‎"Going back to bed never makes the motel coffee taste better." -- Deepak, Jr.

 

You get those little fucking two-cup pots with a packet of some woody material inside of it that is billed as coffee.  You plug the pot in and fill it full of reinvented water that came out of the sewage plant down the street, and put the packet in the top, then push the little button at the bottom of the coffee maker.  A red light goes on.  You climb back into the bed and drift off, dreaming of Arabica beans in thick broth in street side cafes in Turkey.  You wake up, 15 minutes later, as the small water heater in the otherwise silent room gurgles the last drop of recycled piss into the two-cup pot, exhaling a last laborious puff of steam into the room.  You walk to the pot.  The color in it is suspicious; the odor is not quite what your nose was hoping for.  But…the allure of caffeine is like a magnet directed at the soul.  Against your better instincts, you pour the thin elixir into the Styrofoam container on the table.  It is sort of brown in color.  There is a hint of battery acid in the air.  Nevertheless, your trembling hands lift the cup to your lips.  The hot liquid flows down your throat, killing everything its path.  You smile.