Chapter 3
CJ
‘Oh meu deus!’ CJ says as she slurps at an iced coffee her cousin Miguel has been perfecting for almost two weeks now, since the start of spring.
Every morning, after they’ve had time to adjust to the day, Miguel gets closer to the right recipe, the sugar syrup to espresso to milk ratio getting better and better by degrees.
It’s not a hard job to be official taste tester.
Not a hard job at all. ‘This is so it, dude. Todd, isn’t this it? ’
Miguel, CJ’s only cousin, is on the Portuguese side of the family – and proud of it.
As such, he has long protested against the monstrosity that is iced coffee.
Lisbon’s coffee culture is better known for its strong, short espressos: café, or bica, is the usual fare, or there’s carioca, a small cup of espresso with a lot of water, abatanado, a larger coffee with less concentrated espresso and some water, and pingado, an espresso with a drop of milk.
Then there’s garoto, a drop of espresso in milk, and meia de leite – equal parts coffee and milk in a large cup – or gal?o, a tall coffee in a glass with a quarter coffee and three-quarters milk, similar to a caffè latte, but since it is Portuguese, infinitely better.
At Querido, Miguel’s café a few doors down, the one thing the coffee has in common is that it is all served hot.
As in: iced coffee cannot, and will not, grace his establishment.
All this said, the great iced coffee experiment is under way because the love of Miguel’s life is an American and so, after years of requests, Miguel has finally relented and decided to embrace the quirk of such a thing, of iced coffee – albeit in the privacy of their own home.
Todd is still campaigning for iced coffee to go on the menu at Querido, not least for the tourists, but on this Miguel will not relent.
Iced coffee in seclusion, for the sake of his marriage’s lasting happiness, is one thing.
Iced coffee out there in full view of the world, where other coffee roasters – or worse, his mother – might see, is quite another.
He’d rather divorce than be seen actively promoting an American import of such déclassé nature.
His limit is importing smokin’ hot American husbands, and that’s final.
‘Damn, she’s right.’ Todd slurps, shirtless and barefoot, a six-foot-five ex-high school football player with the soft, gooey insides of a season five Louis Litt.
He swirls his metal straw around so the ice bangs against the side of the glass.
The sound makes CJ think of summer, of sweltering sun on bare skin, and bad decisions made from the pure delirium of humid, sultry nights. ‘This is your best yet, for sure.’
‘For my sins,’ sighs Miguel, who happens to look like Thor (after the haircut).
Todd holds out his glass for Miguel to sample more, but Miguel shakes his head, nose wrinkled, making a point of being above it.
‘Mam?e, can I try it?’
Jorge and his mop of blond curly hair clamour up off the floor, train set discarded in favour of sitting at the breakfast bar with the grown-ups.
This is all he has ever known, life with mam?e and his two uncles who could be underwear models or the month of July in a pin-up calendar.
He loves it. Loves them all, and how much they all love each other. He exists within an abundance of love.
‘Just a little, OK?’ CJ says. ‘It’s got caffeine in it, and caffeine isn’t good for little bodies.’
‘I’m not little,’ Jorge says, defiantly. ‘I’m a big boy!’
CJ concedes his point. ‘You didn’t let me finish,’ she says. ‘I was going to say, caffeine isn’t good for little bodies, and it’s also not good for big boys and their strong bodies if they want to get any stronger.’
Jorge has already stopped listening and reached for her glass. CJ, Miguel and Todd watch on indulgently as his pudgy hands grab the straw, his pink lips pursing prematurely as he leans towards it. He takes three big gulps, and then spits it out everywhere dramatically.
‘Ewww!’ he cries, shocked that anyone would trick him into consuming such a beverage. ‘That’s bad!’
‘Correct, my Portuguese boy,’ Miguel says, leaning over him with a paper towel to mop up the mess.
When Jorge displays behaviour directly from his mother’s side, he is CJ’s Little English Boy, but when spontaneously speaking Portuguese over English, devouring a plate of traditional sardinhas assadas, lamenting his love for mid-2010s Cristiano Ronaldo – he is unfailingly Miguel’s Portuguese Boy.
‘You’re a snob,’ CJ accuses him, Todd looking between them and zipping his lips, slyly issuing a wink at CJ to thank her for her support but unwilling to play with actual skin in the game, out loud, at least for this round.
‘Just add it to the damned menu. Surely the profit margin more than makes up for your outdated coffee prejudices.’
‘No,’ says Miguel. ‘I cannot. It will kill a part of my soul.’
CJ glances to Todd, then Jorge, then back to Miguel and rolls her eyes.
‘Oh crap,’ Todd says. ‘Look at the time. I’m late.’ He downs his coffee, grabs his shirt from where it is slung over the sofa, and searches out his shoes.
‘Dammit,’ CJ declares. ‘Me too. I’ll walk out with you, Todd. Jorge, I love you. Come give me a kiss. Rodrigo’s mam?e is picking you both up from school so you can play, and then I’ll pick you up from their house after work, all right?’
‘All right. Love you,’ he says, reaching out for another taste of the iced coffee, and this time deciding he does like it, after all, swallowing it down several times. It does not go unnoticed by his Uncle Miguel.
‘Your English son,’ he says, with a discontented sigh, ‘has terrible taste.’ He launches at him with tickling hands as punishment, and Jorge squeals delightedly. ‘Terrible!’
CJ can hear the tittering of flirting before she rounds the corner to the main floor of CoLab, which isn’t an uncommon sound.
With forty or so expats at any one time, CoLab is a hotbed of incestuous lots-of-work-but-lots-of-play behaviour.
Folks arrive and immediately commence hanging out in one another’s circles, the people who have been here a week or two longer revealing their Lisbon ‘secrets’ to the next wave of arrivals, and CJ sees it almost daily, the forming of new connections, the way people start out with shy hellos and then get waved over for table football and invited out for dinner, and then the way CoLab trips and excursions further disarm everyone, long travel days and more new locales, with the added social lubricant of Portuguese beer and wine.
Eyes constantly meet over the brim of MacBooks by day, and by night CJ has heard what happens.
As in, not heard the rumours, but Heard.
What. Happens. She’s often joked that the water at CoLab is infused with a magical potion that makes even the most average player ace the game of seduction: it’s a working holiday for most people here, and so they enjoy it as much as they can.
And the things the maids have reported finding in guests’ quarters!
Truly horrifying: mirrors moved to face the bed, bodily fluids of every kind on the bedsheets, adult toys discarded without a care for modesty, and often the batteries missing from the TV remote. That happens more than you’d think.
Luis is responsible for engineering a lot of this behaviour, with his self-titled role as ‘Vibes Director’.
It is testament to his charisma that he’s able to pull the designation off.
Luis hangs around the place issuing compliments and flirtations, and is in charge of organising the cool activities and excursions they collectively put on as part of CoLab’s extensive social calendar.
He also does most of the graphic design – not realising just how talented he is at it, as it goes – so when he’s not recruiting sign-ups for beach trips and fado nights, he’s also at a computer in the communal hall along with everybody else, working on flyers for the website or posting to social media to make sure CoLab stays booked and busy.
CJ isn’t surprised to see that said computer is currently abandoned, and Luis is instead leaning against the worktop at the far end of the hall, where the ‘mess’ is, or work kitchen.
Another day, another low-slung jeans and tight T-shirt combo for him, sunglasses perched atop his head, stopping his messy black hair from flopping into his eyes.
His T-shirt has ridden up slightly, revealing a sliver of buffed, bronzed stomach, the light trail of hair that leads from his belly button into his underwear a suggestion for all who look, without him having to say a word.
He’s making the new girl laugh, the one who came in last night.
God, she was haughty. Polished RP vowels, designer clothes, entitled attitude.
CJ just wanted to get home, but had to wait to check her in.
The girl was almost three hours late, without letting them know, and CJ had missed Jorge’s bedtime because of it – an unforgivable sin after she’d already missed yesterday morning, too, in order to perform naked acrobatics at Luis’s house.