Moby's, Mocha and Making It Across America...

Dear Juliet

Moby's on the 17th sounds like fun. I don't think I've got any major points to make today. Everything does seem to have fallen into place again, but my days would be full of neither coffee nor tea if I didn't have my dear Miss Landau for to go and see.

So, Dear Miss Landau lore...

Coffee shops were deeply entangled with the whole saga. Glasgow's always had a drinking culture, but the Seattle Company Coffee at 13 Renfield Street dared to bring pastries and mochas to its mean streets about 1998. Not being an enthusiastic denizen of Glasgow pubs, I went for overpriced coffee culture in a big way and became one of the first customers of the Starbucks which replaced it about a year later. I went there for about thirteen years and was heartbroken when it closed.

Actually, you know it quite well. That's where Xander was sitting when he first saw Dru in Roses. Thank God for standardisation. A Scottish Starbucks could stand in for a Sylmar Starbucks any day of the week.

Xander looked around, but saw no sign of demon, ghost or vampire. No, the night was quiet, the traffic light. The coffee shop’s interior was a soothing blend of purple and mocha furnished with tall pine chairs and dark stone counters, all gently illuminated in faded yellow by hanging teardrop lights. The sandwich selection sat on display behind clear Perspex, the bored barista stood on tired, heavy feet by the espresso machine and the only question waiting to be asked was whether his next mocha would be grande or venti.

He scanned the street again. Nothing, just shuttered storefronts, drifts of litter and the occasional 7-11 sign. Just that good-looking brunette in the long white dress floating languidly past.

She who walks in beauty by the night, he found himself thinking. She who looks…

Just.

            Like.

                        Drusilla.

Xander froze, snapped out of his reverie by the clear and present realisation that Spike’s ex-girlfriend, one of the former scourges of Europe and an insane killer who'd have made Jack the Ripper wet his pants in sheer terror, had come to an abrupt halt and was – right now – standing less than ten feet away from him.

Smiling at him.

Like Jack the Ripper before him, Xander nearly wet his pants. He sat there, all thoughts of  his next café mocha grande banished, wondering what was going to happen next.

(Drusilla's Roses)

13 Renfield Street also got a brief mention on p. 119 of Dear Miss Landau, and my cousin Keith kindly got me a subscription to Boingo so I'd be able to access Wi-Fi when I was crossing.

All I had to do was go into a Starbucks.

There's quite a lot of truth in the quip that I crossed America via Starbucks, and it seems I was something of a pioneer. Wi-Fi was extremely fragmented then, and Boingo was one of the first aggregators.

I remember sending the first blogs back to the National Autistic Society Scotland from a café on 5th Avenue, New York, and emailing you while eating my first street-legal, US issue Hershey bar and a New York cream cheese bagel:

Dear Miss Landau

The Empire State Building looks very nice today, and I’m emailing from right next door to it!

Jim always remembered how it felt when the first blogs started coming in:

One day we were discussing it at Morton’s, the next we were in the office with articles coming in from New York, Chicago and Amarillo…

In a sense, James really did steal the Enterprise, and we helped him do it. On the second or third of March, I was walking past Carol Evans’ office and she called me in. The first blogs were coming in over the Wi-Fi. We all clustered round her desk and I remember Carol saying:

‘He’s done it. He’s made it. He’s out there again and going for LA.’

 It wasn’t a TV episode, a play or a film. It was real, and it was surreal.”

(Dear Miss Landau)

Then we went out of contact in Chicago. Between Fremont Street and Barstow it was like coming in blind...

But then I saw that blessed Starbucks sign, and found you.

From: Juliet Landau                                                                                                                                                            Sent: 12 March 2010 09:26                                                                                                                                                      To: James Christie                                                                                                                                                            Subject: Schrader Boulevard

Hi James.

I hope this reaches you! Do you want to meet up on Sunday for breakfast at 10.30? I got Drusilla’s Redemption and look forward to reading it when I come up for air from all the TAKE FLIGHT stuff. My producing partner read it and loved it!!! He’d love to join us as well.                                                                                                                 

:)                                                                                                                                         

Juliet

Well, I got there in one piece. Possibly the first Asperger to cross the United States solo with the official backing of NAS Scotland.

In Redemption, Dru got back from Africa in one piece as well. There's a scene near the end worth recounting:

They walked down the street, Dru wincing in the late afternoon sunlight. Xander noticed she seemed even more distracted than usual. She was swaying, head down, one hand plucking at her skirt.

She looks like a child’s toy, he thought, a spinning top winding down with nowhere to go.

He loved her, and he just didn’t know what to do.

Then he saw the coffee shop on the corner.

“Dru…“

She swayed and spun.  People eddied past her, hurrying and disapproving, reminding her she was from London, but not part of it.

“Dru, I said I’d stand you a cup of coffee when it was all over.”

She came to a stop, looking as vulnerable as he’d ever seen her. He took her by the arm and led her into the shop. It wasn’t a Starbucks, but it would do. Pine chairs and tables filled the floorspace, framed posters from old Humphrey Bogart films adorned cream-coloured walls, a squashy sofa sat beneath an overhead fan which clicked gently as it revolved, and a curly haired Greek proprietor sat dozing behind the polished plastic counter.

The door shut behind them with a satisfying click and they found a couple of tall seats by the window, well placed to watch the tides of people walking by.

Dru sat downcast. He bought them both mugs of coffee, and she silently warmed her hands on hers the same way she had in Los Angeles.

Xander waited for her to say something. It had been a kaleidoscopic few months, from the Fall of Sunnydale to the house on Candlewood Drive. Dru’s own arrival in the San Fernando Valley and the way they’d fallen in love, then the parting of the ways to London, Cleveland and Rome. Great Russell Street, the Council and the Congo…

It sure had been a hectic time, but in all the frenzy of adventure and change there was one thing they’d forgotten.

“We’ve graduated,” he said, meeting Dru’s eyes. “We were kids.  All parts of a tale in a small California town we’ll never see again, but now we’ve scattered across the earth like swallows and the big bad world, well, it’s tougher than any Hellmouth could ever be.”

Dru nodded, looking about ten years old. 

“You’re right to be scared of humans,” he said to her. “After what we saw in the Congo, I’m as scared as you are, but you’re also the bravest…”

“Oh, stop it!” she said suddenly. “I’m not brave! Dr Duthie telling me how heroic I was just reminded me how afraid I am. I didn’t used to be. I didn’t know what day or year it was, and I didn’t care. I was away in my own little world talking to my dollies. I was a silly child for a hundred years and now, now…”

He saw her hands beginning to flap and knew she was going to reach her climax and come out with it at any second.

“Now I’ve got to be a bloody grown-up, just like you!” she exploded.

He looked at her calmly as she wound down, and took a long sip of coffee.

“We’re all a bunch of scared children, Dru. It just takes a lot of maturity to admit it, so I guess you really have grown up. And, silly child or not, all I want to do is stay with you.”

“I don’t deserve you…” she started to say, flapping.

“Shut up, Dru,” he said, gently and kindly. "Yes, you do.”

Her face broke into the widest smile he’d ever seen and she buried her head in his chest. Her hand found his and they sat there together all that evening. Not really noticing the overhead fan clicking and not really seeing the endless flocks of strangers passing them by, away in their own little world and worrying no more about what was to come.

(Drusilla's Redemption)

I made this place up. I don't know if it really exists, but it might.

Years later, I saw the first Starbucks in Seattle. I might see it for the second time soon, but I still miss the old place on Renfield Street.

Miss you, too.

Love,

James