The Clover Café (or simply, “The Clover” as people who knew it called it) was inside a courtyard formed by some old buildings in a neighborhood near uptown. “If you don’t know, you don’t go,” could have been its tagline, if it had one – but it didn’t.

Long ago, the neighborhood was split down the middle by railroad tracks carrying freight trains at night. They would rumble through town with their distinctive whistle, a sound you either hated or loved. Brooke never met anyone who didn’t have an opinion on those whistles.

This once vibrant community had been home to a mix of ordinary folks where men worked in the textile mills and machine shops, women kept house, and children walked to school. At least until the jobs started going overseas. Now, the community was on hard times with crumbling buildings and boarded-up homes.

No one knew where the people went. Down to South Carolina perhaps, but to do what? Did anyone know? Did anyone care?

There wasn’t much hope until a developer convinced the people in Raleigh, the ones writing the state’s rules, how the land under the crumbling buildings and boarded up homes could be put back to work if the dirt was simply called, “Brown-Fields.”

It’s funny how simple, and life-changing, it can be when someone plays with words. Those two words, “Brown-Fields,” let the developers build places for people – to live, to eat, to shop, and to work – on land that had long been considered contaminated by the waste the mills and shops created.

Words, as much as policies, are important, thought Brooke. Like when the developer started calling the area “Historic,” instead of “Run Down.”

People asked, “How could something as simple as mere words change perceptions?”. But change did come, and now this was “the spot to be, and be seen.” All it took was a change in perception for something to become different, and then become real.

Mel was waiting when Brooke walked in at nine. They ordered and found a table as Brooke turned off her phone. She was trying not to look so often, or even check the time. Lately, she became worried if she had an addiction to her phone, the same way Mel had an addiction to drugs. Could they both be dependent on something, in hope of fitting in? Were all Xennials like that? She wanted to think about that – later.

After the usual pleasantries, Mel started in. “I won’t lie, those were terrible years. We were a family, and I was gettin’ the demons of my addiction tamed, until, WHAM, out of the blue they split up, sold the house, divided the money – two ways, not three – and my dad moved to Vancouver, maybe to be a lumberjack for all I know. Mom went to New York, saying how she was going to act, since she’d been doin’ it so well – married to him.”

Brooke took in a deep breath and let it out slowly as Mel kept talking about how she was now sharing a place with friends; teaching yoga three mornings a week, working afternoons in the skateboard shop next door, and hustling tables on weekends, when she needed the cash. She said she was clean now, with a tone Brooke believed.

Finally, when Brooke got a chance, she changed the subject to talk about the neighborhood, how Mel liked it and if she planned to stay. Mel was back on a roll, but this time she sounded more like the Chamber of Commerce than someone going through the drama of her parent’s divorce.

She started to glow as she went on about how much things had changed after the light rail started running on the old tracks. How people could ride all the way from the suburbs into town. Or like she did this morning. Bike up to the train (they had bike racks inside), hop off, peddle to coffee, then a short ride to yoga, then back to the shop. Later, the train took her home for the night.

Mel told Brooke how she wanted to make something of herself – someday.

“Just watch me, I’m not walkin’ out on this one.” She prayed to stay clean and that was her plan. She sold her car to save money for the downpayment of a place of her own. “Life’ll be good for this girl,” Mel emphatically pointed to herself, using the same tone she used to say she was clean.

The Clover was full that Friday when Blair, one of the twins who owned the place, took a break from restocking the shelves with donated books. Blair wanted to speak to Mel and meet her new friend. He flipped a chair around with its back facing them and sat down at their table like he was straddling a horse.

Blair’s family had owned the little sliver of land under the cafe and the other small buildings by the tracks for years. It wasn’t a big sliver, as slivers go, but it was big enough to show up on the maps the developers studied.

Back in its day, The Clover Café was a small grocery. It had a lunch counter to serve the workers in the mills and shops who lived in modest homes nearby. Now it was a hodgepodge of coffee and tea; used books and records; snacks (some healthy, most not); wine and beer; and things the local artists put up for sale. There wasn’t much order to the place, no signs or posters, just stuff stacked here and there. Another tagline could have been, “Keep looking. You’ll find it sooner or later.” But again, they didn’t use taglines at this café.

The odd assortment of buildings Blair and his brother owned around the coffee shop formed a small courtyard, well … more of an alley, really, where the brothers set up tables so folks could linger. There used to be large apartments above, with stairs leading up from the courtyard. But when times got hard, the apartments were remodeled and now there are smaller units with metal stairways hanging on the outside. “Apartments connected by a series of fire escapes – but in a good way,” was Brooke’s impression.

The brothers strung party lights over the courtyard and built a small stage where people could read poetry or offer political opinions. Some of the poetry was good. A lot of it wasn’t. The political opinions pretty much matched the mood of the neighborhood and wasn’t going to change how anyone voted – if they voted at all.

Katie, the singer who lived upstairs, often stoped in the courtyard on her way home. She’d pull out her guitar and step on stage, offering more wisdom than any of the political harangues. When she was finished, and Blair’s brother locked up the store, she’d put her guitar away and use the fire escape to go home.

Blair was forced off his horse of a chair when Fred, aka ‘Da Mayor,’ walked in. He excused himself from Mel and Brooke, his new friend, to see why Fred was motioning him over to the side.

As the two men talked, Mel whispered to Brooke, how Fred wasn’t really the mayor of anything like a city, “He’s just called ‘Da Mayor’ by the artists in the mill across the tracks where they have their studios.” She explained how twice a year the mill opened for a show and the artists invited friends – the ones with money – in for a few drinks, enough so they’d buy a painting or two.

“Fred’s the one who puts it together and makes up the rules, so ‘Da Mayor’ fits Fred.”

“Wow, what an interesting neighborhood!” Brooke said, thinking how colorful the people seemed.

“Yeah, everybody’s just doing their own thing so it’s kinda like a small town inside a big city,” replied Mel, with her usual infectious grin.

Da Mayor lived next door to Katie, in one of the apartments, but with inside stairs. If you needed him, he was either having coffee, painting in his studio, or, if it was late, upstairs asleep – maybe.

When they finally said goodbye, Brooke gave Mel a hug, not the superficial hugs friends give to be polite but a real hug that said, “I love you and want to be your friend forever.”

Later she thought about how someone she’d liked, but never spent much time with in high school could have gone through so much and still be so kind and helpful. Brooke wanted to be more like Mel, she thought, not for the troubled past, but for the bright future.

As Mel walked to the doorway to leave, she stopped, turned her head over her shoulder to look back at Brooke, and said, not so much as a reminder, but an affirmation,

“Just watch me.”