Benny was a drug addict, and he knew it. He wasn’t overly concerned about his condition. It was common knowledge that millions of his countrymen shared the same fate and still managed to live fruitful and satisfying lives. Every night, he was happy to go to bed early, that much sooner to wake to his next cup of coffee. Sweet, full, warm, and delicious coffee. Sometimes, expectant like a child on Christmas Eve, he tried to put himself to sleep by imagining the perfect cup. Every morning found him bounding down the stairs not to find gaily wrapped gifts, but that wonderful cup of coffee morning after morning that he never tired of. For a special treat, sometimes he brought home a new flavor of gourmet coffee from the corner grocery store.
He had a favorite coffee mug, a hand-made ceramic cup he had bought years ago from a roadside stand on a trip with Maggie. He bought one for each of them, but hers had broken in some mishap years ago. He guarded his own cup religiously. No one else was allowed to use it. The strange glaze made him think of hiking in a dark cold autumn forest below a gray ceramic sky.
Practically every morning was the same ritual. The five or ten minutes it took to carefully boil the water, brew the coffee, pour in the cream, and smell that deep familiar aroma heightened the anticipation of that first sip of the morning. It was, of course, more than the flavor that tickled his giddy expectation. Almost immediately, after a few minutes at most, he could feel the energy coursing through his veins. His second cup was never quite the same. He knew from experience that he couldn’t take caffeine after about three o’clock in the afternoon. To do so would interrupt his sleep and diminish the pleasure of that wonderful cup the next morning.
Benny did his best writing in those first few hours after his coffee. He was never so alive as in his time governed by caffeine. For whatever reason – the combination of the caffeine with his own natural bodily fluids, the freshness of his mind, the unconscious inspiration of his dreams – his ideas flowed like a fountain in the desert into an unbroken stream of brilliance that he almost never quite seemed to be able to duplicate later in the day.
Once in a blue moon, if he stayed up past midnight – which he seldom did – some strange inner prompting would come to him. It was as if someone unseen, hidden in the closet or under the bed, was whispering words with mere suggestions of his own clouded thoughts, a chaos of neurons acting with some hidden purpose, his own body and mind a mere vessel for some objective wider than he could understand. He was reminded of this strangeness whenever he poured the cold cream into his steaming hot coffee. A universe of patterns, infinitesimally small and detailed, swirled and boiled into a model of thermodynamic (energy). Where there had been plain black, hot coffee had become a maelstrom of fractal complexity by the mere suggestion of cold, white cream. His thoughts – everyone’s thoughts, the very act of conscious attention – were a cloud of activity not dissimilar from his coffee vision. Perhaps our conscious thoughts were a window into another dimension.
Benny laughed out loud at his own joke. “You see?” he thought to himself as he slapped his thigh. This is exactly what he meant. He never thought such things after the madness of the work-a-day world overwhelmed his senses. Some day, he knew he would need to shed his present occupation for the humbler and quieter life of a philosopher. Some day, somehow, some way, but not now.
“What’s the joke?” Benny jumped as Elliot’s voice came from behind him, returning with its owner from the rest room.
“Oh, nothing,” Benny answered subdued, wiping a spill from the table. “I was just thinking of something.” Elliot waited expecting to share in the entertainment. Then Benny added, “I’ve forgotten what it was already. Say,” he said with a tinge of excitement in his voice, “How about a nice cup of coffee?” Benny was always on the lookout for another unwitting enabler of his own vices.
They were sitting at a booth in the restaurant across the street from the DC Herald office. Benny had had his primary cup of coffee earlier before they left the house. Now he was working on his auxiliary cups.
One of the surlier waitresses had brought Elliot a cup of coffee that he was just about to sample when he asked, “So, what is it that we have to move?”
“The office,” said Benny as he took a sip of his own.
“What about the office?”
“We have to move out this morning before Sid changes the locks.”
Elliot practically dropped his cup as he exhaled a sort of truncated cough. “What? I didn’t know you were moving the whole office! I thought you had one thing you needed help with!”
“Oh?” answered Benny innocently. “Well, the office is one thing. Ah, I see. You mean there’s a lot of things in the one office. Gee, I’m sorry you misunderstood.”
Elliot said and flailed his arms excitedly, “I didn’t misunderstand anything! You said you wanted to move something! Some thing! One thing! Singular!”
“Office is singular. I need to move one office. Look, we’re here now, so let’s just get it done.”
There was that get it done again. Elliot was beginning to understand the affinity between Benny and Ed. Their minds both worked in mysterious ways. “How long is this going to take?” he asked in resignation.
“It shouldn’t take long at all. I’ve got experts lined up for the job. It can’t take very long anyway. It’s got to be done while Sid is out. If he finds out what we’re doing, it will be bad.”
There was that ‘we’ again. Benny explained his plan as Elliot listened, befuddled to find himself so deeply engaged in something that didn’t have anything remotely to do with getting an entire travelogue written in a slim six weeks. Elliot recalled the Herald office as possessing half a dozen or so rooms stacked high with all manner of boxes, newspapers, and miscellaneous equipment, and shook his head in disbelief. “There’s no way in the world we can sneak all that stuff out without Sid knowing.”
Benny shook a handful of nickel-sized pills into his hand and downed them with a sip of coffee. “Ye of little faith! Look; don’t let it upset you. I’ve got it all planned out.”
Elliot observed, “You know, you seem take a lot of antacids.”
“I get a lot of stomach aches. It’s from all the stress of running a newspaper in a major metropolitan city.”
“Have you ever thought that it might have something to do with all the coffee you drink?”
“What could coffee possibly have to do with stomach aches?”
“I’ve heard coffee is very acidic.”
“So’s your stomach. What’s that got to do with it?”
“Have you ever tried to go for a week or so without drinking coffee?
“Why would I do that? I like coffee, although this here leaves something to be desired.”
Benny was swirling his half-filled cup – his second that morning – and didn’t see the waitress’ displeased expression having overheard. She turned away with her coffeepot having changed her mind about offering Benny a refill.
“Maybe your stomach aches would go away,” Elliot continued.
“I don’t think so. It’s not that kind of stomachache. It’s more of a stressed-out kind of stomach ache.”
“Maybe you wouldn’t be so stressed out if you drank less coffee.”
“What is your problem with coffee?”
“I don’t have a problem. I’m just making an observation.”
“That’s fine. But that still doesn’t demonstrate any causal relationship between the two things…”
Elliot noticed two men hopping out of a good-sized moving van that had just pulled up. “I think our guys might be here.”
Benny turned to look out the window, and got up to greet the men. As they came through the door, Benny said to the older of the two, “Are you Sergio?”
The younger man said, “I’m Sergio. This is my Uncle Pedro. But he doesn’t speak English.”
As Benny explained the essentials of the job, Elliot noticed, but did not mention, that a trim uniformed man had appeared suddenly and was writing a parking ticket for the van. Benny told the movers that they had to move an office full of stuff around the corner to another building.
“No problem”, said Sergio.
“It’s a little complicated, because there’s a situation with the landlord, explained Benny. “We’ve got to move quickly, quietly, and surreptitiously.”
Sergio grew a little suspicious and asked, “When do we get paid?”
Benny assured him, “You’ll be paid promptly and handsomely as soon as the job is done.” Then Benny turned to Elliot, handed him a mobile phone, and said, “Give us about twenty minutes and then call me up at the office. When you see Sid leaving, do your thing like we talked about.” Benny motioned the others out the door and led the way upstairs to the Herald office.
thermodynamics of ideas 