// Toriv

I like to make a big deal out of breakfast. Most important meal of the day, to use the cliché. But more importantly, it’s your first chance in the day to say hello to the people you love. To me, breaking the nighttime fast applies to people too.

Maybe that makes me a sap, but I like it, so whatever, I’m a sap. To pick up Freud again (and this is the last time I will, I swear), it probably stems from childhood too. My mom used to have to get up really early for work, “at the asscrack of dawn”, as she’d say when my dad was out of earshot. As a kid I’d miss her at breakfast, so I learned to get up at the asscrack of dawn too, just so I could sit at the table with her and drink my juice and tell her about all the stuff I planned to do during the day. I was that kind of kid, always talking, always drawing attention. Like I thought that if the grownups’ attention faltered for even a second, I’d die or just stop existing. I guess it’s an only child’s kind of mentality. Not to say that I was spoiled, far from it. Hard to be spoiled when you have my dad for a dad, or my mom for a mom, for that matter. But I did grow used to having them for myself.

Anyway, breakfast. Breakfast is my favourite meal ever. I could live off of breakfast food, which sounds gross and weird to some people but hey, more midnight pancakes for me. Breakfast is awesome because it can be anything you want it to be — savoury or sweet, heavy or light — and it’s still breakfast. It’s the most versatile meal in the day, the greatest thing since sliced bread, especially when it is sliced bread.

Back when I still lived with my parents (eons ago, if you must know), I used to make them breakfast most mornings. My mom likes sweet breakfast and my dad likes salty, so I’d always make a bit of both to make everyone happy. I also learned exactly how my parents like their coffee and would make it for them every time, and to perfection, thank you very much. Then we would sit down to eat and discuss the coming day’s activities, and my mom would tell me to knock ’em dead, and my dad would tell me to not get into trouble (again), and I would tell them sure thing, Mom, and when do I ever get into trouble, Dad, honestly.
So all that to say, I’m not really used to having breakfast on my own. It was the weirdest thing ever, actually, once I started living in my own place. Most mornings, I’d go over to my parents’ house anyway, just as they were getting up, and make them breakfast just like old times. They never told me not to do it. I think they kind of knew it was something I had to do, at least until I had gotten used to being all on my lonesome.

I’m better at dealing with it these days, thanks for asking. I’m a big boy now, I eat my scrambled eggs alone and everything. Except when I’m not.

These days, when I make breakfast for someone, it’s usually a guy. The ones who stay the night, anyway, and I usually ask them to stay the night. It’s just nicer that way, even if the sex is only so-so. So-so lovers deserve breakfast too, that’s my philosophy.

It’s trickier to make breakfast for a near-stranger, though. For my parents or for my friends, it’s easy to guess what they’d like on any given day. For a guy you only met the previous night, you can’t really guess, unless you happened to have a discussion on preferred breakfast foods in between making out and undoing buttons. So you’ve gotta ask, which is fine, but sometimes the guy will get awkward, or impatient, or confused, and then you’re stuck standing there with the question floating between the two of you like a ghost. I swear some people get weirder about what would you like for breakfast? than they do about the STD question.

But I ask because I like to do it, because the rewards usually outbalance the weirdness. Even if I’m never going to see them again, I like to send people off with a full belly and a smile. That’s just how it is: when the people around me are happy, I’m usually happy too. I’m a simple guy with simple pleasures.

Now that I think about it, that’s probably the reason I decided to open a coffee shop. Sure, most customers will be in a rush to grab their coffee and go, but I always make sure to send them off with a smile. Breakfast and a smile, a winning combination! I’d put that on the sign if it weren’t too long and too corny.

So doing business in breakfast is pretty great. My father thinks I should have more ambition (you must be able to imagine his tone by now). I think he sort of wanted me to be a lawyer or a doctor or something, despite him being a craftsman himself. But whatever, I’m happy, I keep my head above the water, I see the people I want to see everyday, and I meet new ones every time someone steps up to the counter. The chime above the door is the cheerful refrain to my coffee-scented days. It’s enough. It’s enough! Some days I’m so happy I feel I could die.

Even the solitary breakfasts, the quiet mornings before the café is even open are okay when you’re that happy. Even loneliness isn’t that bad when you know you’ll be throwing your doors open to the world in a few minutes. Business in breakfast is probably the best idea I’ve ever had.

// Mahendra

I have breakfast alone most mornings. It’s a good chance for me to wake up, get my bearings, and plan out my day. This usually takes some time; I don’t wake easily. Often it takes until I’m actually in class preparing my notes for the upcoming lecture for me to shake myself fully awake. One time last winter I came to school so groggy that I walked right into the doorframe. At my age! My grad students were in stitches and didn’t let me forget it for a long time.

Sometimes my sister Charlotte and her children join me for breakfast. They get impatient waiting for me to wake up sometimes. I can only use the time difference of five hours for so long.

“Hello from Montréal,” I tell them, when I finally get online.

“Hello from London,” they chorus back.

“You look sleepy,” Celeste, Charlotte’s eldest, always says.

“I feel sleepy,” I always reply, which never fails to make them all laugh.

So it goes. My sister’s children are at the age where the adults in their life still enchant and interest them, so they always have plenty to say. And I suppose it must be exciting to be talking to their faraway uncle, whom they only really see twice or three times a year. I like technology, but more than that, I’m grateful for it. In my parents’ time, communicating from across oceans and continents wouldn’t have been as easy or expedient as this.

I didn’t think much of it when Charlotte appeared on the screen by herself one morning. It was almost noon over there; the girls must have been busy. But when my sister smiled in greeting, she looked haggard and wan, like she hadn’t slept all night.

I asked her, “Are you all right?”

“Me? I’m–”

“You look–”

Then I remembered, and checked the date to be sure. February 10. In the little window, Charlotte sighed and leaned her cheek on her hand.

“I’ve just been thinking about him,” she said. “You know how it is.”

Four years ago, my sister lost her husband in a car accident in downtown London. She’s recovered, mostly, but the days before and after the anniversary always bring her down. People like us (like my parents and their generation and their generation before them) have complicated views on marriage, so I didn’t know if she would ever marry again.

Charlotte said, “I was up with Annie most of the night.” Anastasia, her youngest daughter. “She had those night terrors.”

“Again? I thought those were over with.”

“She gets them sometimes around this time.” Her face turned sorrowful, lined with a kind of tired helplessness. “Winter is difficult for her. She’s so afraid of the streets.”

This pained me, deep in my chest where my heart sits. We’d both hoped that Anastasia would have been too young to remember the traffic accident that took her father and spared her, but the ghosts of that day cling to her, though with her nearly nine years old.

“Maybe you should have moved to somewhere in the southern hemisphere. Australia or something,” Charlotte joked weakly. “That way I could send the girls to you for half the year.”

I tried my best to smile. “Sounds like fun. Me and the girls in the Australian Outback.”
“And then you’d all die from the heat,” my sister laughed, in such a way that I couldn’t help laughing too.

“Or the spiders!”

“Oh, eugh!”

We talked for a while longer, reminiscing about her Paul. I hadn’t known him very well, but we had gotten along. He’d been simple and kind, a good husband and father. He’d loved the girls to bits. And he’d been half-Indian, so my parents hadn’t fussed much more than necessary when Charlotte and he had announced their engagement.

Celeste, being the eldest, did her best to put on a brave face, but Anastasia still missed her dad openly. I felt sorry and wished I could comfort them all more, but that’s difficult when one lives an ocean away.

“I need a vacation,” Charlotte said finally. “Now that the holiday rush at the clinic is over.”

“Then take one. Go somewhere warm and pretty.”

“I was thinking Montréal, actually. The girls want to see your flat.”

I made a show of looking around, to make Charlotte giggle. “They’ve seen my flat. They said it was boring. Too grown-up.”

“They’ve only seen it over Skype! They told me the other day, and I quote, they absolutely must see it for themselves, it is imperative that they do.”

“Wherever did they learn the word ‘imperative’?”

Charlotte pressed a hand to her face, suppressing laughter. “I thought they learned it from you!”

“You know full well that their reading level has long since surpassed mine.”

Charlotte laughed until she hiccuped, and when she emerged from it, her eyes were brighter than before. On the small screen, I couldn’t tell if it was from mirth or tears.

“I miss you,” I told her once she had quieted. “All of you. Do come over, I’d be glad to have you.”

Charlotte sighed. “Oh, I’m not sure anymore. It’s flu season, you know. So many concerned parents–”

“The other doctors can handle it for a few days.”

“–and having us all there would get in the way of your work. You know the girls, they wouldn’t leave you alone. Favourite uncle,” she teased.

“Only uncle,” I corrected. “I’ll take off work. Or we wait until summer. I’ll only have my grad students then.”

Charlotte bit her lip, thinking and fretting. I finished off my morning tea and looked reluctantly at the clock. Time to go. I told Charlotte so, and was afraid for a moment that she would begin to cry, but she pulled on a watery smile and waved.

“Until next time, then, big brother,” she said. “Call Mum and Dad, will you? You always forget. Mum got upset again the other day. ‘Maddy hasn’t called since Christmas–‘”

My heart hurt again, for different reasons. “She can start by leaving off ‘Maddy’.”

Charlotte looked sad and torn. “You know how she is.”

I wanted to say “stubborn”, but that felt unkind. And Charlotte was right. It was difficult to make an old woman change her ways, especially when she was your mother.

I let it go. It was always best to let it go. “Take care, Sherry.”

She smiled. “Take care, Mahendra.”

I finished my breakfast alone, doing my best to forget the sound of the name ‘Maddy’ from my sister’s mouth. Let it go. This is why you left. Just let it go.

The next day, I went to café Vanellas for breakfast. It was strange; I don’t usually leave the house early enough to stop for anything longer than a pastry hand-off, but maybe I was restless that day too. It had been happening a lot lately. Midterm jitters, perhaps. They got to me as much as they got to the students.

The man behind the counter greeted, “The prodigal professor returns.”

I clutched the strap of my bag as I walked up, like I’d been caught at something. “How did you know I’m a professor?”

He smiled and he looked cheeky and young. I found that I couldn’t really tell how old he was. He was youthful and mature all at once. “Lucky guess. I have an instinct for such things.”

Before I could reply, another employee emerged from the backroom, wiping his wet hands. This one was willow-tall, blond, but with the same pointed ears. He said, “Don’t listen to him. Toriv watched you grading papers the other day.”

“I wasn’t watching,” the barista named Toriv protested. He’d been caught, but his grin said he didn’t mind. “Stop looking at me like I’m full of crap. He does have a professor-ly air about him.”

I said, “So I’ve been told.”

“So there.” He didn’t stick his tongue out, but he may as well have. “So, what’ll it be, Prof?”

I ordered a breakfast sandwich and sat down to eat, going over emails with my free hand. Toriv and his fellow bantered behind the counter as they went about doing barista things. Toriv called him Lor and needled him constantly, which was probably annoying, but the man took it with the good humour of one who is used to such things.

Not for the first time, it struck me how cosy and comfortable it was in this place. Gentle music piped in from hidden speakers, which Toriv sang along to absentmindedly as he went about his tasks. The walls were hung with pictures of green landscapes and smaller amateur-looking photographs, objects and memories like that looked like they had been accumulating for years. It was a public space but every touch was personal. It was a place that made you want to linger, to drink in the light and the warmth and the good cheer permeating the room.

I had to leave before too long and found I was reluctant to go, but duty calls. Toriv appeared and swept my plate away as I stood. It was different standing next to him without a counter between us; he was shorter than I’d thought, and when he smiled he looked up at me through his lashes.

“See you next time, Prof,” he said. “Oh, just a sec–”
He stepped quickly to the counter to set down the plate, then returned with a small steaming beverage. I could smell it from here: chocolate and espresso.

“I didn’t order this,” I said, flushing, probably, from the attention.

“On the house,” Toriv said cheerfully. “Figured you could use it, to kickstart your early morning. If you want it.”

I hesitated, perhaps a touch too long, judging from the way his chin tipped away, but then I reached out and took what he was offering, my fingers closing around the top of the cup to avoid his. “Thank you. That’s very kind of you.”

“Just promise you’ll come back,” was all he said. “I want to hear all about you terrorizing the youth of today.”

“I do no such thing,” I replied, but I could feel myself grinning.

Toriv sent me off with a complicit smile and a wave. The mocha was excellent and warm, and suddenly I felt more awake than I had in days.