The rest of the staff is dispersing around the fight as if it doesn’t exist, heading out front for a cigarette break or starting to barter over shifts with the time sheets and markers.
“Um, sure,” I say, edging out of my seat before Dominique starts hurling things. “I love ropes. Show them to me!”
LuAnn breezes through my introduction to the register, baked goods, and fearsome coffee machine in ten seconds flat. “It’s easy, kid. You’ll be fine,” she tells me with another reassuring yet condescending pat on the head.
“But where are you going?” I blink as she rounds the counter.
“I’m not on until this afternoon.”
“Then who . . . ?” I trail off as LuAnn points to Dominique. “Oh.”
“Don’t worry,” LuAnn tells me carelessly, armed as she is with her awesome vintage style and unshakable confidence and — oh, yes — age. “Just ignore the attitude. She’s a marshmallow, really.”
But if she is, it’s a stale, hardened marshmallow, because nothing I do or say during that first shift makes any impact.
“Two lattes — one soy, one decaf — and one iced chamomile!” Dominique yells over at me later that afternoon.
“Sure thing!” I reply, quickly dispensing with the easy tea option before facing my new foe: the dreaded espresso machine. Having spent the morning busing tables and working from the relative safety of the register, she’s finally pushed me to the back of the counter and set the Beast loose on me. Sure, you think I jest, but you haven’t seen the thing — a looming silver monstrosity of dials and switches and funnels, all which (if caressed in just the right way) supposedly work to produce Totally Wired’s famed coffee, “the best in New England.”
“Sometime this week would be nice!” Dominique adds, raising an eyebrow at me in disgust.
Yay, team unity.
“What are you doing, trying to fly that thing?” Our resident chef, Josh, appears in the hatch window, brown hair sticking out in unruly tufts over blue eyes. He watches with amusement as I gingerly prod and press the machine.
“I’d settle for a latte.” I try not to look like such an idiot, still painfully aware that I’m the new kid. Kid being the operative word. LuAnn was right to assign me that nickname — all the other staff is clearly way older than me. Carlos is thirty or something ancient like that, Dominique is maybe in her twenties, and that blue-haired waitress, Aiko, may look young, with her petite frame and steampunk T-shirt, but it turns out she’s a junior graphic-arts student at college nearby. The next-youngest person around is actually Josh — Aiko told me that he’s nineteen, a year out of high school — but he’s kept mostly to himself, hanging out in the kitchen, pressing panini all day.
And, of course, popping his head out to watch me flail around in utter confusion.
“Try hitting the thing,” Josh suggests. I prod a shiny silver button. “No, next to that other thing.”
I follow his directions, still half-convinced that the Beast is going to reach out and skewer me with one of its levers. There’s a hiss, a groan; the machine gives an almighty shudder, and then . . . success! Two cups of espresso stand before me.
“Lifesaver!” I beam. “Now, um, if I can only remember how to do that again. Another hundred times . . .”
Josh laughs. “Hold that thought.” He ducks back into the kitchen and reappears a moment later with a pack of Post-it notes. “These should help you keep track,” he says, scribbling 1, 2, 3 with a black marker and slapping the notes on each of the knobs and dials in turn.
“Thanks,” I tell him, grateful. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”
He grins. “That’s why you’re a serving wench, and I have a whole kingdom of my own!” He gestures grandly at the tiny kitchen. “Behold, my domain.”
I laugh. “Wow, impressive. You’ve got running water and everything.”
“Well, most days.”
“Sadie!” Dominique doesn’t even turn as she yells.
“I better get back to serving. And wenching,” I tell him. “But thanks!”
I deliver the drinks — probably lukewarm now — to Dominique. “That’s just wonderful,” she drawls. “Maybe next time you can wait until we all drop dead from old age.”
“Sorry, I —”
“Look, just go clear the tables out front.” Dominique lets out a weary sigh, as if my incompetence is just too exhausting. “Tout de suite.”
I stare blankly. “I took Spanish.”
“Now!” she translates.
I grab the cloth and duck out from behind the counter. I take my time cleaning each table — not so much out of my faultless work ethic as in the hope of eavesdropping on some juicy plotlines for that novel I’m going to write one day. But, as usual, Sherman fails me.
“You know, I told him to paint the fence. It’s bringing the whole tone of the street down.”
“And they’re having a sale on paint right now at Mike’s Hardware.”
“Exactly! Some people have no sense of community.”
See? If I wanted to write about the minutiae of existence, I’d be in heaven right now. Or maybe that’s the point: I could write about a waitress in a small-town coffee shop, doomed to spend her days listening to conversations about DIY home repair while her love is far away. . . .
A flash of red outside the window catches my eye, and I look up to see a trail of grade-school kids in summer-camp T-shirts, winding down the street in an unruly snake formation. Kayla walks alongside, outfitted in her very own red shirt and weighed down with water bottles and sunscreen. She beams, perky as ever, adjusting one kid’s falling baseball cap, then nudging another back in line. The very picture of summer enthusiasm. I should have guessed that she’d wind up working with kids — or the elderly, or cute fluffy animals.
She sees me watching, and raises her arm in a wave. I manage a vague gesture, balancing dirty dishes.
By the time I’m done clearing, my stomach is rumbling at an alarming volume. I was so busy picking out my first-day outfit that I skipped breakfast; I haven’t had time to eat all day.
I approach Dominique apprehensively. “I was thinking maybe I could take my break . . .”
“Whenever we hit a lull,” Dominique finishes for me, her expression stony. “Does this look like a lull to you?”