2 latte art can be provocative, I guess?
2
latte art can be provocative, I guess?
Ava
Every day I am pushed closer to the brink by our customers.
‘I have a girlfriend,’ the man in front of me says as I push his flat white across the counter. I glance up at him in confusion, and the sliver of neck above his starched collar turns pink while he nervously shifts his weight to his other foot. I blink a few times until I catch him pointedly looking back towards the coffee now midway between both of our hands. I’d made a heart with steamed milk and the shape is just starting to shrivel as the bubbles deflate.
‘Would you like another one?’ I ask evenly, gesturing towards the drink.
‘No,’ he says, neck now an indignant shade of magenta. ‘I’m very happy with her. We’re going to get married one day.’
As he grabs the cup and storms away, a sigh rips through me. This is not the first time a man has taken my innocuous latte art as some kind of sordid proposition.
While the-one-that-got-away settles into one of the comfy armchairs in the corner, I grab a cloth to clean the surfaces. I move around the shop, wiping reclaimed wood tables and tucking chairs back into place. The problem with working the same type of job for years is that you become so efficient you almost bring about your own boredom. The work isn’t fulfilling , but I don’t need fulfilling. I don’t have to give this place a second thought after I walk through the door at the end of my shifts, and that’s a good thing.
City Roast is a surprisingly charming place for its location smack-bang in the concrete corporate catchment zone of the lawyers, accountants and wannabe finance bros of London, and usually sees the bulk of its customers just before nine. Now late morning, the shop’s scattered with laptop-laden students, parents with buggies, and our handful of retired regulars people-watching through the floor-to-ceiling windows that line the walls.
I swat a hanging vine out of my way as I head back to the counter. The plants trailing from light fixtures and shelves and sitting in heavy pots are all fake, but my manager thinks they’re real, which may or may not be because in moments of extreme boredom I water them anyway, and he’s definitely watched me do it. With no new customers coming in to interrupt my quiet time, I settle behind the counter to make myself a coffee, watching a single droplet of espresso trickle down the side of the machine.
‘Ava!’ a disembodied voice calls from the back room, knocking me out of my reverie. I catch eyes with my co-worker Mateo, who gives me a grimace in solidarity and takes my place by the coffee machine. I shuffle backwards, taking a deep breath before pushing against the door, preparing to defend myself against whatever affront to hospitality I have no doubt committed.
‘Oh, there you are. I’ve been calling your name for ages,’ my manager says, not even looking up as he peers at the shelves in confusion, a pen in one hand and a clipboard in the other.
Carl is, as always, immaculate. His salt-and-pepper hair is slicked back with enough product to strike fear into firefighters everywhere, and sun-weathered skin pulls taut across features that were probably very handsome, twenty years ago. Nowadays, he looks as if someone with limited artistic talents has tried to draw Mark Ruffalo from memory.
‘I was serving a customer.’ My smile is as false as my excuse.
His chinos are just a fraction too short, exposing the ‘fun’ socks he wears every day, and anthropomorphic hamburgers peek out around his ankles from astonishingly reflective Oxfords. It’d be nice if he put as much time into helping out around the shop as he does polishing his shoes, but such is life.
‘Your apron’s dirty,’ he accuses, finally glancing up at me.
‘Oh, is it?’ We’ve been open for two hours and my apron is already covered in milk splatters, coffee grounds have migrated under my nails, and a single almond-shaped burn on my left wrist is still glowing after it touched the steam wand earlier.
‘I’m doing the stocktake and have noticed we seem to be missing,’ he pauses and glances down at his clipboard as if to check the numbers, even though I know he already knows what’s written, ‘seven KitKat Chunkies. Do you know why that might be?’
My mind darts back to last night. I’m glad he’s technologically inept, because if he were to review yesterday’s CCTV footage from outside the front of the shop, he’d see clips of me cramming chocolate into my mouth with such gusto that a passer-by had to stop and check if I was choking.
‘No, no idea at all,’ I say innocently. His eyes narrow just slightly in a way that makes me think he doesn’t quite believe me, but he doesn’t push it. ‘Was that everything, Carl? I think we have customers.’ I push my way out of the room without waiting for a reply.
I’m crouching on the floor by the milk fridge organising bottles in order of expiry date when a group of men breezes through the door. I stifle a groan before getting up, joints creaking in that mid-twenties way. Who even comes into a coffee shop at four minutes to seven on a Friday evening?
The corporate version of the Powerpuff Girls, apparently.
‘Hi,’ the tallest one says – dark suit, high cheekbones, and perfectly proportioned features that briefly make me think of golden ratios and Fibonacci sequences. He drops his voice and appeals to me through thick eyelashes. ‘We would be obscenely grateful if you could serve us three double espressos.’
I’ve never been particularly receptive to male charm, so I force a closed-mouth smile and reply, ‘Coming right up.’
Listening to gossip is one of the few perks of working in the service industry, so as the coffee extracts, I eavesdrop. From my recon, I learn that two of them are staying late in the office to work on a project, while the other is helping out as a favour, but their discussion is peppered with tech terms I don’t fully understand. Frankly, it’s nowhere near exciting enough to justify delaying my closing. I tap the till a few times while the final coffee is finishing up.
‘Paying together or separately?’ I ask, interrupting their chat.
‘Together,’ the first man says. ‘Whose round is it? Rory, is it yours?’
‘Nope, it’s Finn’s,’ says Rory, a pale, gangly redhead with more freckles visible than skin and a mouth almost too big for his face, his collar half up and tie slightly askew. He grabs his coffee and knocks it back like it’s tequila, before widening his eyes and panting the word ‘hot’.
The third man comes to the till then – Finn, according to my unparalleled powers of deduction – taking out his phone. Chestnut curls fall over wire-framed glasses as he leans closer to the card reader to pay, and the slightest grin tugs at the corners of his mouth.
‘You know the facial recognition doesn’t require you to smile, right?’ Powerpuff Boy number one says, sending a sideways glance at Finn.
Finn pockets his phone and takes his glasses off to clean them on his shirt; a baggy olive-green number with the sleeves rolled up, more casually dressed than the other two.
‘I’m sure this isn’t in your wheelhouse,’ he retorts good-naturedly before pushing his glasses back up his nose, ‘but have you ever considered that some of us are just happy to be here?’
He has an accent I can’t quite place. It’s as if an English accent has been sanded down at the edges; vaguely American in its cadence, the sounds softer and lazier.
‘Sorry about this, by the way,’ he says, looking across the counter at me. A bigger smile pulls all the way up to brown eyes that are unexpectedly warm as they catch mine. He’s not much taller than me, probably just shy of six foot, so he’s perfectly at my level. ‘I realise you’ve probably already cleaned everything, but the coffee machine in our office broke and we’re working late, and Julien is a diva who categorically refuses to resort to instant coffee.’
The first man lifts his tiny mug in the air with a nod as if in a toast and says, ‘Worth it, though.’
Finn taps Julien’s mug with his own and they sip their espressos, sensibly much more slowly than Rory, who’s hovering impatiently by the door like a spaniel that knows it’s about to go on a walk.
Finn makes a guttural noise not entirely appropriate for a public setting. ‘Shit, I’ve missed good coffee.’
I’m emptying the coffee grounds for what I hope is the last time today when Rory starts talking. ‘Are you two done? I would absolutely love it if we could finish work at a decent hour. I’m desperate to be home in time to watch The Chase .’
‘Uh, I think it’s a bit late for that,’ Julien says, as he and Finn catch each other’s eye and try not to laugh.
Rory turns with a groan, shoulders slumped, forcefully pushing against the door once (it’s a pull door), twice (still a pull door), then realising his mistake and yanking it open (there you go) and stepping outside.
‘Sorry,’ Finn says again, arranging the mugs into a triangle and pushing them towards me on the counter while Julien walks towards the door. Rory’s already crossing the street, his posture despondent even from a distance. Finn rubs a hand along his lower face, drawing my attention to the dark stubble covering what I can tell is a particularly defined jawline. ‘Someone’s coming to fix our machine on Monday, so if you spot us in here at closing time again you are more than welcome to bar us.’ I raise my eyebrows. His mouth twitches like he can read my mind, and his tone is somewhere between amused and apologetic when he says, ‘Although, honestly, I can’t promise I won’t be back during actual sociable hours, because that was the best coffee I’ve had in a long, long while. And I’m not just saying that because I feel bad about stopping you from leaving on time.’
This man has been in the shop for mere minutes, and I can already tell he talks too much.
‘Finlay O’Callaghan,’ Julien calls out from the door he’s now propping open with his foot, ‘please stop flirting with this poor woman and let’s go.’
A sheepish grin spreads across Finn’s features and he mumbles, ‘I was just being friendly,’ before joining his colleague, both men calling out a loud goodbye before the slam of the door closes off the sounds of the street.