Coffee & Cigarettes

It was a Thursday evening, and except for the idle busboy checking his reflection in a napkin dispenser, the coffee shop was deserted. Outside, furious, iron clouds rumbled in the sky, like the sound of a hundred brass timpani thundering from above. A brilliant fork of lightning split the earth and rain began to cascade down in curtains of thick shower. The shop’s door was flung open and a young girl dashed in, clothes drenched by the sudden downpour. The bell clamoured crazily as it was tossed around by the icy autumn gale and the boy cringed as it rushed straight through his ribs.

“Welcome to Java Joe,” he droned mechanically. “May I take your order?”

The girl scanned the blackboard, twisting her poppy-red lips in deliberation. Her icy knuckles rapped against the varnished mahogany counter as she shifted her weight from foot to foot, apprehension fleeting across her seemingly naive expression. She let out a slow, shaky breath before wrenching her gaze from the board to meet his.

“You know what,” she sighed, tousling her auburn mane through the crochet, cream beret poised atop her head. “What I really need is a cigarette.”

The boy raised a hand and rubbed the back of his neck, eyeing her petite, polished stature and chic, leather purse-and-handbag-combo beneath a sceptical brow. She certainly didn’t retain the grimy pores and crooked look of his regular customers, but who was he to judge?
He’d only been on the job for two months and as The Boss always said, business is business, as long as business isn’t a cop.

“A cigarette?” he asked lowly, resting his forearms on the countertop. “What kind of cigarette?”

He watched her eyes as they squinted in contemplation, his expression organized into perfect normality. She looked no more than fifteen, with her loosely defined-cheek bones and slightly disproportionate figure. He smirked at her uncertainty. The girl fidgeted restlessly, worrying on her bottom lip as her eyes flitted around the cosy café.

“The funky kind,” she stammered, struggling to control her pulse. “Please.”

He gave an abrupt nod before tapping at the register and handing a receipt for one Quiche Lorraine to the hesitant adolescent. She took it slowly, brows furrowed into a caterpillar across her forehead.

“Just take it and sit down,” he snapped.

She obeyed, circling the shop once before settling upon a worn, tweed sofa by the fire exit at the back.

He wasn’t a bad guy. He was using his minimum-wage, minimum-brain job as an opportunity to sell Funk to minors but really, he wasn’t a bad guy. It was what he was told to do and he always did what he was told. And he’d never, ever dream of touching the stuff himself. All he dreamed of was Tallulah, and when you dream of Tallulah you don’t need Funk. When you dream of Tallulah, all you need is fresh air.

And cash, because Tallulah needed a little more than that.

The oven timer rang and, wrenched from his thoughts, the boy retrieved the quiche, sliding it onto a plate and delivering it to the girl with cutlery wrapped in a paper napkin.

She stared at him blankly.

He rolled his eyes, sauntering back to his post behind the register. “Don’t forget to use your fork and knife,” he advised.

The girl nodded stiffly at his retreating back. Gazing anxiously around the room, she brought the cutlery onto her lap and unrolled it from the beige napkin. Her hands recoiled as a pale green cigarette rolled out from between the utensils, snatching it up quickly before it could escape down her thighs. She should’ve gone elsewhere, but she had nowhere else to go.

With shaking hands, she placed it between her lips and lit up.

Ten minutes later she was slumped against the cushions, her head lolling languidly to the side as she gaped up at the ceiling fan rotating smoothly above. It was the most phenomenal thing she had ever seen. She wondered if pumpkins could move that way too. Her hair stunk of burnt shrubbery and a small droplet of dribble teetered at the corner of her parted lips. The cigarette was balanced on the edge of an empty coffee cup, burning away as fast as her reality.

The bell at the shop’s front chimed again and the boy looked up from the grubby dishcloth twisted in his hands. It fell to the floor as he caught site of the girl wandering through the door. She was tall and slender and curved in all the right places, with long, auburn hair scrunched into a bun at the nape of her neck. Her plump lips were a perfect poppy-red and her eyes gleamed, crystal blue as the necklace he was getting her for Christmas.

He raised a hand halfway to his head, tilting his fingers in an awkward salute.

“Hey, Tallulah.”

She didn’t even look at him. Her gaze shot straight through him to the girl slouched haphazardly on the tweed sofa at the back of the café. Her flats clacked against the sandalwood floor as she strode past him without so much as a fleeting glance. His hopes fell with his heart.

“Caroline,” she said sharply, rigid hands cupping the girl’s jaw. She paused and as she sniffed at the air her face contorted into a grimace of repulsion. She looked back at the girl, scrutinizing her face. “What’s the matter with you?”

The boy’s heart caught in his throat as she picked up the spliff, now a smouldering black stub staining the coffee table, and raised it to the light.

“Don’t-” he sputtered. “Don’t touch that!”

Tallulah dropped the Funk and whisked around, scorching him with an accusatory glare that he deserved. He could feel every one of his nerves shrink and cower beneath her gaze.

“John, right?” she snapped.

He looked down and dug his hands into the depths of his apron pocket where he could feel twenty-four funky cigarettes clustered in to bundles of six.

“Jonah, actually,” he gulped, trying his best at charming. Nodding at the younger girl, he slackened his jaw into a look of innocent curiosity. “Do you know her?”

Tallulah rushed a hand through her hair, nodding with gritted teeth. “She’s my sister,” she flicked at the spliff with the peep-toe of her wedged shoe. “And she appears to be high.”

He was sure his stomach had dropped out his ass. There was no way it was strong enough to hold the thundering of dread that weighed like a canon ball deep in his abdomen.

The girl groaned and her eyes blinked lazily up at the ceiling. Tallulah rushed back to her side, patting her cheek lightly to help her come to.

“Caroline!” she hissed. “Caroline, where did you get the Funk?”

The girl grinned, eyes rolling back into her head. “Here, I think,” she drawled, waving a sluggish hand through the air.

The boy squeezed his eyes shut. He pinched his arm, then his cheek. He tugged at the ends of his hair. He didn’t wake up.

“Call the police!” Tallulah hollered as her sister drifted out of reality. She looked back at the busboy, eyes wild with fear and fury. “Call the police, John! Now!”

The boy didn’t know what he was doing as he dialled emergency services and when he told the operator that a girl was currently passed out due to a bad reaction to some Funk that had been sold to her on location, he was sure he’d gone insane.

“By who?”

“I don’t know,” he stuttered. “She just said she bought it here.”

After he hung up he rushed to the cloakroom, ripped off his apron and stuffed it into the nearest locker before forcing a fresh one over his head. He clenched his jaw against the hot pulse that thundered in his ears. Steadying his breathing, he licked his fingers and slicked them over his wild shock of ebony hair, tucking in his shirt and smoothing out his brows. Evidence disposed of and looking presentable, the boy returned back to the shopfront just in time to hear the familiar chime of the entrance bell for the third time that evening.

The medics rushed in and resuscitated the girl as her sister wept and shrieked and grasped onto the boy next to her who relished in the strawberry scent of her shampoo. He held her close to his chest and dried her tears with the hem of his clean apron and told her everything would be alright. When the girl came to, they took her to the hospital. She couldn’t remember past Sunday.

The police searched the facility with Beagles and Alsatians that made the boy sneeze. He couldn’t have sold the funk; he had allergies to such herbal substances. After three hours of searching, they found the stash in an employee’s locker. His name was George Mc Gillard and he had left his shift early to visit his brother in the rehabilitation centre he struggled to pay for, which then became his motive for selling illegal substances. He was later arrested and detained.

After giving their personal statements, Tallulah and the busboy were free to leave. A merciless chill had set upon the night as the two ambled down the isolated streets to the parking lot. The boy watched Tallulah as she undid the elastic in her hair and the enticing scent of her strawberry shampoo wafted on the icy breeze. She paused, catching his stare with an awkward twitch of the lips.

Scuffing the toe of her shoe across the tarmac, she tangled her fingers in her denim belt loops, shyly gazing up at him beneath her lashes.

“Thanks,” she said softly, gaze roaming the floor. “For everything.”

Jonah took in the glimmer of her eyes, traced the slight pout of her cherry-blossom lips, breathed in the soft fragrance of her cologne, and reality seemed to slip away. Without hesitation, he closed the gap between them, pressing her against his torso as their lips connected in a mist of hot breath. His heart swooped, his mind reeled; he ignored the relentless clap of hands slapping against his chest. An icy first came up and the girl smacked his lips from hers, eyes blazing.

“Touch me again-” she stammered, voice heavy with angry passion. Spicy breath condensed against his lips as her gaze bore through his skin, through his flesh, right into the depths of his soul. She raised both hands and shoved him away, ripping apart the heat ensnaring their bodies.

“Touch me again,” her eyes went dark. “And I’ll tell them what you did.”

He watched her retreat with his mouth agape, his pulse racing and every fibre on his body longing for more.

Like the effect of coffee and cigarettes.