The customers came in with the morning and stayed through the long stretch of day. Some were loud and talked of markets or housing or politics. Some came alone and said little. They sat by the windows and watched the street like it was a film they had seen before. The baristas knew them. Not their names, always, but their orders. Flat white. Long black. Sometimes oat, sometimes almond, sometimes just strong.
There was the man who always brought a novel and never finished it. He sipped slow and underlined things in pencil. He nodded to the staff but never stayed long enough to know them. There were students too, hunched over laptops and thick books. They ordered one drink and made it last three hours. The owners said nothing. Sometimes they smiled, sometimes they sighed. The students didn’t notice.
Older men came and sat near the door. They spoke of football and war and women they had loved in the sixties. They spoke like the world had been clearer once, and maybe it had. They liked their coffee strong and their toast simple. No smashed avocado. No foam in the milk. They liked the place quiet but didn’t mind the music if it was something with a guitar.
The young ones came for the photos. They stood near the tiles, near the plants, near the neon signs. They held their cups just right and took ten shots to find the one. Then they left. The baristas saw them but did not mind. A sale was a sale, and the café lived on sales.
Some came in angry and left lighter. The warmth did that, or the ritual, or the way the crema settled on the surface like a lake at dawn. Others came happy and left the same, holding hands, laughing too loud, reminding the rest that joy could be simple.
In the late afternoon, the tradesmen came, dusty and hungry. They drank fast and didn’t wait for it to cool. They nodded thanks and left without ceremony. The sun dropped low, the shadows stretched, and the cafés grew quiet. The city kept moving but slower now. The last customers left with the scent of coffee on their breath and something calmer in their chest. It was a kind of church, and they had come for communion.
