I smiled at being caught in an unguarded state of preoccupation with my dark thoughts. Then I took a sip of the decaf.
“It’s good. Tastes like the real thing,” I said, and this time I was telling the truth.
“Nothing hard about making a good cup of coffee,” Lillian said to this customer as she lit up another cigarette.
And that statement provided something of an answer to my questions about Lillian and her business. Because the coffee at the Metro Diner didn’t have to be as good as it was, nor did the excellent food served there have to be so carefully prepared or so reasonably priced. That was not how we did things where I happened to work. The company that employed me strived only to serve up the cheapest fare that its customers would tolerate, churn it out as fast as possible, and charge as much as they could get away with. If it were possible to do so, the company would sell what all businesses of its kind dream about selling, creating that which all our efforts were tacitly supposed to achieve: the ultimate product –– Nothing. And for this product they would command the ultimate price –– Everything.