“What the f**k is going on here? Where’s the little guy who makes the coffee?” she snapped.
I stared at her and my mouth dropped open.
“Yeah. Where’s Rosie and why was the store closed yesterday? Ellen never closed the store. As in, ever.” That was Manuel, he’d been a regular since before the days of caffeine. He used to read Vonnegut and Updike for hours in the T-U-V section. I’d known him for as long as I could remember.
“I go out of my way, seventeen blocks, for the Coffee Guy’s coffee. What am I gonna do now? Where am I gonna go?” another guy asked. I didn’t know his name but he’d come with Rosie after he left the chain-coffee-shop and usually popped by a couple of Sundays a month and sometimes actually bought a book.
They started to press in and Hank pushed in front of me going into bodyguard mode.
Really, I was fed up. I understood the love of coffee, but this was ridiculous. I’d had the worst few days of my entire life. I was Lee Nightingale’s girlfriend and we hadn’t done it yet. I was a woman on the edge.
I stood on a chair, put my thumb and finger in my mouth and gave the ear-splitting whistle Dad taught me when I was eleven.
“Listen up people!” I shouted.
All eyes turned to me as I noticed Mr. Kumar walk in with an Asian woman his age and another one much older, the other one possibly prehistoric.
I turned my attention back to the mob.
“The Coffee Guy, whose name is Rosie by the way, has moved to El Salvador,” I lied.
This was not met with happy noises.
“He’s turned his back on coffee and is in the wilds of Central America building houses for the poor. I think we should all take a moment away from our quest for coffee-satisfaction and think about this noble decision. As you clamor for caffeine and curse the hard-working but innocent staff at my store, Rosie is sitting in the bed of a beat-up pickup bumping across dirt roads to make one room homes out of mud for those who have nothing at all.”
I was kind of laying it on thick and had no idea what I was talking about but I was counting on American insularity. Since we hadn’t been to war with El Salvador, what did anyone know about it?
Now, people were staring at me as if I was a performer in the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow.
“I’ll understand if you make the decision to move back to a franchise coffee shop, but consider this. In a couple of years, little businesses like mine, and Mr. Kumar’s over there,” I pointed at Kumar and his neck descended three inches into his shoulders, “are going to be taken over and America will be wall-to-wall franchises. The franchise is killing off America’s Mom and Pop shops. Ask yourself… is that what you want? Is that what you really want?”
No one said a word.
“I said, is that what you want?” I shouted.
There was some shuffling of feet and someone said a quiet, “No.”
It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement or a cry to freedom but I was beginning to feel like an idiot. I mean, I was talking like Tex, for God’s sake, not to mention standing on a chair.
“Good. Duke’s taking coffee orders. We’ll get you all sorted out in no time. Thank you for your attention.”
I stepped off the chair and Hank was grinning at me. I figured Lee would hear about this. It didn’t matter, they were used to me doing crazy shit. I ignored Hank and smiled at Kumar.
“Hey, Mr. Kumar.”
“India,” he said. “This is my wife, Mrs. Kumar and my wife’s mother, Mrs. Salim.”
I smiled at the women. Mrs. Kumar was clearly a beauty in her day and the bloom was not yet off the rose. She smiled back and it reached her eyes with a dazzle.
Mrs. Salim’s entire face was wrinkled and motionless and I fought the urge to listen for her breathing.
“You buy food at my store, we are here to buy books at yours.”
Something about this show of solidarity made me want to cry. Mr. Kumar must have sensed it because he bowed his head to me. I bowed mine back.
“Then we are going to go to see Tex in the hospital. Then we will go and open our store.”
“I’m going to see Tex later too.”
He nodded.
“Now I can see that you need to make coffee.”
I nodded back and Ally pushed through the door. She saw Kumar right away and smiled, pushing forward. “Hey Mr. Kumar. Is this the missus? Whoa!”
Ally rounded the Kumars, saw Mrs. Salim and couldn’t hide her reaction.
I left her extracting her foot out of her mouth.
Dolores was taking orders, saying such things to the customers as, “Skinny lah-tay, uh, come again?” and Duke was making coffee.
Dolores worked at the Little Bear which was a very cool and could-get-rowdy bar in Evergreen. She could take an order for eight margaritas, two without salt, three frozen, three Jack and cokes, a white Russian and a Shirley Temple, fill it without a mistake and carry it all to the table on one tray. With coffee, she was hopeless. She came in to help out at Fortnum’s every once in awhile and it was never pretty.
I shouldered in next to Duke and made Hank a cappuccino with a triple shot. Pepper Rick was still on the loose and I wanted Hank hyper-alert. Hank positioned himself at the end of the counter, in full view of the front door and in reaching distance of me.
“I guess I picked the wrong time for a bender,” Duke said to me.
“Yeah, but I’m getting used to getting stun-gunned, kidnapped and shot at. Finding the dead body was a serious bummer and Tex got shot in the shoulder last night but other than that, no worries.”
Duke went still. Dolores looked up from the paper cup on which she was frantically misspelling instructions in hot pink marker and stared at me with huge eyes. The customer standing in front of the espresso machine gaped at me.
Er, I guess Lee didn’t fill Duke in yesterday.
“You wanna run that by me again?” Duke suggested.
I eyed the customer and pulled at the machine. “Later.”
We cleared the throng just as the happy sound of the cash register at the book counter rang. As per usual, everyone looked up and Ally yelled the ceremonial, “I sold a book!”
Sometimes when someone sold a book, we shouted it. It was cause for celebration.
I did my book sale happy dance, waving my arms and turning in a circle. When I finished my dance, I noticed it was The Kumars’ purchase. They were standing in front of Ally and I gave them a big thumbs up.
In slow motion, old Mrs. Salim returned the gesture and I feared that her thumb would break off in a poof of dust like the zombie’s arm in Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. She snatched the bag from Ally with bony fingers and they walked out on a wave, Mrs. Salim shuffling behind, her bag rustling.