies the surprising cosiness and warmth of the interior. Of course coffee shops must normally be inviting and cosy these days, just enough to appeal to the everyday sensibilities of the city worker and student. The atmosphere of a restaurant is important to a lot of people, though it isn’t something I’m used to noticing. Perhaps I’m always too busy to note my surroundings, cosy or not. My own personal failing, the curse of absentmindedness. Or is it the opposite? An overabundance of focus, so much that I simply forget to raise my eyes. If my sister were here, she’d snap her fingers in my face. Look up, will you, smell the roses!

Having said that, I miss her horribly. I haven’t seen her or the girls, her two young daughters, since Christmas. The curse: forgetting to look up for hours, days, weeks at a time. I’m a sham of a brother, truly.

So, the café Vanellas. I never cease to find it incredible that one could live in the same neighbourhood for years and still be discovering things about it. I’d never seen it before that day a few weeks ago, when construction on the road along my usual path to the metro station forced me to deviate from routine. And I suppose my monstrous sweet tooth must have been rearing its head that morning, because it simply wouldn’t let me pass by the little coffee shop until I’d ventured inside to peruse their assortment of cakes and muffins. Sweets for breakfast, there’s a bad habit I’ve never shaken, but needs must.
On that very first day, there was a man behind the counter. I should say an elf, though noting it excessively must seem a faux-pas, these days; they’re about as common a sight as any other race in the melting pot of Montréal. I should clarify that he struck me less by virtue of his race and more by virtue of subjective beauty standards: he had the most striking dark eyes, the most open and charming grin.

“Hello,” he said, “Welcome! Bonjour et bienvenue! What can I get you?”

For a small shop, their pastry selection was extensive, and it took me a moment to settle on a harmless-looking cinnamon cake.

“This is one of my favourite ones,” the man behind the counter told me, though who knows if it was true. “Goes great with a mocha.”

“Tempting,” I said, and it really, really was. The everyday agony of a sweet lover. “But I’ll pass for today.”

“Hope that means you’ll come back,” he said. He grinned again as he said it and placed the bagged cinnamon cake in my hand. “But either way, have a great day.”

I wished him the same and left. The cake was had during the metro ride, and it was exquisite. Unsurprisingly, I craved hot chocolatey drinks for the whole rest of the day, but I do have some measure of self-control.

The next time I brought my patronage to café Vanellas was in the afternoon, maybe a week later. I was restless, overly sensitive to the bustle and noise of the city, but too strung up to simply go home and rest my head. So to the café it was, with a bundle of midterm papers under my arm, with urban exhaustion all over my face.

“So you did come back,” greeted the man behind the counter. His black hair was swept back in a messy ponytail and his hands were very slender. There was an easiness about his every movement, a confidence too pure to be arrogance. Clearly he belonged in this place, he fitted right in just like all the interlocking tables and chairs.

“I did.” I felt shy suddenly, as I often do when I’m noticed. “Thought I’d give that mocha a try.”

He smiled like he’d won a game. “Coming right up, monsieur.”

The mocha was excellent, as I’d hoped. I savoured it as I graded papers at a table by the wide bay window. Patrons came and went, and for every one there came the cheerful “Hello and welcome! Bonjour et bienvenue!” The sun was warm through the window, even with the haziness of the winter sky and the chill of the frozen streets. It was homey and comfortable, and the cup of coffee was warm and sweet to the last drop.

For a fleeting, foolish moment, I imagined his smile tasted the same way. But as is the case with such imaginings, rare as they are, I made sure it was gone in the next moment.