He stood and watched as I warmed a cup by running hot water over it, and when steam began to hiss through the milky froth he stepped to the side so that he could look over my shoulder. Boiling water shot through the grounds and an aromatic, oily layer rose to the surface. Before the foam could separate or the crema lighten, the milk was poured in along with the espresso and they swirled like a nebula unwinding itself in a galaxy the color of a monk’s robe. I put the cup on a saucer and gave it to him, gently, the way a nurse wistfully hands over a newborn.

Drinking it, he contemplated the way I was now cleaning the machine, washing my spoons.

“You make a good cup of coffee,” he said.
“The milk takes something away from the flavor, I think.”
“If I’d wanted to judge the coffee bean, I’d have ordered a Ristretto,” he said sharply. “I said I thought you made a good cup of coffee because the Cappuccinno is the hardest to make correctly, especially for Americans, and you have made one of the best I’ve had.”
“I noticed you watching me,” I said.

He laughed and set the cup down, rattling, on the saucer. Steam rose up out of it and snaked between us as people walked by on their way to work. The man had an Italian accent and he had been visiting the espresso stand for about a week, wearing a different, well-tailored suit every day.

“I have been found out,” he laughed.
“Yes, I’ve been watching you work every day for many days now. Every day I have asked you to make a different drink, and have seen the honor you bring to your craft in your technical precision and respect for the integrity of the drink. Today was your final test, and your efforts have made a great impression on me. You see, I notice these things, even when no one else does. It is my business to be so observant, therefore forgive me.”
“Who are you,” I asked.
“A-ha!” he said, his eyebrows raising suddenly. From inside his jacket pocket he produced a business card and extended it to me between two fingers. The whole motion was quite fluid, practiced.

“You’re Basilio Domenico,” I exclaimed. Some of the people walking by turned to look at me, not because the name meant anything to them, but because I had almost shouted the words.

Basilio bowed slightly to me, offered me a hand that had as many rings as fingers, and I shook it. Basilio Domenico was a very important man.

“You do not belong in this place. Come work for me instead.”

So I left Luau Jack’s Expresso Hut, even though I wasn’t unhappy with my life. Very few baristas get an offer from Basilio Domenico, and nobody gets a second one. My apron was hanging on its hook when Luau Jack came in that afternoon to pick up the recycling.

At first it was great. I worked at one of Basilio’s fancy coffee bars, and he paid me three times what I was making before. I made mostly Caff Lattes and Americanos for capricious rich folks who tipped staggeringly well or not at all. We had the finest ingredients to work with, and I made some of my best espressos in those days. I met a lot of famous people, like Jack Nicholson, who joked with Basilio and had a booth waiting for him, always, whenever he was in town. Camille Paglia came in some times, but she drank green tea and we had little to talk to each other about.

After a couple of years, though, Basilio told me I was only to brew espressos for him and his friends, and so I worked at the parties he would throw in his house in this hills overlooking the ocean. Even more celebrities were there, and people who were powerful but ran in circles unknown to me. Once I made a Lungo shot for a swarthy man and his wife, and I saw his picture in the paper the next day: he was an exiled dictator from South America.

The people at Basilio’s parties would ask me to mix drugs in with their espressos. I learned how to mix in the proper proportions of cocaine so as not to overwhelm the flavor of the roast, and how to grind ecstasy so that it would properly dissolve. Over time, they would ask me to put more and more drugs and less and less espresso, until I felt that what I was making could no longer be called an espresso drink by any stretch of the imagination.

The guests would get very drunk, and would act unpredictably, and sometimes I was afraid of them. Once, a famous football player groped me, and I didn’t know what to do. Basilio would tell me, “do not worry, I will take care of you,” but I was less and less sure of that.

I would not call our relationship abusive, but Basilio certainly took advantage of my naivety. When it became clear to me that he no longer cared about my “technical precision” or “the integrity of the drink,” I showed my contempt for him with every glance. As befitted his talent for observation, he quickly recognized how I felt about him, and he laughed at me to illustrate the insignificance of my hatred. It was the same laughter he had given me the first day I’d met him, I suddenly realized, but I hadn’t seen it for what it was.

The last straw came when I was asked to make a Cappuccino for Ray Liotta at an Oscar after-party. I wasn’t paying attention anymore, and the foam I poured was frothy and tasteless. Because I respected Ray Liotta’s work so much, I went to pour it down the drain and make a new one.
“What do you think you’re doing,” sneered Basilio.
“This Cappuccino is an abortion,” I said, “I won’t serve it, not to Ray Liotta.”
“I don’t care if it’s black as tar and bitter as blood,” he said, “serve it anyway. Nobody cares, it makes no difference to anybody but you.”

Basilio found my apron hanging on a peg in the kitchen when he came in later to do lines of cocaine with a tennis star.

I went back to Luau Jack’s Expresso Hut on my knees, and Luau Jack told me to stand up, make coffee, forget the past. He is not glamorous, but he is a good man, and we make good espresso, and you will find us there between 7am and 6pm, Monday through Friday.