Wall Flower

My first shift at Coffee, Tea & Piano Keys began a week later, as my new employer Mr. Tucker promised, at four in the evening and ended at seven. Throughout the week I have three hour shifts except on Saturdays when I have two hour shifts. Weekends are morning shifts; weekdays are evenings unless I am needed in the morning and I am available to come in.

I knew how to make most of the frappuccino and lattes because Mr. Tucker trained me the weekend after he offered me a job. I practiced all day Saturday with him, Joe right by my side the entire time. I asked Joe to come with me because working with an older man still sends fear blazing through my arteries and veins like a forest fire.

Today, Mr. Tucker said he would let me handle my first half hour by myself – not entirely by myself, actually, for the other cashier, the too-skinny and seemingly sleep-deprived man I saw my first time here, would be beside me and watching me in case I needed his assistance. For the next half hour Mr. Tucker will shadow me and check on my adjustability and work-ethic. This would happen on and half, every other half-hour Mr. Tucker would shadow me and “check in.” I was taken aback by my being frightened more at the thought of going solo for every other half hour than the thought of having Mr. Tucker breathing down my neck. I suppose my wall-flower, socially awkward penguin, antisocial nature overrode my fear of men.

After putting on the dark chocolate apron on over my plain black v-neck and dark jeans and after pinning my name tag (Loraine Fontaine, barista), I let the cashier (I surmise that the proper title for my co-workers would be barista as well) before me finish her shift so I could take over. Following her departure I took her place before the cash register and waited with nervous excitement for my first customer, shaking as softly as a leaf on a bitter night.

I took the time to peek at my co-worker, the man that looked sleep-deprived, who stood beside me. He sneakily hid his phone under the view of the cash register and counter to text. I do not doubt that he knew of the no-texting-during-work-hours rule that applied to all of us baristas, though I also do not doubt he deliberately ignored this rule. I decided to really look at him so I would not internally condemn him without knowing him (as Jesus says, “Why do you tell your brother, ‘Get that splinter out of your eye!’ when you have a plank sticking out of your own?”). He had a plain black v-neck as well, though his was the kind that one found in the men’s section of a department store; his jeans were such a dark navy blue I thought they were black, and they had various tears spread across like scars, some covered by plaid patches, others left like open wounds; he, too, had a dark chocolate apron, though his name tag was turned in a way I could not see it. When I reached his face it has half covered by his white gold, loosely curly hair; it reached to his shoulders. This coffee shop must have allowed piercings because he had snakebite piercings, I do believe they are called, dotted beneath his lower lip. When he glanced up at me I caught a quick glimpse of two silver dots – I’m assuming those were piercings as well – on his left gold eyebrow and crimson stretchers (am I correct?) in his ears before I bashfully looked down at the buttons upon the cash register.

My heart beat went from the speed of a humming bird’s wings to the speed of a jet’s propellers when I noticed a familiar pair of brothers and a curly, dark haired girl casually mosey into the shop. I let out a breath I did not know I was holding as Cassandra, Nicholas and Joseph walked up to my register, nonchalantly checking out the menu; Joe and Cassandra did so theatrically, saying a loud, “Hm,” every few seconds while the two stroked their chins. They embarrassed me sometimes: this was another reason why I sometimes loved Nicholas more, for he did not over exaggerate his coming in and being one of my first customers.

As Joe and Cassandra continued their “Hms”, a co-worker of mine, a tan woman of my age or slightly older with freckles on her cheeks (hers were cute; why could not mine be as cute?) and sunny-day blue eyes, told my co-worker beside me that he had to “man the drive-thru.” He sniffed, looked past me at the drive-thru with caramel eyes, and said, “Okay,” before strutting over to where the female co-worker just stood.

My female co-worker flipped her dark, sandy, braided hair onto her shoulder closest to me and stared intently at one of the three of my friends. I did not have time to tell which one she was ogling because Nick cleared his throat, smiled sweetly, and said, “Hey, I’m ready to order, miss.”

Joe had moved from behind Nick to go look at the pastries farther from me and I saw, from the corner of my eye, my female co-worker watching him with as much focus as a hawk watching its unfortunate prey below. The green monster named jealousy suddenly roared loudly in my ears, melting slowly into an irritating ringing, and I had to try very hard to concentrate on what Nicholas was ordering.

“I’ll have a, uh, regular sized . . . Malibu Dream? Yeah, that, and she’ll have a regular sized English breakfast tea latte and a vanilla cupcake. Uh . . .”

He looked over at Joe and I mimicked him. Joe was still assessing the desserts, but the female co-worker had slithered over to him and was smiling with fangs exposed, ready to strike at him and poor her venom into him. Joe was oblivious and smiled politely before returning to Cass and Nick.

He had barely opened his mouth when the girl scurried back to her register and said, “What'll you have?” She looked expectantly at him, hoping to hypnotize him with her pretty eyes.

My claws were out and ready when Joe sweetly declined: “What? Oh, no, I’m with these two.”

“Oh, uh, okay,” she sputtered, and I comically and triumphantly pictured the woman deflating like a balloon and becoming as useless as a rubber snake.

Nick finished his order, I wrote his name on all three drinks, gave him the cost, and he smiled as he gave me the money.

“Thanks for coming, guys,” I said with a smile. I got the receipt and handed it to the curly haired boy. “I’ll get your drinks ready.”

Nick and Cassandra turned away to wait for their drinks. I was about to turn around and get their drinks started, cups waited patiently on the counter behind me, when I felt a presence. I slowly turned and found Joe with cake pop hanging sideways like a rose between his teeth. He was digging into the little paper baggie I gave him and he said, “Howed on one shecon’,” he said, the stick of the cake pop hindering his voice, and pulled out the second cake pop. He took the first cake pop out of his mouth and held the second out to me.

“Yes? Would thou preferest a different flavor of thine cake ball upon a stick?” I asked, and ignored the confused look contorting the female co-worker’s face.

“No, I want you to have it; I bought it for you,” he said, eyes upturned and voice revealing offense.

My heart melted the green monster of jealousy away in an instant, and I felt bad for feeling possessive of Joe when I had no need to feel such a horrid emotion. I took the cake pop from Joseph, smiled a twitch of a smile, and he returned it with a luminous smile of his own before he happily walked over to his brother and my sister in Christ.

I pulled out a napkin and placed the cake pop gently upon it, as if it were made of glass and could break easily. I made their drinks with a furrowed brow: how could I have let such an ugly emotion such as jealousy snake its way into my heart? It is not as if I had reason to be, for Joe is not my possession nor is he obligated to have that title. He is sweet, and my green monster shied away from such a sweet heart, afraid of the reality of its ugliness. I vowed then not to be jealous over a girl flirting or showing interest in my friend, Joseph, again. Such a bad taste in my mouth, jealousy leaves, and I took it away with a bite of the perfectly sugary and satisfying red velvet cake pop.

“I have an English breakfast tea latte, Malibu Dream, and a cappuccino for Nicholas,” I called out, setting the three drinks upon the small, white quartz countertop jutting out from the small glass windows in front of the tea and coffee makers.

All three of my friends walked up to get their drinks, Cassandra smiling brightly and widely at me. She reached over the counter top with palm facing me. “High five, lovely!” she cheered, and I did as she ordered. “Good job, Loraine.” She took a sip and moaned in gusto. “Really good!”

Nick looked as though he might begin hyperventilating and pass out on the spot, staring wide-eyed at Cassandra and nervously wiping his hands on his jeans. I held back a laugh, but not successfully, and he tried desperately to recover. “I, um, yeah, proud of you, Loraine, um . . . yeah. I gotta get going to rehearsals.”

(Nick had gotten the part of Maurice in Beauty and the Beast, and Joe had gotten the part of Le Fou.)

“What? Already?” Cassandra asked, a little disappointed.

“Yeah,” was all Nick said before he ducked out of the shop. Cassandra and I shrugged, and Joe watched his brother as he left.

The rest of my shift consisted of customers flooding in at random and in large hordes and disappearing as suddenly, as though the plague had wiped them all out. I assumed it was the after-work-day rush that caused the customer apocalypse.

Mr. Tucker shadowed me during the wave of customers, and luckily I only faltered once: I nearly forgot a customer’s double-shot cappuccino with extra whipped cream and three Splendas. The customer, an older man with flecked with gray hair, was jittery and impatient, and I nearly asked them why in holy heaven they thought they needed a double-shot cappuccino with extra whipped cream and plenty sugar. Mr. Tucker saw my temper when I was apologizing for making the jittery man wait, and the jittery man was getting “snippy with me,” as my mother would say it. Mr. Tucker thankfully left me off with a warning and rewarded my over-all good job with twenty minutes of piano playing.

As he walked me to the piano, Cassandra and Joe waved animatedly at me, and I pursed my lips into a bashful grin. I sat at the grand piano’s bench and situated myself.

“Got enough songs to play for twenty minutes?” Mr. Tucker asked.

“I have plenty of songs in mind, yes,” said I.

“Good. The last song these people heard was before your shift, and some people are just too shy to play. Gotta live up to my name, don’t I?”

I cringed at his syntax inwardly and nodded. He patted my arm; I cringed outwardly, and felt eyes on me. One pair of those eyes was Joe’s and they were concerned. The boy must have seen the tenseness in my rigid shoulders, my clenched jaw. He knew why I shied from older men, even when they have no sick, lustful motives in showing me kindness in a pat on the shoulder, a light touch on the arm, a compliment.

The second pair of eyes belonged to my male co-worker, the one with the piercings dotting his face. His eyes betrayed amusement and something else, especially when he took a quick peek towards the table at which Joseph and Cassandra were seated.

I played an array of songs ranging from movie scores, songs frequently played on the radio that I waste time learning, songs from musicals, songs from artists that pop up on my Pandora Radio – all sorts of songs that I love playing and don’t mind playing because they are easy and people know them and their mainstream-ick (I am speaking of the radio songs, the popular crap by artist that do not know talent).



“Can I read your poems yet?” Joe asked when he, Cassandra, and I reached our dorm room. While Cassandra unlocked the door, Joe gave me a sad, pouty face.

“No,” I said bluntly.

“Humph,” he grunted, and he crossed his arms defiantly, like a small child.

“Go study or something, Joseph,” I laughed. Cassandra opened the door. “Or go to the library and read some poetry. Poe is good to read at night. Chilling and artistic his poems are.”

“I don’t wanna go to the library,” Joe whined. “Do you have anything by him that I can just borrow?”

“Want some cheese with that whine?” Cassandra called from inside our dorm room.

“You would be correct in your assumption that I have poetry novels,” I said, and I walked into my room. “Come along and wait for a second.”

As I reached into my box full of books, rummaged around, searching and searching for Poe, Cassandra plopped onto her bed. “Loraine,” she said, “what do you want to do for your birthday?”

I heard a smack echo through my room and turned around to find Joe’s palm connected to his forehead. “Your birthday!” he groaned. “It’s Saturday, isn’t it?”

“Affirmative,” said I, continuing my search as though it were not interrupted. I finally pulled out what I was searching for: The Raven and Other Favorite Poems. I stood from my crouch and meandered over to Joseph, arm extended with book in hand. He took it, lowering the hand with which he had used to smack his forehead in exasperation.

“Birthday, birthday, birthday,” he muttered before he did something at random: he scurried away, leaving me standing in my doorway confused and yet not confused, staring after Joseph as he dashed down the hall to the elevator.

“I’ll remember your birthday, I promise!” he called, his voice reverberating off the walls and beating against my eardrums.