On Leave: A Novel, Chapter 10

I was tired. I walked to the cafe head hung low and eyes strained bloodshot red. I had worked a dreaded clo-pen, in which you close until midnight and then get back up at 6 am to open shop. I practicalled tripped over a stray dog laying on its stomach, chilling out. It yelped.

“Sorry, Cheddar,” I mumbled and stumbled my way to the cafe.

I got in. Jessica Royals was preparing the teas, brewing them with a delicate manner so hard to master that it would take years before I could catch up to her level. Jessica was a brilliant young diamond, 5 ft 2, eyes of blue, and was finishing up her final year at Westwood High School. She told me she was saving up money to go to college. Smart young woman, loves books, movies and music. She reminds me so much of myself because I, too, love those things.

Today, she was in her usual calm mood.

“Hey, Nat,” she said casually.

I ignored her and stomped over to the back of the house to put my stuff in the closet. I went back out.

“Can you get me some mocha powder? I forgot to make mocha last night and we’re expecting a pretty busy crowd today.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Or I can do it,” she suddenly threw her hands up in exasperation.

“No, fine, I’m sorry, I closed last night so I’m pretty burnt.”

“Whatever,” she said going back to brewing the guava fruit tea. “Just make that mocha sauce before the customers get here.”

So I went to the back of the house and did what she said. I went over to the shelves and got a large bag with brown powder caked on it. Our in-house mocha. I grabbed a cube-shaped bin and put the mocha powder in it. It wafted up to my nostrils. I bent over to cough, hacking up all the mocha powder that accidentally made its way through my nasal passages. I hate it when that happens. I just didn’t want to cough all over the mocha powder since I didn’t want people to consume germy mint mocha lattes.

I went over to the hot water dispenser and put the pitcher under it. The thin stream trickled out slowly, releasing steam as it did so. A little bit of water hit my fingers and I whispered a curse word or two. Sometimes when things happen like that you just have to brush it off. So I did. I grabbed the large whisk from the cupboard and whisked together the mocha powder with the hot water. As bad as it smelled in powder form, it actually smelled good when mixed together. It formed a pudding-like consistency at first, but then as I stirred it more, it became smoother and had a more liquid consistency.

I grabbed the container of mocha and made my way out of the back-of-house. When I got to the front-of-house, it was already mayhem. About twenty people were in line.

“Natalie! Get to the bar, quick! We have to ring up these orders.”

Was this the sweet relaxed Jessica that was greeting me earlier? What happened to her?

I shook myself out of my daze and quickly went over to prepare the drinks. About thirty drink cups were lined up. Plastic 16 ounce, small hot 12 ouncer, venti in a double cup. A writing was all over these cups, so much writing I coudll barely understand half of the things Jessica wrote.

“You need better handwriting,” I said aloud to her, but she didn’t hear me, instead focusing on the customer in front of her. I aspire to Jessica’s work ethic so much it’s not even funny.

Ok, let’s see. A grande passion tea lemonade with eight Splendas, 1/4 pump of classic syrup and blended. Weird, but I didn’t have time to ponder on how weird–I read the cup–Amina’s drink was.

I put the tea and scooped a small scoop-ful of ice into the blender.

“Oh, you can put more ice in it than that,” a diminutive lady squeaked. She was wearing the fanciest clothes and had these aviator shades on. It was like I was interacting with a shorter version of Anna freaking Wintour.

I nearly rolled my eyes in exasperation but caught myself. I didn’t want to risk being fired for something as simple as rolling my eyes and showing a bad attitude.

I grabbed all the ice I could. It felt as if I was digging for diamonds or going on an expedition to the North Pole.

“Now, blend it up for 30 seconds.”

I had a momentary moment of bewilderment. Who did this woman think she was, my manager? I turned on the blender.

“One, two, three…”

And I knew I was done for. This stranger was actually counting aloud. She was micromanaging my drink-making instead of trusting me to make the drink for her without worrying.

“I want to make sure it is 100 percent perfect. If I don’t have the perfect passion tea blended drink, I will perish in solitude for the rest of my life.”

Geez, I thought, she should be an actress. Maybe she is an actress and I just don’t know it. Sometimes when living in New York City and working at a coffee shop, you can meet all kinds of people here.

I finally finished it for her. She tasted it.

“Eh, it could use something more. Try putting in six pumps of hazelnut syrup, three pumps of toffee nut, and dash it off with a little heavy whipping cream.”

I nearly barfed. That sounded grosser than having a possum crawl into my room. But I needed to get paid for my labor, so I did what she said. The mixture looked like someone drank this kind of monstrosity and pooped it all out. It looked disgusting, but according to the woman’s face it tasted like heaven.

“Thank you, dear,” she said. And before I could say thank you, she had slipped me a $10 bill. I quickly stashed it away in my apron pocket and continued making the drinks.

“Hey, where’s our caramel Frappuccino?” A moody teenager confronted me. She had blonde hair in two cornrows and was wearing a Victoria’s Secret jumpsuit. “My friends and I are waiting. Hey, girls, come here.”

They all swarmed on me at once. It was like I was meeting an army of Mean Girls Plastics. They were all dressed up in pink matching jumpsuits.

“I also had a drink!”

“Me two!”

“Me three!”

“Me four!”

“Me five!”

“Me six!”

“Me seven!”

The ringleader turned back to me.

“Get us our drinks now or we’re calling the cops on you.”

Why was she calling the cops on me? Because I was Black?

I didn’t say anything and quietly made them their drinks. They hovered like hungry vultures, their bodies and faces screaming, Where’s the caffeine, the sugar, the good stuff that makes us bounce off the walls? I bet once that sugar crash hit, they were going to crash with it.

I scrambled to find the syrups, and pumped them one by one in the plastic cups. Sarah got a mint caramel Frappuccino with extra toffee syrup and mint caramel sauce around the cup. I took a brown sauce dispenser and masterfully made a work of art in the cup.

“Oooohhh,” a girl who looked like Sarah mused. “That’s beautiful.” She was the only one in the group who genuinely seemed interested in the aesthetics of the drink. I blended up the mocha sauce and caramel syrup with the whole milk.

“Did you use soy?” Sarah asked. I snapped out of my reverie. Shit. I stopped the blender, threw out the gloopy Frappuccino mixture and started over, grabbing the soymilk from the fridge this time.

An angry pregnant lady and her husband accosted me from the front.

“Hurry up with our drinks!” she shouted.

“I’m trying ma’am, I’m so sorry,” I said.

“You know what, forget it, we’re going elsewhere for our drinks. Honey,” she turned to her husband, “let’s go get some lattes at the nearby Starbucks.”

I gulped. To any small coffee shop owner, the mere mention of Starbucks sounded like a four-letter word. I freaked out.

A diminutive kid wearing Coke bottle glasses and a pudding bowl hairstyle rushed in.

“Chuck, you’re late!” Jessica snapped.

“Sorry,” he said, and went into the back of house to retrieve his apron and put away his stuff. He looked sheepishly at me when he came to the front.

“Sorry,” he laughed weakly. “I overslept. I took a huge nap and then–“

“Can you put extra caramel sauce on my macchiato?” a young woman asked nicely from where I was making her drink.

“Yeah, sure.” I turned to Chuck. “Sorry, man, it’s just that we’re pretty backed up.”

“No problem,” he said quickly, and with that, helped me with lighting-speed churn out the drinks.

—

By the end of the shift, we were burnt. However, this is why weekends are the best time to work at a coffee shop, because people tend to have sympathy for the baristas. They know we are so busy, so they tip us a lot. Even though we nearly killed ourselves making so many drinks, we ended up splitting $15 each in tips. You’d think we were servers at a five-star restaurant or something.