Theatre of breakfast with strangers

David Sherman

We indulge in a curiously intimate experience with one or two dozen strangers every morning. We have breakfast. We all serve ourselves from two counters – one food, one drink. We dance around the food table and coffee machines without acknowledging anyone, making sure not to brush a hip, elbow an elbow.

The window into strangers’ lives is different than a restaurant. We sleep in rooms side by side, pass each other on the stairs. Share the view of the sea, the same choice of help-yourself breads, meats, cheeses and fruits, jams, honey, Nutella, butter, stand in line for toast machine, coffee machines, try and grab the last piece of frog melon before the anonymous soul behind you grabs it.

Courtesy ends at the fruit platters.

The brevity of the insight into strangers’ lives stokes the imagination. Some linger; the day is young, unwitting performers on the stage of the daily ritual for an audience that is mostly indifferent.

The couples that ignore each other as they eat, no smiles. Do they love each other? Are the relationships going out like the tide? Or perhaps complete and comfortable?

The couple where the lovely young woman’s smile is greeted by her partner’s cold shoulder. She’s trying. He drops his phone and turns his back to head for the waiting groaning board. Her smile turns off like a stoplight.

The phone couples. There are many. They eat staring at the elephant glass. Sometimes phone in hand, fork in the other, sometimes phone is glowing tableware, leaving hands free for feeding. They continue staring at screens when they’ve chewed the last piece of toast, the last bit of hard yolk. Perhaps they text each other to say, “Let’s go.”

The couples where one, usually the man, is on his phone as he eats, his partner eating by herself or talking to him as he eats, stares at screen or types on same and, perhaps, listens.

There are those who find dopamine in each other, like the elderly duo last week. He was over 80, she was in her 70s, but they locked eyes during most of the meal, held each other’s hand and left hand in hand, the man walking slow, both blissed out day after day.

Was it a new romance, a rekindled romance, was one of them dying or losing it so they were making every minute count? They were checking out when I came back from a morning stroll. I wanted to ask, “How does your love stay locked and on display? How long? What secrets can you share? What secrets won’t you share? Does she always butter your bread? Do you always bring her coffee? Even at home?”

There are the “normal couples” that eat and chat as you imagine they’d do at home. There are loud couples who are alone in a dining room of 20. Vociferous groups of six, yelling loud enough to be heard above crashing waves as if they were at the beach. Except, they don’t notice they’re not. Or care. Or converse across the globe on FaceTime, and share the conversation with everyone. The enclave is theirs.

The views are choice and difficult to choose between. On the right, the sliding glass doors and the Atlantic and its endless sky, the motionless clouds that form and dissolve rather than move. To my left, the moveable feast, strangers assembling and consuming, most days ignoring the other guests that fill the rooms over our heads.

It changes day to day, week to week. Some go through their routines without regard to the other humans in the room, guests as invisible as the mostly Black staff that wash toilets, wipe floors, change linen, stock cups and coffee machines.

The Black staff from Cape Verde, earning poverty wages, become visible once you ask their name, introduce yourself, say, “Thank you” or ask, “Tudo bem?” leave a few euros.

Some days, people will smile, say hello, nod, acknowledge we’re sharing a remarkable place. Some will engage, converse, Americans apologize for Trump.  

In a restaurant, plates are prepared in a kitchen and served. Here, it is people’s choice, like a shopping cart at a supermarket. A wide selection to wash down with a wide selection of coffees, juices, waters and animal and plant-based milks. If you are what you eat, and how you eat, this is a smorgasbord for the imagination as well as the appetite.

One can decipher or imagine their neighbour from how and what they eat, how they treat who they’re eating with, how they treat the staff. Mostly, they’re ignored.

Yes, croissant can be bathed in Nutella. Cereal buried in slices of pineapple and apple, drizzled with honey and jam.

There are the few who covertly stuff bananas, apples and pears into their pockets to, I imagine, get them through lunch. A few discreetly manufacture sandwiches on their lap, slapping cheese and cold meats between slices of bread. It’s then wrapped in napkins and squirreled away. Free breakfast becomes free lunch, perhaps tea time, as well.

The detritus of plates, cups, cutlery, leftovers, eggshells, empty condiments packets are left for the invisible and the unacknowledged to clean. No one leaves a penny. After all, food appears, tables cleaned, dishes washed, by magic.