Just to my right a man and his daughter are playing a Cactus Canyon pinball game. My table is round, stoney-colored with a brass rim. My coffee came with a three cube "Cafés Richard" sugar packet and a matching "Cafés Richard" cup and saucer. The man is getting a little too much into his pinball game, smacking it around while his daughter climbs over a bar stool, bored. Now it is her turn, but she immediately loses her ball. Then they leave and another guy takes their place; he is even more violent with the machine.

There are three other chairs at my table, but I cannot imagine four people packed into this small space. The bottom of the windows are frosted; one of them has a golden image of Sacre-Coeur. There's a TV that was showing music videos for a while, but someone changed it to a bike race; the pop rock songs that played in the background have been replaced by middle eastern melodies.