Fiction
The alarm on my cell phone drags me, kicking and screaming, out of sleep. It's 9:30. For a few minutes I just lay there, listening to the high-pitched shrieking rendition of Dixieland and cursing silently. I briefly entertain the notion that I set my alarm for three hours too early last night because there is no way that that was five hours of sleep but I look over at the clock and my cursing becomes audible.
"Fuck." I feel that it's important to establish that.
Somehow I blearily make it through the ritual of "shower and a slice of leftover breakfast quiche from a few days ago" and even manage to dress myself before getting in my car and driving to work. I'm wearing my Vans today, in direct violation of the dress code. Yeah. Take that, The Man.
Chris is working too - apparently there is some amount of mercy in the universe - but I discover to my horror that I have, during the night, become immune to caffeine. I work in a fucking coffee shop, for Christ's sake. Caffeine is my trade. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so I drop three shots of espresso into my coffee. Last week, a customer called that a JFK.
The shop is slow this morning - it's Memorial Day weekend, and everyone between the ages of 14 and 63 is at the beach, so I have time to recover a little from last night.
Last night. Jesus. The Underground. There's a very good reason that the last time I went to the Underground I swore never to go back, and by breaking that most sacred vow last night I must have been tempting fate because fate delivered in the form of a few too many shots of Jagermeister and a quick, spiraling depression - two things which I have often found to go hand in hand. Because Beth works there. Tall, beautiful Beth with the laugh that sounds like wind chimes in March after a cool rain. God damn. I must have written volumes on her laugh alone, but that was years ago.
Well, a year ago.
Well, 8 months.
I had gone back with the hope that it would be her night off and of course I knew that it wasn't and of course she was there and of course that began with an awkward, drunken conversation and of course it ended poorly. Beth was many things, prominent among which were a mean drunk and a horny drunk, and not in that order. I had forgotten until last night.
The usually steady stream of customers is just a trickle now, so the three of us take ten-minute shifts in rotation. Our store is nestled pretty deep in the West End, just down the street from the richest school in the state and the Country Club. Yuppie central. Our clientele is almost comically blue-blooded. The closest thing to what I have come to think of as my crowd are the Hot Topic rejects that clatter through with eight pounds of chain hanging off their pants that have never seen the inside of a warehouse or mosh pit, with perfectly gelled hair hanging over their eyes, talking about how high they got last night. Adorable.
Today it seems to be mostly old women, who seem to have a collective fistful of sand in their collective vaginas towards whom I have no trouble being frosty. I'm definitely not in the right mood to be developing enthusiastically satisfied customers - not after last night. Briefly, I wonder why I was stupid enough to agree to cover Ann's shift, but the answer comes easily - I am a sucker. I consider stealing some paper out of the printer and continuing my writing bent, but the moment at which this would be possible is suddenly gone and sandy vagina number thirty-seven wants a Frappucino - "And be generous!" she says with a mischievous wink. What the fuck does she want, a second cup? 900 calories of that shit isn't enough?
To be continued later.