Les Bijoux

Rita Ariyoshi

He stepped from Dublin’s fine and familial mist into the aromatic modernity of the coffee shop. Tim thought this to be the biggest change wrought by forty-plus years in the European Union: the drift of social life away from the pubs to the coffee shops with their uncomfortable chairs. He missed the swarming, warm clubbiness of the pubs, the music that tore the heart from the breast of a living man, the clumsy poetry that at times touched the ancient runic magic. He missed it all, even though he hadn’t had a drink since his sixtieth birthday, four years ago. It was a loss, plain and simple, both culturally and personally. Except for the nice coffee-shop pastries. . He loved a good lemon cake with crisp, acidic frosting that cracked at the onslaught of teeth and melted sweetly at the back of the tongue.