Secret Connections Over Morning Lattes

A Little Secret

For the past few months, Lucy and I have been stopping by GAIL’s for our morning lattes. As is often the case, the staff start to recognize you as a regular, and you, in turn, remember them.

With one particular woman, we developed a special bond—us both suspecting that the other spoke Russian. Her Slavic accent was pretty strong, and I somehow revealed a bit of my own as well. But for all those months, we continued to exchange sly smiles and kept our little secret.

Honestly, I’ve been getting a kick out of this undercover game. Just yesterday, at a Ukrainian salon, I was doing my best to put on a British accent while hiding my phone screen from the stylist. It has nothing to do with politics or anything like that; I just love the idea of stepping into an entirely different identity for a couple of hours and trying to blend in with the locals.

Now, back to that woman at the café. One morning, out of the blue, she spoke to me in Russian! We exchanged a couple of phrases before casually switching back to English. That moment felt special in our growing bond. The spell was broken, and the absence of our secret made me feel a bit more at ease.

Once, on a weekend, it was bustling with people. I ordered my coffee in English like everyone else. As I was about to leave the café, I suddenly decided to call out to her, “Thank you so much! Goodbye!”

A couple of days later, I walked into GAIL’s as usual and saw two women who looked strikingly similar. One was the woman who had first spoken to me in Russian, and the other was the one who recently had quite the surprise at my little outburst.

It’s funny how small connections can lift your spirits!