Coffee Before the Shop Opens

There is a café on the corner of my street where I am allowed to sit for an hour without ordering a second thing. I go before I open, around seven, when the chairs are still upside down on the tables and the man behind the bar is counting change into the till. In Brussels this hour belongs to nobody.

I order the same thing: a black coffee, no sugar, and a glass of water I do not drink. The waiter and I have not had a real conversation in nine years. He knows my order, I know his daughter's name, and we have decided that this is enough, which I think is a form of respect.

Two languages, one street

At home I speak Flemish; in the shop and at this counter I speak French, and both are slightly wrong by the time they reach my mouth. My mother telephones on Sundays and says I have a Brussels accent now. I tell her the city does that to people. In the café nobody asks which side I am on.

I have two languages and one set of hands; the hands do most of the talking.

My hands around the cup are not a pretty sight in winter. The knuckles crack, the nails are never clean no matter what I do in that back alley with the cold water. The cup is the only thing that is warm all the way through. I hold it until it drops to room temperature, and then I go to work.

What I watch from the window

From the window I watch the same three people wait for the tram. A nurse, a boy with a cello, a woman who smokes exactly one cigarette and puts it out with her heel. I have never spoken to any of them. If one were missing I would notice for a week and say nothing, and that is how I know the neighbourhood is mine.

Living alone taught me the difference between loneliness and quiet; I only mind one of them.

At half past seven I pay, and the waiter says what he says every morning, which is not much, and I walk the two hundred metres to the shop, unlock the padlock, put the kettle on, and get ready for a day of wheels that are never as straight as their owners believe.