Notes from a Pastry Shop
/Pomme Sucre on calle Barquillo has some of the most beautifully subtle pastries in Madrid. The layout of the shop, with its sleek, back-lit display cases lining the store’s interior, implies that it was intended to do nothing more than sell delicious sweets. Reality (as is often the case) tells a different story. It seems that Pomme Sucre patrons did not want to -- could not -- wait to leave the shop before biting into their freshly baked croissant or caracol or napoleon, that they also wanted coffee to complement it, and to sit down. For the shop looks as if the customers themselves simply dragged in tables and chairs off the street and put them unevenly into the corner of the shop. The delightfully mismatched coffee cups and saucers, forks, and plates, only strengthen this theory.
Even if it was never intended to be a sit-down, eat-in shop, Pomme Sucre was always destined to become one.
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I found myself in this sweet sweet shop for my second coffee of the day – the first having been drunk in an unsatisfying environment and thus in need of a rewrite. I’m at a small table near the door, so not only is it impossible to open my newspaper in any kind of comfortable fashion, but I get the full distraction of people walking in and out of the shop. No matter. For this particular morning, this crowded spot – complete with a distinct electrical hum from the dessert display cases – is where my mind is at ease.
The table on my left is only slightly bigger than my own, yet holds one grandmother, two parents and two adult children – all dressed in perfected Sunday morning Madrileño attire. (The grandmother’s chair – although rickety – is draped with a fur coat.) In the corner is a couple who are in the beauty of a morning that follows a night. A young woman sits alone with a book directly in front of me. I immediately like her though can’t understand how or why she insists on reading while a pan de chocolate sits untouched before her.
We are like birds on rocks along the coastline, and each time someone enters the shop they cast a furtive glance towards us to see if a table might be open.
--- x --- x ---
A man shuffles in. He’s frail, and walking with a cane. He’s wearing a big black coat with a faux fur collar and his legs are skinny in green pants – green green: not the color of moss but of a new leaf. One of the young girls behind the counter comes around to join him as he looks intently into the dessert cases. She greets him in a comfortable, friendly way that implies routine and begins to describe each sugary offering as they slide down the length of the case together.
--- x --- x ---
I hadn’t noticed he’d left until the draft from the door opening makes me look up. It’s a cold day in February and I see the back of his shaved head as he walks up to the counter. I am reminded of the color grey. (But with an a: gray.)
He grabs hold of the cane he’d left at the counter while paying. The girl smiles at him from her position with another customer as he turns and walks, once again, out of the shop. The pastry bag swings in his left hand and the cane in the other bangs on the glass door as he opens it to leave.
