Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Stella arrived for the lunch shift to find Joey standing at the napkin station, refolding triangles while frozen in what appeared to be a practice pose.
"Those napkins aren't auditioning for Broadway," she said, tying her apron. "You can stop method acting."
"I'm building muscle memory," Joey replied, realigning a stack with obsessive care. "Coffee Drinker Number Two needs to radiate quiet competence. The napkins are my scene partners."
"Coffee Drinker Number Two?" Bea asked, looking up from her artistic order slip.
"Pageant of the Masters," Joey explained, immediately looking both proud and nervous. "I got cast in the still life tableau. I have to stay perfectly still for three whole minutes while people stare at me."
"That's amazing!" Bea said. "Mom and I should totally come watch!"
"Do they get billing?" Stella asked, gesturing at the napkins.
"Supporting cast." Joey held up a triangle, examining it like a diamond. "This one's feeling insecure about its corners."
"Maybe it needs therapy," Stella suggested, moving toward the register where an order ticket was causing obvious distress.
"Don't mock the process," Joey said.
Stella looked over at the register, where Bea's latest artistic interpretation of table orders was causing confusion. Today's creation featured what appeared to be a detailed sketch of a butterfly emerging from a flower, surrounded by swirling lines and small hearts.
"Let me guess," Stella said. "Table Four wants grilled cheese."
"How did you know that?" Joey asked, breaking his pose to stare at her in amazement.
"The butterfly means transformation. Grilled cheese is bread turning into something golden. Plus it says 'grilled cheese' in tiny letters at the bottom." Stella handed him a regular order pad.
Joey squinted at the ticket. "Oh. Right. There it is."
"Crisis averted," Bea announced, appearing at Stella's elbow with a fresh pot of coffee. "I heard my artistic interpretation required translation services."
"It's beautiful," Stella said, and meant it. "Very... expressive. But maybe we could try a hybrid system? Art for inspiration, words for Joey's sanity?"
"That's very diplomatic," Bea said approvingly. "I like your approach to conflict resolution."
"I like your approach to making Joey's eye twitch," Stella replied. "It's quite an artistic achievement in itself."
Joey was indeed developing a slight facial tic as he tried to decode Bea's next ticket, which appeared to feature a small sun with radiating beams. He slipped back into his Coffee Drinker pose while staring at it.
"Grilled cheese," Stella translated. "Extra crispy. The beams mean she wants it golden. And Joey, the artistic meditation is very convincing, but the customer's waiting."
"Right," Joey said, snapping out of his tableau. "Golden cheese. The butterfly ticket needs to radiate quiet competence too, doesn't it?"
"Everything needs to radiate quiet competence in your world," Bea observed. "It's very zen."
The lunch rush began in earnest, and the three teenagers fell into their usual rhythm. Bea created beautiful, confusing order tickets. Stella translated them. Joey stress-folded napkins between customers while occasionally freezing in artistic poses.
"You know," Bea said during a break, "we work pretty well together. I make art, Stella makes it make sense, and Joey makes geometric napkin flowers while channeling classical coffee drinkers."
"I'm right here," Joey pointed out, folding a napkin into what appeared to be a geometric flower. "And they're not poses, they're character studies."
"Of course they are," Bea assured him. "Your stress-folding has reached new levels of artistic sophistication. Very method."
Stella watched this exchange while refilling coffee, noting how the three of them had naturally found their roles.
Bea created chaos with artistic flair, she translated it into functionality, and Joey managed to keep everything running despite his obvious preference for clear, logical systems and his growing obsession with Pageant perfection.
It was, she realized, a much smaller version of what was happening with the adults.
"Can I ask you something?" she said, settling at the counter while they waited for the next wave of customers.
"Always," Bea said, sketching what appeared to be a small dragon on a napkin. She looked up suddenly. "I love your accent, by the way. It's so authentic and musical."
Stella rolled her eyes but grinned. "Right, well if you like that, you'll love this—Fair dinkum, mate, this arvo's been bloody brilliant, yeah? Reckon we should grab some tucker before we rack off, no worries."
Joey burst out laughing. "You get used to it after a while. Though I still have no idea what half of that meant."
"Food," Stella translated. "I said we should get food."
"See? Very practical," Bea said, delighted. "Authentic AND functional."
"Unlike some people's artistic visions," Joey muttered, then immediately looked like he wished he could take it back.
Joey and Stella exchanged a look. Not unkind. Just… knowing.
Bea caught it. Her smile faded a little. "What?" she asked, more curious than defensive.
Stella opened her mouth, clearly trying to find the right words, but Joey blurted out, "She just wants things to feel meaningful, but people get... tired from it?"
The question mark in his voice made it clear he immediately regretted saying anything. Stella shot him a look that said smooth, Joey.
"What Joey means—" Stella started, her voice careful now, like she was walking on eggshells, "is that sometimes your mom's ideas don't land the way she thinks they will."
Bea blinked, processing. "Tired from... what exactly?"
Stella felt the delicate weight of the moment. This was Bea's mom they were talking about, and sixteen-year-old daughters didn't usually want to hear that their mothers confused people. But Bea was looking at her with genuine curiosity, not defensiveness.
And Bea was family. Her cousin. That made this conversation feel even more important to get right.
"From trying to keep up," Stella said gently. "Like when she moved all the condiments by color temperature. It looked beautiful, but Mrs. Walker couldn't find the salt."
There was a pause. Bea's pen hovered above a napkin, then lowered.
"I guess I never thought about how people see her when I'm not... explaining things," she said quietly.
Joey winced. "We shouldn't have said anything."
"No, it's okay." Bea folded her napkin carefully. "I just... I wonder what she'd sound like without me translating all the time."
They let that hang in the air. Then Stella shook her head with a rueful smile.
"Look at us, acting more grown up than the grown-ups. We're having a family dynamics conversation while they're all avoiding each other."
Bea laughed, but it was quieter than usual. She grabbed a clean order ticket and wrote "GRILLED CHEESE" in clear block letters.
"Take that, Mr. Coffee Drinker #4," she announced. "But don't get used to it."
The front door chimed, and Bernie entered with his usual purposeful stride, tablet already in hand.
"Afternoon, young documentarians," he said, settling at his corner booth. "How's the family pattern analysis going?"
"How did you—never mind," Stella said. "I should know better than to be surprised by anything you say."
"Information flows in small communities," Bernie said modestly. "Plus, I've been running informal observations on family dynamics. Very educational."
"What kind of observations?" Bea asked with curiosity.
"Well, Anna's at even money to implement another improvement project before anyone explains why the last one didn't work. Tyler's got a fascinating pattern of appearing and disappearing like a helpful ghost—zero percent chance of actual communication during crisis moments."
"That's disturbingly accurate," Stella admitted.
"I prefer 'empirically sound,'" Bernie said, looking pleased. "Joey here has consistent stress-folding patterns that correlate directly with Pageant rehearsal intensity."
"Hey!" Joey protested, immediately freezing in Coffee Drinker Number Two Contemplating Mortality. "I'm very reliable."
"You're very dramatic," Stella said. "There's a difference."
"Drama is reliability with better lighting," Joey said, not moving from his position.
"This is harassment," he added, still maintaining perfect stillness.
"This is documentation," Bernie said. "Very important documentation. Twenty-three seconds that time—new record."
"Do you think they know they're doing it?" Stella asked, gesturing toward the kitchen where they could see Anna enthusiastically reorganizing spice jars while Margo watched with quiet amusement.
"Probably not," Bea said. "People don't usually notice their own weird habits."
"Question is," Joey said, finally breaking his pose to refill coffee, "who's gonna crack first?"
"Aunt Meg," Stella said. "She's getting that same look you get when Bea asks if the sandwich wants to be 'architecturally expressive.'"
"Food has feelings," Bea defended. "And artistic potential."
"Right," Joey said. "Very practical geometric art. With feelings."
Bernie chuckled, typing something on his tablet. "Meg's definitely showing signs of what I call 'intervention fatigue.' Two-to-one odds she has a direct confrontation with Anna within the week."
"What about Margo?" Joey asked.
Bernie paused, considering. "Margo's harder to read. She's watching everything, but I can't tell if she's planning to intervene or just collecting data."
"Collecting data for what?" Stella asked.
"That," Bernie said with a knowing smile, "is the million-dollar question."
The lunch rush picked up again, and the teenagers returned to their brand of chaos management.
Bea created increasingly artistic order tickets, Stella translated them as diplomatically as she could, and Joey stress-folded napkins while slipping into Coffee Drinker poses whenever he concentrated too hard.
But Stella found herself thinking about Bernie's words and glancing at Margo.
Joey followed her gaze and said, "How is it that Margo watches all this chaos and is quiet? No thoughts, no opinions. Nor normally like her."
Stella laughed and looked back at the restaurant. "Oh, believe me, there are thoughts and opinions in there. We just won't hear them until she's good and ready to share."