Street Symphony (25 page)

Promotion? The sack? She shuddered and gulped at her drink before she whispered, “Three and a half.”

“Another?”

“Yes, please. It was very good. And I don’t have to work tomorrow.”

“You’re an attractive woman, Muriel. Your hair is like a bird’s nest. I imagine a wren. But in the office –”

Muriel couldn’t remember on Saturday morning when she was sitting in the chair at Hair Apparent what had prompted her to put a hand on Hodgson’s thigh, but she did recall seeing it lying there like a detached hand in a horror story. She didn’t quite remember how she’d got home. She’d had to get up early and take a cab to get her car from the hotel car park. Asking her mother to drive her would have meant explanations. It was bad enough that she’d giggled all the way through
Survivor
. Driving with an aching
head through the empty streets at 7:00 a.m., she’d repeated to her
self: Explanation, Recrimination. She sang those two words aloud and added four more: Information. Reformation. Dispensation. Revelation.

She remembered Gilles, with his hand in her hair, also telling her that she needed pepping up. “Erplift you need,” he said. “We strip your ’air down and cut away ’ere. You will be new.”

“Do what you like,” she’d replied as if she were lying down naked in front of him.

The rest of the weekend was like a bad piece of theatre seen through smoked glass. Lance made his joke about diamonds and kept staring at her as if without her blond hair she’d become a stranger. Her mother apologized for the hard Brussels sprouts and overcooked beef and grumbled at length about the amateur opera company’s upcoming season before going to her room to listen to Gigli singing “Vesti La Giubba” at top pitch. Lance poured the last of the wine into his glass and talked about the need of more funding for the arts as if she and the bank were responsible for a national cultural decline and his in particular. In the kitchen, Muriel, confronted by a pile of dirty dishes and a note on the dishwasher saying,
Broken, do not use
, knew that her mother wasn’t going to be easily defeated. She called Lance to come and help but the response had been a soft, “See you,” and the sound of the front door closing.

But that was Sunday, her past life. She was about to move on. She went to the
galley
to rinse out her mug. Wayne and Bren, sitting at the table drinking their own strange brew, turned and said, “Hi, Muriel.” She smiled at them in response. Wayne offered to pour her a coffee. She thanked him but said she’d brought her own and then suggested that he bring her the figures he was supposed to have finished on Friday.

She sent Lance a text.
Working late tonight. Inventory.
Inventory! As if they were going to count the money! How easy it was to lie. How liberating. She had, at two in the morning, lain back on the pillow not caring that she was still awake, and thought about poetry. Short and long lines. Breaks. Rhythm. It was time perhaps to buy an anthology and find the poems she’d liked at school. This evening, she was going to check out a condo downtown. Next weekend she would tell Lance that she could no longer pay his rent. Maybe she could persuade him and his oil can to move in with her mother. She went into Jack’s office and sat down in the postulant’s chair.

“Thank you for the other evening,” she said.

“Well,” he said. “Yes. We could, you know –”

“I’d like to take my vacation at the end of the month, Jack.”

“Both weeks?”

Both weeks! How utterly mean that sounded. Out of the entire three hundred and sixty-five days, she was allowed only fourteen or, given the weekends, ten!

“I might stretch it to three,” she replied. “I’ve worked some extra Saturdays.”

“There is the annual report coming up, Muriel.”

“I intend to leave everything ready and I’ll be back before then. There’s a jazz festival in Monterey. I’m going to drive down. I’ll be back on the ninth.” Oh yes, she would come back. She would come back with determination. Hodgson’s job was not beyond her, and there were places higher up the ladder within her reach. And if, and if, he went to the super-boss and complained? Then she might be fired and a whole new world, an uncertain world, would open up before her. It might be a chasm but at least it wouldn’t be a rut.

She stopped by Mahood’s desk to tell him to take over the Javez account and then she said, “That’s a nice tie.” The man’s look of confusion assured her that she was on the right track. Back in her own office, Muriel closed the door and took a long strand of blond hair from her purse. But for the smoke alarm, she’d have set fire to it. Instead, as she dropped it into the wastebasket, a few hairs at a time, she murmured, “Thank you,” to the denizens of the Caffè Italia. They had made her realize that she had only this one life, that she was thirty-seven and that in another three decades, she might well be sitting there too looking forward to an endless day. Tomorrow, she would listen to the old guy who murmured “cherries” as she walked by, talk to the sick woman in the corner, respond to the hockey fan, tell the sculptor she knew her work. And maybe one morning in late December, she would march into the café and, with apologies to Dickens, say, “The coffee’s on me.”

5. The Price of Coffee

Monday was over. Another day.
Day of his life. The last lingerer was closing his laptop. Jurgen couldn’t believe the price of beans was up again, the second time this year. As he dusted the crumbs off the tables onto the floor, he pictured a bistro where smart people made reservations and ordered fine wine and talked about vacations in Peru. Terry had left the brush outside again and it was damp. What could you expect from a seventeen-year-old kid on minimum wage and tips? He wrote a note for Elise:
Pls swp flr b4 opn.
He could’ve bottled this five o’clock smell: stale coffee, sweat from spandexed cyclists, baby powder from the afternoon mothers’ group, worry, disappointment, friendship and occasional flights of glee.

Good coffee. Good baked goods. Decent location. Eleven years. Should be rich by now. Ha ha! He laughed. The word for his once-upon-a-time dream café was
shabby
. He spelt it aloud. S.H.A.B.B.Y. A song in there somewhere. He blamed the customers. Some of
them bought one coffee and then spent hours reading the free news
papers, doing their school work or just hanging around. Sometimes, towards the end of the day, he wanted to shout, “Have you no homes to go to?” but didn’t in case they hadn’t. His competitor on Lake Street hung a sign in his café window: One coffee – One hour. That seemed harsh, but apparently no one complained.

Shabby, and getting shabbier. It was time to buy paint and spend a weekend sprucing up the place. There were marks on the wall where pictures had been hung and then taken down. Scenes of city life and floral pastiches remained for sale. The books on the shelves near the door had a tired, unwanted look. He added chopped nuts to the muffin mix that Elise would put into pans and bake in time for the seven o’clock crowd. Arthur, Kate, Blondie, John, Fiona, Kumar, Sara: All of them perhaps desperate. Or looking for comfort. So was he a comforter? Yes! He was a provider of service and shelter to a small segment of humanity.

Whatever, there’d be no medals coming his way and the profits shrank as the price of coffee rose. There was a limit to what people would pay for the precious brown liquid.
I buy so-called organic fair trade beans, I grind them for you, I turn them into lattes, cappuccinos, americanos, double doubles. For a little extra, add any of these taste-defying syrups to your drink, ladies and gentlemen, and ruin a fine cup of java. Thanks. You’re welcome.
Smile. Need to get teeth fixed. Fortunately, due to his staff, he only had to come in early twice a week. But in the last part of each day, excepting Sunday, he was here, counting the take, adding up the slow figures, checking how many muffins were leftover to be sold cheap next morning and which sandwiches had to be thrown out because of their lapsed sell-by date.

His mother, who didn’t always know who he was any more, had said to him last Tuesday, “Still at the café?” as if she were reproaching him once again for his unfinished degree, his wasted talents, his life as a server of food and drink. But she hadn’t been impressed either when, tempted by promises of quick money
and fast advancement, he’d gone to work for the Trident Investment Trust. Perhaps she’d even been glad when the company disappeared in the slump like a car down a sinkhole, and hoped he’d finally become a doctor or a professor, a son she could boast about to the neighbours.

When he woke up at night to go and look at Joey in his crib, he imagined the boy asking, “What do you do, Daddy?” There was no chance of becoming an astronaut before the boy learned to speak; he was precocious and even at thirteen months words made sense to him. But he could be a cop, a firefighter, a man in an admirable uniform. A fake uniform kept here at the café and worn home every evening?

Zoe, loving, undemanding, offered to clean the café on Saturday,
and had smiled a lie as she went off to the hospital that morning.
All will be fine very soon. Keep making the muffins and they will come.
She’d given up asking, as had his friend Al, as had brother Hank, When are you going to finish your novel? And that was good because he had no answer except that Philip K. Dick, Terry Pratchett and many another had mined his chosen seam. Current prize-winning authors left few themes untouched. He had to go further. He needed time to think, to choose, to find a relevant and original idea, an idea that didn’t smell of caffeine.

A rap at the door. The closed sign was on. Another rap. Persistence. An angel, the one he dreamed of, had at last descended to say,
My company wants to buy your café for many millions. I can take you away from all this.

He opened the door.

“Can I get a coffee?”

Jurgen wasn’t sure when the request had changed from
may I have
to
can I get
but he didn’t like it. Many customers simply said,
Coffee
, and not even
please
. Words mattered. Language was a gift to be cherished. He’d spent two happy years learning that before Sam Novak from Trident had come along with his twisted we’ll-make-you-rich lure.

The intruder was a woman, twenty-something, dressed in the latest style: Planned bedraggle. She put her umbrella by the door.

“Your artist,” she said, looking at the Christmas design on the window.

“I know,” he replied, “He lacks a sense of proportion.” He went to stand behind the counter waiting for her to say,
I want to take you away from all this
, before she drove him to the ferry, to the airport or whatever magic carpet she might use to transport him to another life.

But she said in a flat voice, “I need a job. I’m desperate.”

He turned and saw his own face in the mirror behind the bar. Thirty-nine and he looked ten years older.
She
was desperate!

“There’s a lot of it about,” he said. Old Arthur, sick Kate, lonely John, early Sara, friendly Fiona, weird Blondie.
All of us have those days.
He poured the last of the coffee from the machine into a mug and offered it to her. He could use the help but could he afford another minimum wage out of the so-called profits? She was a student. She had references. Two days a week was all he could offer.

She was grateful and said, “You won’t regret it. I make a good latte.” Then she looked around and added, “It’s a nice place.”

So she was sucking up to him. She promised to come in tomorrow evening to learn the ropes. As he let her out and locked the door again, he hoped she’d find something better.

He might go to the bank and say,
Can I get a loan?
as if he were asking for the day’s special.
Your assets, sir? My wife, my son, my mortgaged house.
Then he could buy a bigger, shinier machine, smart green-and white-striped awnings, decent outdoor tables, bright cushions for the chairs.

Jake, owner of the two adjacent stores, prowled by and stopped to stare in between the reindeer’s legs. He seemed to see himself as a magnate. The Cheese King taking over the world or at least this small block. Jurgen waved. The other man nodded and moved on. He might as well have written
loser
in a balloon over Santa’s head.

One option was to set fire to the place, try not to get caught and reap the insurance. But what then? Another café? Stay-at-home dad dependent on Zoe, who even now might be attracted to another man, a richer man, an ambitious, go-getting guy like Jake? Or perhaps a quiet few years in jail to finish his degree and begin to write the great novel.

His cellphone rang. It was Zoe the mindreader. “Darling,” she said, “I’ll be a little late tonight. Mila leaves at 5:30. I hope you’re on your way home. Joey needs his bottle and then…”

“Fine, sweetheart.” He ended the call and yelled into the silence, “It’s my hockey night!” He kicked the wastebasket. Used cups and napkins skittered over the floor. He took a deep breath and added
srry fr mss
to Elise’s note and turned out the lights.
Yes, the door will be open at 7:00 in the morning. Yes, all of you who run away from your houses, apartments, wives, kids, husbands, loneliness, before it’s even light, you shall have breakfast!
They were his family, his dependants. Every morning, six days a week, they expected to see each other, knew each other, asked each other how they were, talked about last night’s game. And the later people, too, had their expectations of pleasant service as they politely asked about Joey or his mother and then settled down to relax and solve the world’s problems with their friends.