Today was a really busy day and I was slightly worried about how I was going to manage with today's challenge - Second Person Coffee. After working late, I didn't get a chance to start on it until almost 9pm...
But, for some reason, I managed to blaze through it at a something approaching warp speed, It was good fun to get a chance to work in a style that always evokes (for me, at least) memories of the hard-boiled detective stories I read in my youth...
Coffee Morning
The cup
of coffee sits on the little black table, no more than twelve inches in front
of you.
It has
sat there for at least three minutes now. When the waitress first brought it over
and deposited it on the table you tried to will it towards you. Persuade it with
power of thought alone to come to you. It remains unconvinced. Instead, it sits
there, stolidly. Taunting you. I’ve got
that caffeine you want, it seems to say, but I know you’re too hungover to get it.
Eyes
little more than slits, scrunched up against the fat slabs of morning sunlight that
slide in through the unguarded windows, you decide that either you’ve turned
into a vampire overnight or the coffee’s right. You promise never to drink
again. Then realise that’s a promise you’re only likely to be able to keep
until the next bar you find yourself in, so instead you promise never to
arrange early morning meetings again.
It doesn’t
help that this place is so nice; so
corporate, so facelessly sterile, so lacking in any kind of individuality that
you half feel like checking to see if the guy working the barista isn’t just a
clone of the guy you saw working the barista at the other coffee place of the
same name that lies three blocks away. This is not the sort of place you want
to be right now. Decked out in frosted glass and chrome, packed to the brim
with fancy beige leather chairs and the kind of miniature black wooden tables
that seem designed to comfortably hold nothing larger than maybe a thimble of
espresso. This is not your kind of place.
Your kind
of place, the coffee is more agreeable. It understands the kind of night you’ve
had, understands the amount of alcohol that’s currently floating around your
system. It doesn’t gloat. It’s far more open to the possibility of telekinesis.
And the food, don’t get you started on the food.
You tried
to order ham and eggs when you got here and they looked at you like you’re
crazy. Actually, they looked at you like you’re a crazy middle-aged white guy,
slightly balding, with a severe hangover. It’s the kind of look that manages to
convey a powerful combination, intrinsic disgust mixed with fervent hope that
this isn’t what lies ahead for them in so many years to come. You realised this
is not a ham and eggs kind of joint. So you ordered whatever the waitress recommended
which turned out to be half wholewheat and 100% organic and looked like nothing
you’d ever seen before on a plate. It was kind of difficult to tell what was the
packaging and what was meant to be edible so you ate anything that wasn’t
plastic. It all tasted pretty much the same and it didn’t help the rolling,
lurching feeling that’s swimming around in your stomach one jot.
It’s warm
in here, like they believe you can only drink coffee by matching your body
temperature to what’s being served up in the identikit white and green mugs and
so, when the door opens and a gust of cool air sweeps in, it’s so pleasant that
you just let it wash over you and don’t even bother to check the identity of
the latest customers. Five seconds later, that turns out to have been something
of a mistake.
Two men, thick
set and dressed in cheap grey acrylic suits sit down heavily either side of you
at the table. They could be brothers and maybe they are. Buzz crew haircuts,
flat boxer’s noses, little black eyes that seem lost in faces that only a mother
could love. And only a short sighted mother, at that. A man in a black shirt
sits down opposite you. Gold medallion. Slicked back hair. His crumpled face
seems familiar but your brain protests when you try to dredge up the details.
You figure it might be good to know what kind of trouble you’re getting into
and so cajole your memory to try harder. Yeah,
yeah, I’m on it, it says and then promptly goes back to sleep.
“Joey,
Joey, Joey.” says the man, Jersey accent so thick that he must be putting it on. No one talks like that outside of gangster
movies. “I am not pleased that I have to sitting here today.”
He picks
up your coffee and sips from it. The coffee doesn’t even try to protest. You
really wish that you could remember who this was.
You feel that
you should probably protest but
struggle to get your priorities straight. Should you protest at his coffee
drinking? Should you protest at his comically bad accent? It feels like there
should be something else to protest about but your brain, in its inebriated
state, is still trying to play catch up. Be
with you in a moment, it says.
“I talked
to your bookie, Joey” continues the man, “He says you’re still short fifty
large. So let’s be straight. The money’s in my hands by tonight or Tony and
Frankie here are going to find you and they’re gonna take you apart bit by bit.
What’s left of you, they’ll be able to fit through a grille, you understand
what I’m sayin?”
He leans forward slaps your cheek and then stands up and walks away, swiftly followed by the hulkish Tony and Frankie.
Vincent ‘The Cleaver’ Finelli says your memory as the door closes behind them before
reminding you that you saw him on a late night documentary about mafia bosses who’d been
tried for murder more than ten times but never convicted.
You
struggle to think why it was that he was talking to you.
Your name’s not Joey,
pipes up your brain, you really should
protest about that.
This, you
decide, has not been the best start to a day.
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