Alyx showed up before dawn, the predawn chill curling under their collar and making them wish they’d remembered a scarf. The Whispering Bean felt different at that hour, like stepping into a parallel realm where the city’s usual commotion hadn’t fully woken up yet. Stained glass windows refracted the thin morning light into wild streaks of color that fell across Alyx’s open notebook, each shard looking like a promise still waiting to be written.
The barista, who usually wore their constellation tattoo bare and proud, had it hidden beneath a cable-knit sweater that morning. They didn’t say a thing as they placed the first mug in front of Alyx. The mug carried a faded phoenix emblem, all swirling wings and chipped detail that suggested it had been broken and painstakingly mended more than once. Steam rose in languid tendrils, coiling into half-recognizable shapes.
Alyx sipped and tasted the tang of memory—like scorched sugar and old typewriter ink and that jittery rush of adrenaline right before a big protest. Their fingertips began trembling as a vision took root, vivid as a film reel running inside their skull. They saw a drag king from 1982 in the Bean’s cramped bathroom, adjusting shiny cufflinks with an air of easy swagger. The mirror showed not the king’s face but Eli’s, younger and sharper, wearing a beaten-up leather jacket with “57th Street Dykes” stitched in crooked letters across the back. The drag king winked at this phantom reflection and headed out to face a waiting crowd that roared with applause no one else could hear.
Alyx jolted back into the present, breath hitching like they’d surfaced from deep water. The barista was calmly polishing mason jars behind the counter, acting like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. They caught Alyx’s eye and nodded toward the front window, where Eli’s ghostly silhouette hovered, veil rustling in a breeze that left every branch outside perfectly still.
By day three, the visions stacked on top of one another in a chaotic collage. It wasn’t just images anymore—textures, scents, and echoes bled into Alyx’s consciousness. They felt the grainy rasp of a whetstone sliding against steel behind the café sometime in ’92. They tasted cheap diner coffee on sticky vinyl seats in ’67, two women sneaking notes beneath the table and pretending they were just friends. They felt the soft brush of Eli’s lace veil against their fingertips, even though in the real world there was nothing there to touch.
Each day the barista offered a new vessel, as if each piece of timeworn ceramic had its own story to add. One morning it was a chipped teacup rumored to be from the original women’s bookstore, the next a mason jar still displaying the tattered remains of protest stickers, then a mug scrawled with faint anarchist symbols that had nearly worn off. The barista would hand over these relics with a gentle caution: “Drink from the past, but don’t drown in it.”
On the fifth evening, the café windows blurred under a relentless downpour, turning streetlights into glowing smudges and making reflections dance in slow motion across the glass. Alyx tried to scribble down the remnants of the previous day’s vision, the one where Eli showed up at an ACT UP meeting, boots planted on a slick pharmaceutical rep’s desk while passing out small bone-carved buttons. The barista approached and set down an “I ♥ NY” mug with a jagged crack splitting the heart right down the center. Their voice was quiet but firm when they said, “This one’s going to hurt.”
Alyx barely took a gulp before the next vision slammed into them like a gut punch. They saw the café engulfed in flames, furniture collapsing into ash while Eli stood at the center, totally untouched, layers of fabric burning away until their skin revealed a tapestry of protest slogans inked in a dozen languages. A younger version of the barista, locs still dark, hurled a brick through some developer’s office window in a move that felt both triumphant and terrifying. Then the scene lurched into total darkness, only to reform into a memory from Alyx’s teenage years—fifteen years old, shivering behind a Kmart, pressing a disintegrating copy of Zami into another runaway’s hands. Eli hovered beside them, draping a ragged shawl around both their shoulders like a worn-out guardian angel.
Alyx snapped back to reality with a violent inhale, noticing shards of ceramic scattered across the table. The mug had slipped from their grasp at some point, and coffee was pooling near their notebook. Outside, Eli stood pressed against the glass with both palms flat, their mouth moving in silence. Somehow, Alyx understood the message: now you know.
On the seventh dawn, the café seemed to hold its breath. No one argued about the Wi-Fi, no one debated the day’s headlines, and the espresso machine that usually hissed and clanked sat in perfect stillness. The barista approached Alyx’s table with something different this time, not a mug but a wide bowl fashioned in the Japanese raku tradition. Its cracks gleamed with gold filigree, turning each fracture into a piece of living art.
“Kintsugi,” the barista said, running a fingertip along one glittering seam. “Today you drink from what’s broken.”
Alyx lifted the bowl and took a careful sip. The final vision moved through them like a slow tide, thick and heavy as warm honey. They saw a future version of themselves, hands methodically stitching a massive quilt from scraps that carried the histories of this place. Eli’s wedding gown, the barista’s worn apron, a bit of the rainbow crosswalk pavement, a shard of the café’s stained glass. Everything joined by gold thread that caught the light in mesmerizing glints, each stitch a tribute to lives lived on the margins and battles fought without fanfare.
When Alyx’s eyes fluttered open, the raku bowl had split neatly in half on the tabletop. Outside, an eviction notice that had been stapled to the café’s door curled at the edges and burst into a brilliant blue flame before dissolving into nothing. Eli stood in the newly brightened light, giving a real smile for the first time, teeth shining like micro-constellations. It felt like a benediction more than anything else, a promise that not all stories end in abandonment.
Moments later, Eli faded from view, and the barista resumed wiping down the counter with a deliberate sort of care. They paused to glance at Alyx, offering a look that balanced pride and gentle challenge. “Guess you’ve got some writing to do.”
Alyx hardly heard them; their pen was already scrawling across fresh pages, words pouring out that might finally weave together the politics and the raw, beating human heart they’d wanted to capture all along.
To be continued…
Gemma Ortwerth 
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