“We’ve made some fine pie,” the man behind the counter at Atomix Café says with a smile a couple hours before the start of Sunday’s into-the-night “Twin Peaks” first-season marathon. A little after three, tables shift and a video projector on a plinth surfaces from under a white shroud. The white screen’s backed by red and brown blankets to keep out the falling autumn afternoon. A few flyers had been up for a week or so, and there’s not much of a crowd, but the effect is amusing, as owner Adam Paul says, “like doing homework in front of the television.”
The sound of Angelo Badalamenti’s unforgettable narco-lounge fills the dimmed space, like heads-down time in the all-purpose room. I wander in and out of the course of the next eight hours to catch fragments of the series: a mother murmuring ominously, “It must’ve happened about this time twenty-four hours ago” or Kyle Maclachan’s eyes agleam at piles of donuts stacked like crowned checkers, “A policeman’s dream!” Strangely, the brackish quality of the video projection makes the glossy images from 1990 look almost as weak-tea as David Lynch’s latest, “Inland Empire.”
Some customers are confounded, entering the dim room with no place to sit, but only a few bolt and run. Since the shop’s not even checking out the newest box set with its bells and whistles, the event seems as much as excuse to make pie as anything else. “I definitely think that was a big part of it,” says Jeremiah Barber, 24, a server-performance artist who supervised the pies, made with crust from new employee Wendy Lynn Zeldin, who’d worked at “a big pie place.” A hand-calligraphed sign—which would not have looked out of place on the show—for “Atomix’s Twin Peaks Coffee + Pie Fest” offers $2.25 slices of pumpkin, cherry, apple, peach-raspberry, vegan cheesecake with fresh raspberry and vegan chocolate mousse. (The house blend was complemented by fresh-brewed Ethiopian Sidamo and “Motor Oil.”)
“It’s hard to have lots of specials since we have so few employees,” Barber says, “if you were trying to find fresh peaches the same day every week.” But for a one-shot, nothing’s wrapped in plastic. “We could buy peaches and apples and raspberries, everything from scratch, which helps.” (The apple pie’s past juicy, like some bacon-caramel concoction.) The pie was the hit, superb pie porn and crust-snuff, with patrons bragging on the peach-raspberry. “I heard more than one person say that was the best slice of pie,” Barber says. “That’s awesome.” A fine complement to Agent Cooper’s “That is one damn fine cup of coffee.” What could you do next, owner Adam Paul’s asked? He mulls. “Maybe ‘Freaks and Geeks.'”
He thinks, nods. “Pizza. Pepperoni pizza.” (Ray Pride)
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