Coffee and Sugar, C. Sean McGee [highly recommended books txt] 📗

in over the line and they were ecstatic, to get fifty one percent, because at the end of their learning, fifty one percent meant a hundred percent title.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, even though they only know fifty one percent of the subject, they have a certificate that says they are a hundred percent qualified. That is the world we live in, a world of fifty one percenters. Think about it, nearly every doctor in this city got forty nine percent of their answers wrong in university meaning that; being a fifty one percenter, every second decision they make will be wrong. Now you imagine how many decisions a doctor will make every day, how many do you think are wrong?”

“That doesn’t seem right.”

“That’s the world we live buddy. Designed and mapped by schizophrenic and bi-polar geniuses and administered and maintained by fifty one percenters. There is nothing wrong with you Joao. You’re a hundred percent in my book. Don’t compare yourself to any of these pseudo scholars. If you do, that’ll be your forty nine percent decision and guess what; you’ll be just like them. How you feeling?” he asked with a gentle hand on Joao’s shoulder.

“Better Mr Fatts. I feel better. Thank you. You’re a good man Mr Fatts. Like on the TV” Joao said picking himself up off the floor and walking with a more steadied step out of the store room to attend to his mop and broom.

“TV?”

“The Carriage of my Heart” said Joao surprised he had not picked his own resemblance in the mirror by now.

“I don’t watch television. Maybe you can describe it to me one day” said Fatts.

“Ok, great, well there is this boy from the country that moves to…”

“One day” said Fatts, lightly patting Joao on the back, taking the rest of his coffee in his hand and sitting on a stool in the corner of the store, watching discreetly, the people eating, conversing and lazing about in his café; the life that emanated from each and every one and as the cup touched his lips, he closed his eyes and vacationed inside his soul once again.

Joao took to his mop and busied himself around the café, watching how the leaves inscribed on the sticky tiles always seemed to match and he wondered if the tiler had meant it this way or whether he had just been lucky. They looked very pretty running along the floor and up along the walls but they were disorientating and after basing his senses in cheap bleach, his mind started to drift and the walls starting to breathe, pushing in and out and all of the pretty blue flowers started to spin like little cellophane fans.

Joao smiled as; from the bustling street, walked in The Nervous Lady who; for as long as she had walked in through that entrance, had always brought with her, a fervour of anxiety and viral stress with the other baristas who generally played a game of paper, rock, scissors to see who would have to brave her intolerable fickleness; at times debasing their the façade of endearing respect, throwing their hands about in front of her depreciating eyes.

Today though was different.

The Nervous Lady walked straight up to the counter smiling, something which made all of the baristas more than slightly apprehensive and had one of them reaching for the night stick taped to the bottom of the counter. Her eyes were glistening, like how the glasses did sometimes when the afternoon sun dropping by the open shutters cast its reflection into the tiny droplets of water that spilled from the rim of the glasses and beaded on the silver counter.

“Coffee and sugar” she said smiling to The Barista.

“Sure thing mam, I’ll bring it right over” said The Barista.

“I want the boy to make it, not you. He knows how to make my coffee. Yours tastes, cheap” she said after a length pause.

“Whatever” said The Barista.

The Nervous Lady took to arranging her seats; the dance of obsessive delight that had her sitting for no more than a single second before her mind dirtied her perspective and had her itching inside her conscious eye, electrifying her blood so that she jolted from her seat, twitching her fingers wildly and like a golfer crouching down to the green with his squeezing eye locked on a single yard, she eyed the distance between her hands and what would be that of her imaginary companion and she danced around every angle, twisting and turning her neck, rushing to where the empty seat sat; prodding it lightly to and fro, trying to quell the obsessive itch in her mind.

The two baristas stood dumbfounded, looking obviously and rudely at The Nervous Lady, as did the scores of patrons sitting about the café, the bread bastilled in their hands, frozen in time, one inch from their mouths as their wide eyes paid no respect to the absurd that played out before them, watching in insolent splendour as The Nervous Lady lost herself in her nervous dance, making the imperfect, perfect and present in her attendance.

As she sat twitching her fingers, one of the baristas brought over her coffee and laid it out before her, watching her oddly as he slowly back stepped away from her table towards the counter where his friend stood smirking to himself. The Nervous Lady stopped her twitching a took the cup in both hands and gently pulled it to her lips, pulling a cold breath into her mouth as the cup lifted off of the table and as the coffee until it hovered before her chin, she smiled to herself as the breath she had taken broke free from her expecting lips and brushed away the lines of steam that ran up from the hot liquid bridging just on the rim of the cup.

As her breath escaped, so too did the lines of steam and with them; like salt in a freezing current, a part of her soul, a recurring itch, went with the current, with the lines of steam, out and away from her being, into the passage of day where it became the breath of a discerning man walking through his life carrying an imaginary bag of all the things he didn’t like or need not care for but collect he did and he would never know why.

The Nervous Lady touched her aged but soft lips on the rim of the cup and closed her eyes as the hot liquid poured onto her expecting tongue and her senses exploded with aghast.

“What the fuck is this?” she screamed, spitting the vile drink out of her mouth and painting the clear glass window before her with the black coffee she exalted from her mouth.

“Oh shit” said the barista, “here we go.”

The Nervous Lady jumped from her seat and threw the cup of steaming coffee through the air so that on its way to the counter, the hot liquid poured over the tables and floor below and the small cup smashed into hundreds of pieces as it narrowly missed the barista’s head who ducked and dove, out of its range; angered and amused, excited and deranged.

“Fatts!” The Nervous Lady screamed, “Fatts, get out here now. Please, please, please, please, why are you’re insolent staff so intent on insulting me? Fatts!” she screamed.

“Fuck this I quit” said the barista tearing off his apron and slapping it against the counter, pushing past the patrons with little apology and disappearing into the flux of people, swiftly shuffling about on the footpath outside the bustling café as inside, patrons watched; some through hidden peering eyes and others in blatant obtrusive display, some shocked by the woman’s outrage with their eyes wide and mouths agape while others; who were akin to her difference, enjoyed the show through their peripheral vision, caring not to enlighten themselves on her stage by directing themselves to her waking sight.

The other barista put his head down; pretending to clear some cups and plates while out of the store room came Fatts, rushing to see what the commotion was; a chiselled look of war etched upon his face.

“They insulted me Fatts. You’re insolent barista, the one with spiky hair, he insulted me again. I asked him specifically that I wanted a coffee and sugar and I wanted the boy there to make it, like he did yesterday and the barista agreed like he understood and he shook his head and he said yes like he understood. I was very direct Fatts. I was very polite and he shook his head Fatts. That’s universal. It means I understand. See you’re doing it now” she said as following her speech, Fatts focused on her eyes and nodded his head in agreement.

“He insulted me Fatts. He pretended to listen but he wasn’t, not really. Probably thinking about sex or football or something. I’m meeting someone Fatts and look, now I have a stain on my dress and look at the window that I have to look through, it’s got coffee all over it. He insulted me Fatts, they all do. I see them looking at me but I don’t care because they’ll all shut up when my friend arrives and they see how handsome he is and then they’ll all wish they were like me and they’ll all be looking at me, but different. How long have I been coming here Fatts?”

“Eight years, seven months and…’

‘Eleven days. Every day now for eight years, seven months and eleven days. He’s going to come through those doors again, I know he will and I’ll talk to him this time and we’ll be together, forever. He wore shiny black loafers, the rich kind, not like those evangelists wear, like an important man, a rich man. And there was a silver buckle on the toes, looked really smart and his suit was pin striped and he had a strong chin and he didn’t have a beard, but he could grow one if he wanted to, you could see that, but he kept his face clean and shaven and his eyes were that colour of green/blue like in the tropical oceans, like in the travel magazines and his hair was neat and tidy and he smiled at me and said hello. We were meant to be you know?” she said.

“I believe” said Fatts.

“I talked to a medium last week. She is a spiritist. She said that all understanding equates to a solution. You know what that means? It means that if I think and believe something to be true then it must be and as long as I think it to be true then I can equate it and make it true and I know we were meant to be, so I just have to keep coming here at the same time every day, keep calculating the truth and the universe will equate the solution. He will walk through those doors again. And we’ll be together forever. Do you believe me?” she asked manic to Fatts.

“Of course I do” he said, “you are a wonderful kind lady and you deserve to be loved and respected. You deserve all of the kindness in the world. And I know the universe is looking out for you. You’ll see him again” she said.

“I’m sorry about the cup. Can I have another coffee? By the boy?” she asked innocuously.

“Sure,” said Fatts smiling, “Joao, could you help this dear lady with one of your special coffees please?”

“Ok, I would love to” said Joao placing his mop back into its container and rushing behind the counter where the other barista busied himself picking up the pieces of the shattered ceramic cup and drying the splotches of coffee from the floor and cabinets.

Joao prepared the coffee with the same care and assent towards the honesty that sang behind the chorus of absurdity in The Nervous Lady’s song. He dressed himself in her naivety and gazed through her eyes, touching every grain of coffee as his heart touched upon every moment of sorrow that she carried deep in her gut and he looked to; with expecting eyes, at every pair of feet that shuffled about on the broken cement outside the window where she sat, waiting for a pair of black loafers with a shiny silver buckle over the toes to walk past the window, stop in front of the entrance and turn on a five cent piece; like a soldier’s procession, and move into the café where she would follow the feet until they stood upon the tail of her own shadow and as he followed her eyes up the length of the man’s trousers, up to his chest, his heart exploded with hers as her eyes locked upon her late companion’s and heaven swam at her breast and at this very moment, Joao’s fingers picked at each grain of sugar and spent them into the bitter black coffee below and as he pulled himself from his delusion; from her bitter