That Monday morning, his biggest concern was neither the candidates’ reactions nor the political hangover on social media: he voted for one on Sunday and would do so in the second round for another, period; what he still wondered was why, even remembering that his grandmother paid 80 cents for house rent and sometime later his mother 400 colones, and having made no more a distant trip in his life than a short visit to the desperate Guanacaste heat, his identity card began with a 9, a fictitious number that gave him heartache the day he went to renew it to vote.
This neighbour of the old Reina cinema in Guadalupe, a lover of good bread and mortadella, has been making a living for 15 years selling café criollo (strong hot sweetened coffee) and homemade bread from his Vespa model 87, which on the last stop of his workday, he parks at the foot of the same sidewalk that he has turned into a refuelling area for late-night taxi drivers, exhausted ‘chinameros’ and the usual customers who pause and make a morning confession with this man of affable distrustful look and measured words.
His day starts at 10 pm the previous, covered with three layers of clothes and two hats to protect his bones from the early morning breeze, he travels with his two-wheeled kiosk to a couple of taxi stops, of whom he does not understand how they make ends meet in empty streets, either to collect the necessary for the entrance to classes for their children or to someday get out of the pressure of paying fees in a depressed market, there is not enough street for so many people and that also affects him.
At dawn in the centre, he unmoors his plastic container of sweet and salty bread rolls, “pupusas” filled with sweet cheese and custard, butter or mortadella sandwiches, and slices of dry cake; He hangs the bag of polyurethane cups on one arm of the crank and an empty one for the used ones on the other, and he considers the sale open by leaning on the drawer, where the wide thermos of black liquid and another small one with hot milk sleep, a corrugated cardboard box with thick hand-coloured letters, coffee for sale at 300. “You don’t even notice when you reach 60 and more, how incredible,” he stresses as he gives an account of his sandpaper and massage therapy for his sore left heel. Despite having taken some years of his youth drinking heavily, this man of small eyes and attentive ear still remembers better times, a little more comfortable times; his business is not enough to support his daughter and two granddaughters as he would like, so realistically, as he says, now he leaves out of his daily life the luxuries of meat and chicken and instead manages rice, beans, some seasonal vegetables and on weekends some eggs.
But he does not complain bitterly, his tone is rather compassionate, he knows that there are things about others that he does not see or understand, that many have it worse than him, so he gives credit to loyal customers and business neighbours, gives a couple of sips of coffee to a homeless person who in exchange offers a banana or orange and even crosses the street to give bread to an acquaintance who does not ask for it, but he knows is in trouble. This is how he insists on cultivating relationships of humble convenience and limited friendship; he thanks with an illuminated countenance and loud laughter the greetings by name and pats on the back, the honest questions about his health, and some request for his opinion. His motorcycle and steaming coffee turn that corner of frenetic pace into an intimate neighbourhood of two hours, of animated conversations between strangers, the discovery of other people’s realities and even the intimate ones of those who sweep the kitchens of politicians and names screamed on daily headlines; his sabotage is not only economic (many can’t even afford a cup of coffee and that’s why they look for him), it is an endearing bump in that other great bump to work on rush hour and perhaps the only moment in which many hear a good morning with a familiar tone.
This coffee and bread bartender makes that square meter an enviable anomaly, necessary for a city where stopping to make a living is by law a crime against public order. This is an attitude that Chepe should question itself if what it wants is to turn into productive inhabitants, and not just passers-by, those who, due to lack of options, have made its streets their main means of subsistence, perhaps and for example, with an inclusive resource similar to the one that in October 1956, due to the new nomenclature of the Civil Registry, created the party number 9 to formalize the births of children over 10 years old who were not registered.
That La Ciudad adds another number to his ID card is the least of all, that it recognizes him as part of it would seem a small gesture after three decades, but one that even if it doesn’t dispel all of Don Alfredo’s anxieties, at least it would offer him ways to keep some of them away with a little warmth under his soles.