I was told to go to this café on Eleventh Street, just off Fifth. Go for the chocolate croissants, I was told, go for the coffee.

So.

Café Regular has a pressed tin ceiling and pressed tin walls painted paprika. There are two silver carafes on the counter, for milk and half-and-half. There is a small creamy-white porcelain vase of silver teaspoons. There is also a wire pyramid of spiral egg cups. At half past six in the evening, only one egg spiral is left filled. The pyramid is topped with a salt shaker, which leans. There is chocolate to be had, in an old tin cigarette display, and there is a selection of smiling teas. The menu is painted in white on the mirror behind the bar. It includes: Iced chocolate. Fresh orange juice. Egg. (The egg is fifty cents.) Also behind the bar, except when he is outside changing a lightbulb, or inside sitting and reading the paper, is Martin with the sad eyes and the Irish “r”s.

And.

There is a bell on the door, a real bell, not a buzzer, not an electronic bing-bong. The first time the bell rang, a large woman came in, puffing. She ordered a coffee to go, she was on her way to work, at the end of her sentences she laughed at nothing funny. The second time the bell rang, it was Marcos, who called Teresa on his cellphone: “Are you at home?” (The “h” was pronounced like it was being collected, with a small scraper, from the back of his throat. Marcos is not from around here.) “Are you at home?” he said, and then he said again, “Are you at home?” “Come join me,” he said, “I’m at Martin’s. I will buy you a coffee. Or even a cappuccino.” Later, we were talking about the Y. “The cockroaches race with you in the pool,” he said. “I think you’re exaggerating,” Martin said. “Cockroaches can’t swim.” “These ones can,” Marcos said. “They’ve adapted.” The third time the bell rang, it was two women, who asked for a chocolate muffin. “It’s not chocolate,” Martin said, “it’s bran.” So one of the women said to the other, “Do you like bran?” I mean, come on, what kind of question—and especially if your original destination was chocolate.... But then the other woman said, “Yes.” Wha—? “Yes,” she said, “but let’s not get it, because I have a protein bar at home.” Who are you people?

I drank my orange juice, sweet and pulpy in a giant Coca-Cola ice-cream-sundae glass, while misty condensation crept up the window panes outside.