Kiss and Spell (Enchanted, Inc.) (8 page)

“Do I need a mint?”

“You had coffee on your way to work in a coffee shop? Again?”

I glanced around to make sure there weren’t any managers in earshot. “You know as well as I do that our coffee is nasty.”

“All coffee is nasty to me. I can’t judge degrees of nastiness.”

“Don’t tell anyone!” I begged as I opened a bakery box and started arranging pastries on the trays that fit in the display case. “But really, we resell second-rate pastries—at a huge markup—and we make terrible coffee, and people still buy it because it’s supposedly gourmet and because having coffee in a bookstore makes them feel smart.”

She filled an insulated carafe with the regular coffee. “And this store would’ve gone under ages ago without us. The coffee shop is our biggest profit center, believe it or not.”

I stopped working and glanced over at her. “Do you ever feel like working here is giving you bad karma? Shouldn’t we be doing something more worthwhile?”

“We’re keeping a bookstore financially viable. That makes us deserving of a Nobel prize. We’re practically heroes!”

“I guess that’s one way to look at it. We’re subsidizing literacy. But that doesn’t make the coffee any better.”

Then we had to stop criticizing our employer as the store opened for the day and patrons came pouring in for their morning caffeine fix. I wanted to stand on the counter and tell them where they could go for better coffee and pastries. If it got me fired, then maybe I’d be forced to find a better job. But I was too busy to give in to the temptation. Those lattes didn’t make themselves.

At last, the morning rush ended, and we had a chance to catch our breath before the lunch rush. Florence wiped down the counters while I cleared tables, stacking the abandoned books on a shelving cart. Florence glanced into one of the carafes and said, “There’s about a cup left. Do you want it, or should I just throw it out before I make a fresh pot?”

“Is it the regular or the coffee of the day?”

“It’s the regular.”

“I’ll take it.” My morning coffee had already worn off, and it was hard to get away for a coffee break when you worked in a coffee shop. I stood behind the counter, sipping the burnt-tasting coffee, while I perused the classified ads in a newspaper a patron had left behind.

“Still job-hunting, I see,” Florence remarked when I circled an ad. “Are you going to actually apply for any of these, or are you going to talk yourself out of it again?”

“The result will be the same,” I said, sighing.

She snapped me with a towel. “How do you expect good things to come to you when you have that attitude?”

“I don’t think my attitude has much to do with it. I’m not even getting interviews anymore. There just aren’t any advertising jobs. I’ve been trying for almost a year.”

“And it’s become easier for you to stay here. It’s a comfort zone.”

“Here? Comfortable? Are you insane? Of course I want to get out of here.”

She glanced around, as though making sure we weren’t being overheard, then bent toward me and whispered, “Well, you might want to start applying again or networking or putting up billboards, or whatever it takes to find something, because I heard we’re being sold.”

“Sold? To one of the chains?”

“I don’t know, but whatever it is, things are bound to change.”

“If it stays a bookstore, they’ll keep the coffee shop. As you said, we’re a profit center.”

“But bookselling isn’t exactly a growth industry these days. They may just want the real estate.”

I groaned and leaned down, resting my forehead on the newspaper. “Just what I needed. Maybe I should accept Josh’s proposal and become a housewife. It doesn’t look like I’m going to succeed at anything else.”

“My, that does sound romantic,” she said dryly. “You didn’t tell me Josh proposed.”

The memory of it was hazy, like it was something I’d dreamed rather than experienced. “Well, it wasn’t really a formal proposal. More a suggestion. I think I said something about my job hunt, and he said if I married him, I wouldn’t have to worry about it.”

She fluttered her hand against her chest. “Be still my beating heart. How did you not swoon and fall at his feet?”

“Shut up!” I scolded her, even as I couldn’t help but grin at her theatrics. “I think he was raising the topic. Who proposes out of the blue without having discussed anything about marriage ahead of time? I’m sure the real proposal, when it comes, will be very romantic.”

“Yeah, he’ll tell you you’re a failure, but he’s willing to support you.”

“That’s not what he meant,” I insisted, my cheeks flaming. “And I have no intention of letting him support me, but it might be nice to have the pressure taken off the job hunt and to have more time to work on my résumé and go on interviews.”

“You’ll get the time if the store closes, though that probably won’t ease the pressure.”

“The store’s not going to close,” I muttered, returning to the classifieds. And would marrying Josh really be that bad? He was smart, attractive, successful, and he was a decent guy. Heart-stopping romance was the kind of thing that only happened in movies.
And in coffee shops,
I thought, remembering the moment that morning when time had stood still as I looked into those dark blue eyes and felt like destiny had caught up with me.

*

Contrary to Florence’s fears, nothing much seemed to change after the sale went through later that week. There was a memo from the new owner saying it would be business as usual for the time being, and life went on. Josh didn’t bring up the topic of marriage again, so I started to think it must have been a joke or an offhand remark, not something I should take seriously. And that meant I really needed to find a job.

I was going through my ritual of reading the classifieds during a mid-morning lull while Florence took a break when a voice said, “Job-hunting?”

I looked up to attend to the customer and had that same time-standing-still feeling when I looked into his deep blue eyes. Was he the guy from the other coffee shop? I couldn’t even remember his face, so I couldn’t be sure. It wasn’t a good sign if I was swooning over every pair of blue eyes that crossed my path. I knew that should probably tell me something, but I preferred not to think about it. “Can I help you?” I asked, dropping the newspaper.

“How’s the coffee here?” He must have noticed my hesitation because he grinned and said, “And be honest.”

“Well, it’s not really to my taste. It’s kind of, um, strong.”

“Burnt?”

“Enthusiastically roasted.”

“What about the tea?”

“It’s actually pretty good, but it’s in bags so you have to brew it yourself. We don’t brew tea here. You can see the kinds there in the rack.”

“Then I’ll have a tea.”

While I filled a cup with hot water, he leaned against the counter and said, “I thought books and tea went together, and you know, I can’t think of a bookstore that sells real tea in their café. It’s just tea bags.”

I handed him the cup and he selected a tea bag while I rang him up. “If we upgraded the tea, we’d have to upgrade the scones, and where would that leave us?” I quipped, then realized a second later that I was probably speaking out of turn. I shouldn’t be criticizing the merchandise I was selling.

“The scones aren’t good?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s not that they’re bad. They’re just, well, probably better for keeping the tables level than for eating. I suspect the bakery sends us their day-old stuff and figures we won’t notice.”

“Then I think I’ll skip the scone today,” he said as he paid for his tea. He nodded toward my newspaper, with several jobs circled in red. “Are you trying to flee the bad coffee and scones?”

“It’s not that. It’s just that this was supposed to be a temporary job while I looked for a real job in my field. That’s taken a bit longer than I planned.” I squinted at the newspaper as I had the sudden feeling that there was something odd there. Was the newspaper classified section
really
the best way to find a professional job?

“How much longer?”

I snapped back to the present, blinking. “Nearly a year. I gave myself a year, and I have three weeks left.”

“Then what happens?”

“I guess I give up and leave the city. Or I suppose I could get married and become a housewife.”

He dunked his tea bag into his cup and swirled it around. “I would think that finding a husband would be just as challenging as finding a job,” he said, watching his tea rather than looking at me.

“Oh, I’ve already got that covered. I think. It wasn’t exactly a formal proposal, but my boyfriend and I have been talking about marriage.”

He gave the newspaper another look. “Your field is advertising?”

“Yeah. More on the strategy side than the creative—deciding what approach to take and how to target it rather than actually dreaming up the ads.”

“Well, good luck with that,” he said with a smile as he walked away, pausing to drop his tea bag in a trash bin.

“He was cute,” Florence remarked as she returned from her break and tied her apron back on.

“Yeah, I guess he was. Nice, too.”

“And he seemed interested.” She raised an eyebrow and smirked.

“I have a boyfriend. Which I mentioned to him, so it’s not even like I was flirt-cheating. He was just making conversation. He got tea, and he had to wait for it to steep, so I’m sure he was just killing time.” So why were my cheeks burning up?

“Uh huh,” she said, then she switched gears. “Did you hear about the mandatory employee meeting tomorrow morning?”

“How early?”

“Eight sharp, before we open.”

“Ugh.”

“Brace yourself. They’re having it here, and they’re serving coffee to the crew, so we get to be here at seven thirty to get ready.”

“We’d better get to clock in for that.”

“That’s probably the least of our concerns. The new owner is going to address us, and you know what that probably means.”

“He’s going to talk about the changes he wants to make?”

“Yeah, like closing the store and doing something more profitable with the space.”

“You’re such a pessimist.”

“Realist,” Florence corrected. “This is my third bookstore job. I just wanted this one to last me through grad school.”

“We’ll be fine,” I insisted. I wasn’t sure if I really believed that or if I wanted to believe it.

*

I woke the next morning—to that godawful alarm clock—with the sense that I’d had exceptionally vivid dreams of an entirely different life. There had been danger, and there had been moments when I was scared out of my mind, but there was also something nice about it, a sense of accomplishment. I lay there for a moment, trying to recapture the images and feelings, but they dissipated rapidly. The really weird thing was that those images were still sharper than any attempt I made to remember events from longer than about a week ago. I was way too young to have developed Alzheimer’s disease, and besides, that was supposed to work the other way around, where the distant past was sharper than the more recent past. I supposed it was normal for the past to grow foggy with time, but I would have thought that a year ago would be clearer than this.

With a sigh, I got out of bed and got ready for work. As I dressed, I thought about how nice this apartment was. It was a full floor in an Upper West Side brownstone, one that hadn’t even been carved up into studios. How could I possibly afford this place without a roommate while working in a bookstore coffee shop? Then a blurry-edged memory of finding this dream rent-controlled place popped into my head. Oh yeah, that’s what had happened. I put on my coat and headed to the store.

I didn’t have time to stop for my unauthorized dose of caffeine, so I was bleary-eyed when I stumbled my way up to the café, where the tables and chairs had already been arranged like a university lecture hall. Great, I thought, one more thing we’d have to fix before we opened for the day. I had started the coffee brewing when Florence showed up, laden with bakery boxes.

“To get them this early, I had to pick them up,” she explained.

“I wonder if that means they’re actually fresh.”

“Gee, I hope not. I have some pictures to hang and I need something for pounding in the nails.”

We set out enough plates and cups for all the employees, and I had just enough time to get a head start on serving myself some coffee, which was as bad as I remembered, even when it was freshly brewed. I took off my apron before taking a seat at the back of the café. The rest of the staff came in, with much grumbling and speculation about what we’d learn from the meeting. I wasn’t sure which outcome I really wanted. I didn’t want to lose my job, but if I did, that might force me to overcome the inertia in my life. I might someday look back on this meeting and realize it was the best thing that had ever happened to me.

The room filled, and the various department managers came in and sat near the front. Once everyone was seated, a familiar man stepped in front of the group and said, “Good morning, everyone. Thank you for coming in early today. I’m Owen Palmer, your new owner.”

It was the dark-haired, blue-eyed customer I’d chatted with the day before. I was so very, very fired. I wondered if maybe I’d at least get credit for honesty. That was the only way I could imagine my job being saved. I hoped someone left a newspaper behind this morning. I’d definitely need to review the job ads.

He talked about keeping the store open in spite of the challenging economy and mentioned a few changes to help us be more profitable. Most of it had to do with more creative shelving and how we could take advantage of the fact that we didn’t have to abide by top-down dictates like the chain stores. We could shelve books where our customers were most likely to discover them, even in multiple places around the store. It wasn’t exactly an earthshattering idea, but it wasn’t something too many other stores did. He talked about getting employee input on purchase decisions and offering incentives for hand-selling books.

I tensed when he got around to discussing the coffee shop. I didn’t think he’d fire me now, but I prepared myself for a lecture on providing a positive customer experience. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but our coffee is lousy,” he said. There was nervous laughter from the group, and I cringed. It wasn’t my fault, but would he see it that way? “We need to revamp our coffee shop, and we’ll be considering new suppliers.” I wondered if the revamp would include employees who didn’t peruse the classified ads while on the job or openly criticize the coffee to customers. But all he discussed was the quality of what was offered, not the employees. He’d probably fire me privately, in a one-on-one meeting later that day.