The Old City Café

Saturdays were the busiest days of the week for a certain restaurant in the beachy city streets of St. Augustine. In particular, the lunch rush could last anywhere from ten in the morning to two in the afternoon, stretching a four-hour period into a nightmarish drag.

And everybody could work as quickly as they could, but there would still be customers stepping through the door, setting off the bells that let the staff know that someone was there.

It was a tizzy, and at the heart of it all, there were three key figures – fourteen-year-old Summer Hayashi and her mom and dad. Summer was their weekend waitress, taking care of customer service for her folks when she didn’t have school on her plate, and her parents led the kitchen and built The Old City Café from the ground up.

Summer was always smiling when she powerwalked over to customers’ tables, handing them menus and going over the daily specials, but when the place got busy and she was the only one taking orders and running the register, she could never quite help herself from glancing at the clock every thirty seconds.

It was a cool autumn Saturday when Summer swore she met somebody magic.

The sun was hanging high in the sky, keeping things warm but not too hot for tourists, and for that reason, the snowbirds were in full force. St. Augustine was a beach town, after all, right at the edge of north Florida – it seemed to attract all the old people who thought Miami was too fast-paced and Orlando wasn’t close enough to the ocean.

The café wasn’t situated too far from the bridge that connected the two halves of the town. Business was booming most of the time, no matter what time of year it was. When people drove past endless surf shops and tourist traps, they’d be cruising past the café’s wooden baby blue façade and sand-covered porch. Most people thought to themselves, “Oh, look, a restaurant! It doesn’t look too expensive,” and then they’d park in the street and shuffle on in.

And it would all be the same routine for Summer and the kitchen crew. She’d say hello from behind the register, watch where they’d sit, walk over with menus in hand and then give them a few minutes to pick what foods they wanted. Then she’d scribble their choices on a notepad and give it to her dad behind the scenes, the food would take about fifteen minutes to prepare, and then she’d bring it back out – sometimes with someone else’s help, if the order was huge. And after the guests’ bellies were full, they’d walk up to the register and pay, sometimes ordering iced coffees or cookies from the dessert display.

But that day wasn’t one of those easy days.

It was only a little after noon and Summer wouldn’t have a second waitress on-duty for another hour. She was scrambling all over the place, taking orders the best she could and then getting the food out of the kitchen as quickly as possible. It was days like those that made her almost dislike working at her family’s café – but the quiet periods between rushes made it all seem like nothing.

She had jotted down a few orders and brought out a few more plates when she noticed the familiar jingle of the door opening.

Barely glancing at the woman who came in alone, Summer said over her shoulder, “Hello! Take a seat and I’ll be right with you!”

She didn’t quite catch a full glimpse just yet, but she was able to see the stranger smile sweetly in her direction.

Summer quickly grabbed a menu from behind the cash register and made her way over to the woman, who was sitting in the booth closest to the restaurant’s gumball machine. She had long, curly dark hair that was halfway tied back with a flowery barrette, and a jean jacket over a red-and-white striped t-shirt. Definitely not something a tourist would wear, but not quite a getup that would be in a local’s wardrobe.

“Hello, my name is Summer and I’ll be your server this afternoon. How are you today, ma’am?” Summer smiled, handing out the menu.

The woman smiled back. “I’m doing great, Summer, and you?”

“I’m alright,” the younger girl said. “I’ll let you look over our menu for a few minutes, but can I get you something to drink in the meantime?”

“Oh!” She pursed her lips and flipped the menu open. “I was gonna ask – what’s iced coffee? That’s like coffee with ice in it, right?”

Summer wasn’t usually asked questions like that. She almost thought the woman was joking, but she didn’t dwell on it and just answered normally. “Yeah, basically. It’s cold coffee and we have three flavors – plain, mocha, and caramel.”

“That sounds like it would be amazing,” the lady gasped. “I’ve never had cold coffee before. It’s always too hot to drink and then it takes forever to cool off, you know?”

Summer did not, in fact, know. She pretended to, though, because this woman had done nothing wrong and it wasn’t very often she came across someone who hadn’t at least heard of iced coffee. “Would you like to try one?”

“Yes, please! I think I’m gonna go with caramel if that’s quite alright with you, sweetheart.”

The young waitress was used to being called things like “sweetie” and “honey,” living in Florida and all. “Good choice. I’ll get that ready for you and give you a few minutes to look over the menu.”

There wasn’t a whole lot of work that went into making the iced coffee, since most of it came from pre-made ingredients prepped that morning, so it was just a short while before Summer walked back over to the woman’s table.

She seemed to like it, at least, which was a little victory on Summer’s part. With her little notepad in hand, she asked, “What would you like to eat today?”

“Hmmm.” The woman thought about all of the soups, salads, sandwiches and pastries on the menu, but her decision came up blank. “Do you have any specials?”

Nobody really ever asked that question, either. Usually people were pretty dead-set on what they wanted from the getgo. Summer’s mind flickered back to one item her parents introduced to the menu the previous week – a teriyaki almond chicken salad. Only a few people had tried it despite them all saying it was great, so maybe it could count as a “special.”

“We have a pretty new salad on our menu. It’s a teriyaki chicken salad, with almonds, parmesan cheese, onions, tomatoes, and a dressing of your choice,” she recited, clicking the pen in her hand.

“Oh man, that sounds delish,” the lady sighed happily. “I think I’ll try that.”

So Summer scribbled the order on the notepad and then told her that the order would be ready in about fifteen minutes. She trotted back to the register to input the order, sending it back to the kitchen on the order screen, and then as orders were ready, she’d bring them out to their respective tables.

The lunch rush was bustling in and all of the tables were full at any given second. So many orders scribbled on that little note pad, so many orders rung up on the kitchen screen. Summer’s mom even had to cash out a few guests to ease the load, and a few orders were backed up at the moment. It was a bunch of hurry-up-and-wait – exactly the kind of rush that Summer hated.

And the strange woman’s salad was prepared in fifteen minutes – right on time – although there was a mess of tables that needed to be served before and after her. Summer was so caught in the crossfire that she almost forgot about her – she didn’t even have time to look up at the clock and really process the time that had gone by, nor did she have the right mind to memorize any of the tourists’ faces. It was just table numbers and orders, cash-outs and receipts, a few tips along the way.

Summer was saving up to buy a camera, and the tips were helping. Maybe that’s what made certain mix-ups worthwhile; as long as customers were happy in the end, she’d earn a few extra bucks.

A family of four’s order was next out of the kitchen. Two grilled cheese kids’ meals, a ham and turkey Panini with potato wedges, and sweet onion soup served in a fresh bread bowl – these people were in for a treat.

But Summer was a short girl on the chubbier side, so carrying four plates was always a task for her. With a fold-out little table tucked under her arm, she put the plates on a large platform and held it snug on her shoulder, holding her breath. This could go smoothly, she thought. It probably would. She had never tripped in her run as a waitress.

She didn’t know it, but just by thinking that little tiny optimistic thought, Summer had jinxed herself.

It was spectacular. She had tripped over nothing at all, perhaps her own feet, and the table flew out from under her armpit. The big plate that held the smaller plates was set to crash right on the table directly to her left, where an elderly couple was enjoying lunch. The family of four who had ordered the food in the first place was only a few steps away, happily awaiting their food in their blue-and-pink-cushioned booth.

There were so many things smashing through Summer’s mind in that split-second when she began to fall. Most of those things involved bad fantasies about customers screaming at her and her parents essentially firing her, and not a single thought was remotely positive – a rarity for her.

In the blink of an eye, almost as quickly as she fell, Summer spotted a hand with green fingernails reach out of the corner of her sight.

Suddenly, Summer was on her knees on the floor, but there was someone standing above her. Combat boots and rolled-up shorts, a jean jacket and long, curly black hair. It was the weird lady who didn’t know what iced coffee was – and there she was, somehow holding all four plates back on the big plate.

Not a drop of soup was spilled. Not a potato wedge was on the floor. Not a single crumb had left any of the plates, despite Summer’s certainty that everything was absolutely ruined.

“That was a close one!” the woman said, laughing and holding the plates with only one hand. She helped Summer stand up with her free one.

There was no way that this was real. Either this lady was secretly the best waitress in the whole planet – as if there was some sort of secret organization for people who were really good at that sort of thing – or it was just sheer luck.

Or magic, Summer thought before realizing she lived on the planet Earth, something that was very real.

Every guest in the restaurant had caught sight of Summer tripping and the lady saving the day and all of that food, and it seemed as though everyone had released their breaths from the gasps they shared. There was a hubbub for a few minutes, just as the food was handed out and apologies were made, but when it was all said and done, Summer thanked the woman graciously.

“Your meal is one the house, ma’am,” she smiled, still shaky.

“Oh, sweetheart, you don’t have to! It was wonderful, I don’t want anything special,” the woman laughed, waving her hand. She sipped the last of her coffee.

Summer eventually got her to cave in, deciding to just tell her parents later that she’d cover the expenses. And she would’ve been content to just leave it at that, to give the woman the receipt for the meal that she didn’t have to pay for and say goodbye one more time.

But before she could hand her the receipt, Summer had noticed that her booth was now empty. Her glass was empty and the plate totally clean, the woman had left.

Summer walked over to the table to collect the dishes, still wondering about that lady and the weirdness of her existence. Under the salt shaker, there was a napkin and a ten-dollar bill.

A ten-dollar tip? Jeez, Summer thought, her eyes wide. I should be tipping her!

Written on the napkin in neat bubbly letters, there was a note.

“The food was great! You’re a wonderful gal, Summer. I’m sending some good luck your way, though you’ve got enough luck to last you a lifetime! Have a good one!
- Kitty”

Summer wasn’t quite sure what kind of sense any of this made, but she decided not to question it. Sometimes, when good things or people happen, there doesn’t need to be a reason.

Far stranger things were in store for her, after all.