Clouds in Your Coffee
I had a vision of the Far Side cartoon of the fat kid leaning his hand and weight against the door of the School for the Gifted, pushing as determinedly as he can right beside the big sign that read “pull” when the cafe door clunked instead of opening when I tugged on the handle. Pulling the door had worked successfully almost five days a week for as long as I’d been coming, but I pushed now, just in case, and almost hit my face on the glass when it didn’t budge that way either. I could see lights on in the back, but the chairs were still on the table and nothing was moving inside.
Just to be sure, and to satisfy the little OCD monster within, I gave it another push and pull to make sure Mandy hadn’t had a new door installed since yesterday and felt silly but satisfied that I hadn’t been wrong the first time. There were two tables on the walk in front of the big window and I sat at the one furthest from the door as I didn’t want to seem too eager. I did make sure I had a view through the window and around the big, stenciled name of the place to see if things were ever going to get going in there.
After about five minutes, I decided to acquiesce to my desire for imminent coffee and contemplated walking the two and a half blocks to the gourmet shop that had been put into the old bookstore that I’d haunted for years, picking up books the library wouldn’t carry while old Mrs. Laetner was in charge. The coffee there was better anyway, but I usually went in there in the afternoons, another ritual, for an IPA like a real hipster-doofus and sat with the tattoed and suited alike, feeling like we were in a real city with diversity though most of the faces looked pretty much the same.
Plus, they still had the inventory the prior owner’s family had left behind when they inherited the failing business and sold out quickly to couple from up north who had made a bunch of money and were using it to continue some of the good trouble the former owner had tried to do. I felt the smile crease my face as he thought the coffee almost anywhere else was better, books or not. Mandy made it too strong for almost everyone and the running joke order in the place was “coffee with a water back.” Except, it wasn’t really a joke as a large portion of the clientele would spoon teaspoons of water from their glasses into the witches brew until it quit absorbing all light like a black hole. The teens that came in on their first steps of independence, separate from their parents who had been bringing them in for years, would pour sugar and as much cream as would fit in the cup that Mandy and her minions always filled to the brim, the darkness threatening to overflow and take over the world. After a few bitter sips, they would reload as they drank the level down, filling the cup with cream until it faded from black to pecan tan to mocha.
I gave her guff about it, but it was for show as strong coffee was fine with me and I only added a drizzle of cream. I would give the darkness a swirl with the spoon and then drop in the dairy a smidge at a time, the splotch spinning into the black vortex, reminding me of those black and white mesmerizing circles that turn and pull your gaze in deeper and deeper. Even after the cream and hypnosis, I didn’t think the coffee was good, but it was what I was used to and the familiar is a comfort, right?
Whenever she noticed me with the dispenser in my hand, poised over the cup, Mandy would walk by and sneer “pansy” just loud enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear and I’d respond, “I need to sleep sometime this week, Ms. Mandy. I can’t drink it straight or I’ll never get rest.”
“You can sleep when you’re dead. It’s overrated.” I hadn’t come up with a good answer for that one yet so she never felt the need to change her retort.
Just as I stood to walk away, I caught movement from inside and took a step or two closer as a figure approached the inside of the door. It was Kyle or Kevin or Kary or some-such. I hadn’t quite caught the young man’s name over the last few months he’d been there. The staff all wore chalkboard name tags with their names scribbled on them and his appeared to start with a ‘K’ but the rest was unintelligible. ‘K’ was a diligent worker and always made semi-interesting small talk when he was running the register so the actual name could wait. I wasn’t planning on stopping going to the place so there was plenty of time to let it come out organically.
I reached for the handle, but stopped when I realized the lock hadn’t clicked yet. I didn’t want to reenact the push-pull fiasco in front of the teenager who was taping a piece of the paper to the inside of the door. I noticed for the first time that he wasn’t wearing his blue apron or his tag. While I was reading the note, K opened the door. “Hey, sorry we’re not going to be open today. We’ll be back....” He stopped as his voice faltered and a tear crawled down his cheek. “I don’t know when we’ll be open,” he said after a moment.
“Is she going to be ok,” I asked.
He looked at me and I could see the same uncertainty I’d seen my whole life on the faces of those lost for a moment in the world. “I don’t know. Mom’s with her now and I’m going back up as soon as I leave here.”
I knew where she was as there was only one hospital in town and resolved to get some flowers sent to her room. “Is Susan your mother,” I asked, finally making the connections to the little boy I’d seen running around the place fifteen years before when Mandy’s daughter had been working the register while going to school full time. We had gone out for a while when we were both home from school, but things faded when she left after the summer. A few years later, I heard she’d had a baby while up at Clemson and hadn’t gotten married which was reason enough for gossip around town, but she had ignored when she’d moved back to town after graduating with a little boy in tow and worked in the restaurant while going to medical school and raising Koryn (The name came to me with a flood from the past) by herself. Susan was a doctor now in Charlotte and I hadn’t seen her in seven or eight years. I hadn’t seen the boy before recently for a lot longer.
“Yes, sir,” he answered, “I came down for the summer to help grandma.” I saw the boy searching for more words and raised my hand to grasp his.
“You’re a good man then. She’s lucky you’re here,” I said as I shook his hand.
“Thank you,” he replied. “I just hope she’s going to be ok.”
I studied the face for a moment and saw Mandy and Susan and something else familiar. “She will be,” I said, “no matter what.” The boy smiled weakly and let the door fall shut without replying further. He locked it and walked to the back of the shop, leaving the lights burning he had turned on when he’d walked in. I stood dumbly in place, doing math in my head that got more complicated with every calculation. FInally, I stepped back and sat on the chair that hit the back of my leg and I wasn’t thinking about coffee anymore.
