Coffee and Sugar - C. Sean McGee (mystery books to read .TXT) 📗

and take the mop to the floors when you’re done. We’ll start your learning from the ground up. Don’t worry. They’re just plates and cups. Smile a bit more, that’s why I hired you. Sure as hell wasn’t for your good lucks or equilibrium” said Fatts laughing.

Joao did as Fatts said and relaxed to a certain degree though disappointment had been the diagnosis of his potential, echoed incessantly by his siblings, his gargantuan displeasing mother and his drunken self-concerning father. If all you had ever heard was that up was down and left and right for the entire of your life, it would be very hard to take the kind grace of a smiling stranger who; to make your failings seem less fated and tenured, sang like a silenced conscious voice of reason, the contrary to a lifetime of dictated truth.

It sounded sweet and assailing, but it would take a lot more than a few kind and opposing ideas to lift the dogmatic knee from the bruised and crippling back of his stunted and irretrievable self-belief.

So Joao smiled momentarily as if a blind man had heard the hooves of a donkey and called it a horse; it sounded pleasant upon the second it was spoken but it wasn’t true and the second the donkey saw its own reflection; in the instance of his dunce, it would again kick its idle temperament and assume a lesser role.

And momentarily he did smile, adoring the title of useful, belonging and apt, even though he knew; like an apology or a well-wishing, it was just a learned polite behaviour on the behalf of the kind fat man and there was no greater truth in what he had said than what he had heard repeatedly throughout his life so though it felt god dressing in a king’s clothes, they were not his and it would be more conciliating to return the title than to have had it taken away, knowing that the higher he perched upon the throne, the further he would fall into acquainted disapproval.

Joao picked up the pieces of glass and ceramic and he thought of his father and how it seemed that his dreams were just as fragile and how this city was just as reckless and inadvertent to a man’s hopes and expectations as he was to a round dinner plate and he saw in his hands, the shattered soul of his father crawling out from beneath the blue petals of the fragmented flowers that stretched across a thousand shards of broken plate.

“Where’s Fatts” said a voice booming over his head as he crouched over the broken shards sweeping them into his hands and with the tip of his index finger, pressing lightly against the infinitesimal shards, lifting them from the cold tiles like sugar from a bun.

Joao looked upwards and saw one of the uniformed men standing above him with one hand on a pistol strapped to his hip and the other making a fist and pressed against the side of his body.

Behind the man were two other men facing out to the street holding their weapons fast and their eyes targeted on every man, woman, child and stray dog that wandered listlessly past the entrance to the café.

“He’s in there” said Joao pointing with a tilt of his head to the staff door.

The uniformed man walked over Joao and into the staff room with his right hand clenched firmly on the handle of his gun and the right finger gently flicking at the leather strap which locked the gun into place. Joao watched his index finger stroking at the tip of the leather strap delicately as he walked away. The other two uniformed men stayed by the front of the store, their eyes still carving trouble out of perceived normality.

“Coffee please” said a woman’s voice from behind the counter.

Joao didn’t respond. His focus was on his task which was to clear the broken plate and to mop the grease and beer laden floor.

“Hey you. You work here? Can I have a coffee or not? I haven’t got all day. I have to meet someone important. Are you stupid? Come one” yelled The Nervous Lady at the counter.

Joao wasn’t sure what to do. Fatts was back in the staff room with the uniformed man and he wasn’t even sure if that was good or not because the man looked very serious and was masturbating his gun strap. And Fatts was clear that he wasn’t to talk to or serve any customers at all but still, she looked upset and coffee Joao knew.

“Good afternoon mam, can I help you?’ he said taking a post behind the counter, his senses creeping over his shoulder to watch for Fatts bursting through the doors and sketching him in reprimand.

“Coffee and strong,” the woman said, “I’ve had a hard day. I’m meeting someone” said The Nervous Lady.

“OK” said Joao.

“Can you bring it to me? I want to sit over there in the corner near the television. I’m meeting someone” she said.

“Ok mam” said Joao politely.

When the woman sat down, Joao took a moment to disguise himself from reality, detach from his conscious tidings and travel into The Nervous Lady’s conscious mind, to attest to her worries and her burdens and then dive into the emotional dam of her sub conscious fears and loves.

Joao ignored the giant vat beside him full of steaming coffee, a cruel ordinaire mix of blunt dark liquid and intoxicating sweet sugar where the lining in one’s stomach tears along with the enamel in one’s teeth with every sip.

Instead, he took a filter from a nearby drawer that he had seen and placed it over a small cup. While he stared at the fidgety woman who was busily defining the right position of her chair at her table, his fingers pressed perceptively into the fine coffee powder by his side, pinching grain by grain, the effect of her struggle.

He watched her nervously place the seat in front of her at varying angles around the table. She would sit with her knees pinned and her hands folded over one another and pretend to dip her head in faint humouring approval of something that had been said in the delusion she was playing out in her mind, passing her hands over her shy smile as if to modestly brush off her imaginary lover’s bridging compliment, fanning the warm air that touched upon her moistened red lips.

Then; as if someone had pulled on her uncertainty thread, her thoughts would seemingly convulse as her neck would lightly twitch and her fingers would wriggle and writhe in some scheming dance as she lifted herself to slide the chair opposite a half a degree to the right and then she sat back down and smiled in modest approval to the imaginations in her head.

While taking grain by grain with his fingers and placing them into the beige filter sitting precariously above a blue floral ceramic cup, Joao watched the woman and focused on how her face and especially how it tightened when she appeared most comfortable.

He imagined what her struggle must be like, every morning of her life; waking to find everything from the day had moved one zillionth of a degree out of place and having to spend the rest of the day finding what it was that was out of place and putting it back where it belonged; but never knowing that in truth, every morning she woke one zillionth of a degree further from her own perspective and that the change she couldn’t make, was inside herself.

He thought about The Nervous Lady putting on her makeup and imagined that while she sat in front of her antique mirror; paralysed in the painting of perfection and symmetry on her pouting lips, behind her, a clock’s hands raced around so that only a greyish blur was visible against the numbers as if a tiny stroke of her hand had seen days, months or even years pass it by.

He imagined then as The Nervous Lady pouted and kissed the air, her lifting herself from her satin lined stool and upon passing her reflection in a window on the street, seeing that she had missed the tiniest and most invisible speck of colour near the corner of her lip. He imagined her heart beating frantically, a sea of rage washing upon her conscious shore, sirens sounding in her ears and everyone in the whole world, obviously drawn to this stupid mistake.

As his fingers picked at the grains and placed them almost one by one into the filter, his imagining turned to The Nervous Lady in a room, seated at a table no different than she did right now, just an inch or two in front of him, except there were no passers-by, there were no other tables and there was no busy bustle as the many scents of vibrancy shuffled about in hurried flight. She was sitting at a table much like she was now and at the table; which was grand enough for another eleven guests, there were places and plates and glasses with wine set and arranged in front of every chair.

Around her; on the ceiling and hanging from the walls, were lines of coloured string tied with helium balloons that threatened to lift up and out of the room should her gallant expectation lift the roof off of her house. Along the wall that lined the dining table was a large sheet of paper that read ‘congratulations’ and The Nervous Lady sat alone, focused on arranging the napkin beneath her plate, moving it left and right and turning it round and round as silence filled every glass and emptiness attended to every place set out and the silence was eventually broken as she lifted her eyes to the mirror that sat on the wall opposite and looking at her own saddened smile, she clapped her hands and sang happy birthday, cheering her own celebration and she when she was done, she neatly packed up every plate and every glass and put away the presents she had bought for herself; an expensive pen and lace lingerie, and when everything was neat and ordered again; putting every back one zillionth of a degree and she dressed in her Victorian nighty; the white one that wrapped around her neck like a strangler’s kiss and drew absence on her sex as it pulled like a curtain over the length of her body.

And she went to bed, alone.

When he pulled himself from what he imagined was her struggle, the filter before him was already being watered like a delicate flower by his hand, it, pouring hot water gently over the fine handpicked grains, swishing the water over the sides so as to pull the thick clumps of coffee into the centre and ensuring every drop of her soul, passed through her struggle.

Joao threw himself into The Nervous Lady’s glare again as his fingers pressed into the nearby container of sugar and he touched and moved each grain, his fingers working like tentacles to find the sweetness that resembled the smile that etched on her face every time she caught a pair of men’s shoes edging from the crack in the window to the entrance to the café where her heart beat with wanton expectation; she, perched upon her desire like a thief upon a moment.

Joao caught this moment before it turned into something else and he captured the grains of sugar that most felt like this and he put each grain into the cup and allowed them to slowly sink and dissolve into the coffee, caring not to stir the delicate dance of nature.

“Here you are mam. I apologise for taking so long but something like this should not be rushed. I hope you enjoy” said Joao, humbly stepping away behind the counter.

“Thank you” she said politely, taking the cup and placing it between her hands on the table while she continued to receive imaginary compliments from the imaginary man seated in front of her.

“Joao. Did you just serve a client? I thought I asked you to mop these floors?” said Fatts, coming back from his secret meeting, looking flustered and vetted by his encounter with the uniformed man.

“Yes, I’m sorry sir it’s just she…”

“What did I tell you about formality? Listen until you get a feel for this place I don’t want you to worry about having to deal with the customers ok? I’m not mad Joao. Not at all. I wish half of my workers had your gusto, it’s just, for the moment you’re like a newborn in his own skin, you haven’t quite found your legs yet. Let’s just give it some time. Did you make a coffee by hand? You know the vat here is full of coffee; you could have it out in half a second. We don’t do it by hand. It’s too slow and…”

“Sir,” said The Nervous Lady, “I just wanted to say this is the most wonderful coffee I have