Super Grande Black

A deafening siren sounded just outside of Jane’s apartment window, heading down to the street corner where there was a hole-in-the-wall thai restaurant and across the street, a coffeehouse. The first which closed every few months due to a white plastic sign posted as Failure to Pass Food Inspections: Infestation, the other, dimly lit with lamps and filled with overstuffed chairs and couches sitting on top of dark rugs with little tables everywhere to set a cup of coffee and little sandwiches or pastries which were made in the back kitchen. The coffee house had The Best Coffee in Town according to its handmade sign which had been poorly laminated and been stuck on the window with what was probably just tacky putty but looked an awful lot like chewed gum. Regardless of what these signs told tourists, the locals new this corner had the spiciest thai food and that the best coffee really was at the home-like coffee house. 

I hate the manager.

Jane had lived in the apartment for only three years but within the first few weeks she knew she had made the right decision. On a hot summer day she opened her windows and the sweet and spicy smell of the thai restaurant mixed with the bitter-sweet scent of chocolate and coffee wafted into her home, covering the dirt and flower aroma which came with Jane wherever she went. She was glad she chose to bike the extra mile to work as opposed to living around the corner from a McDonald’s and Captain D’s.

Working at a flower shop had not always been her dream, she just fell into it as she did most things, but it had become a passion and she loved to arrange flowers for others, always with a card filled with condolences, love, an inside joke. After starting her own shop she began to copy the cards she really enjoyed, some funny, some sad, some which she wished would have been given to her. She kept them in a small wooden box, never looking at them after placing them in there, forgetting what they said and locking the slips of paper in with a small gold clasp. 

The manager is crazy. 

Flowers came to Jane rarely, mostly because her friends and family believed she wouldn’t want them as she worked with them each day, but she also had had few relationships in her time and never any long enough to earn flowers. Bartholomew, her black and gray bullmastiff and best friend, had been the longest relationship outside of family that she had ever had, and he always got a pat on the head as she left the apartment telling him she would be back soon. Bartholomew accompanied Jane to work but was not invited to sit with her at the coffee shop each morning. 

I don’t know how to stop him. No one does.

Keeping to one’s self is an art, something Jane had perfected. At a young age she learned that you were most likely going to stay on someone’s good side if you didn’t bother them. Knowing this, she would give friendly glances and half-smiles to those she passed, but never an invitation for more than a nod or quick chat. At the coffeehouse, however, she lived in her own little world. She was still pleasant, just less likely to have that conversation about where she grew up, what her job was, the get-to-know-you questions. 

Coffee is a must. Jane had had at least one cup of coffee every morning since high school. Black coffee. No swirls of vanilla, hazelnut, or crystalized sugar. Just plain, black, bitter, scorching hot coffee. At the small coffeehouse where she went daily, she had become a regular. The few baristas who worked there knew her by name and were always very pleasant because her order was easy, she never complained, and usually tipped. The baristas knew she didn’t talk much, but when they saw the black framed glasses which sat precariously on the tip of her nose, her hair flying in every direction with a pencil stuck somewhere in it, they were glad. She was nice and fun enough. Trying to get her to come out of her shell was futile but they tried anyways, not making friends but as least holding familiarity. 

He is getting violent.

Jane had a ritual. A morning ritual where she would go get her coffee, sit in the same chair every morning to drink it, and mindlessly check her Facebook which she hadn’t updated in weeks, respond to any important emails, and just watch people as they filtered in and out, ordering breakfast and chatting with friends about their day to day troubles. It was like watching Friends live. Sitting in a puffy burgundy chair with arms almost slick and smooth from natural wear, even though it had been brand new only a year ago, Jane found her comfort.

When the place was mostly dead, the baristas would mess around. As long as the unsettling gaze of the manager was not upon them they would laugh and joke, always attempting to include Jane, but instead she would just politely laugh, shake her head, give that half-smile, and pretend to do something until they forgot about her again. Occasionally, there would be loud banging from the back kitchen, sometimes so loud she was sure someone had run into something because the baristas quickly would settle down, but she never looked more into it. 

When the baristas began to mess with Jane, all in good fun, they would change her name on the cup or put their phone numbers, always winking as she accepted the super grande black coffee, the usual. She would again, laugh with them avoiding getting into a conversation, but not before making eye contact with the small woman who began working there a few months after Jane had moved into the apartment down the street. Often in the beginning they would unintentionally make eye contact, Jane through those black frames and the barista through a set of dazzling eyes that seemed much too old. 

I think he is going to try and kill me. Maybe everyone.

Jane didn’t know her age because the girl moved swiftly, had a cute pixie-style haircut and a young fashion sense, yet when she wasn’t pouring coffee, making a smoothie, grabbing an apricot tart for a hungry customer, she would stare blankly at nothing with the oldest eyes Jane had ever seen. Her hunched shoulders suggested exhaustion not just whatever she had done recently, but from life. When the jokes started between Jane and the others she would find the old eyes and they would both smile, shake their heads and shrug because the older workers gave the girl the same jabs as they would Jane. These moments they shared never lasted long, and each would quickly return to whatever they were doing. Jane, pretending to care that her high school classmates were going out for Taco Tuesday, another reunion event of sorts that she was not invited to, and the girl, serving coffee to paying customers, always reminding them that it was exceptionally hot.They weren’t friends really, but they weren’t necessarily just acquaintances either. 

Help me. Please.

Meeting eyes across a bustling room or an empty one, it can be an incredibly awkward situation or make one feel as though they are not as alone as they might think. A signal of recognition that shows someone knows you exist. Jane would think to herself, this is my place, my time, I am by myself but I am happy. The old-eyed barista brought a slight comfort to Jane, not as much as that burgundy armchair or a steaming cup of coffee or Bartholomew laying down right next to her thinking he was a lap dog, but some. The woman began taking Jane’s order whenever she came in, sharing gossip about the other baristas, not through spoken words, but messages on the cups and Jane would just chuckle as she read where her name was supposed to be Will totally has a crush on you! Can I give him your number? Obviously a joke, the woman didn’t have Jane’s number and Will was flamboyantly gay, but it was a small comfort to share a joke with someone. 

Jane’s family was close. She loved her parents and her older brother, but she knew she was the disappointment. Every other member of Jane’s family was someone in the world. Her father and brother were both successful lawyers, her mother a doctor, her grandfather spent time in Vietnam, and her aunt was a well-known comedian. Jane looked up to her aunt. She was funny, had an eccentric and lovable style, and was very confident in herself without being overbearing. Jane’s aunt also had a way with getting on people’s good side, a trait which Jane desperately wanted to execute in a similar manner; she wanted to be on people’s good side, but distant enough so that they would never see her faults.

Jane’s aunt was nicknamed Bobby because she was godmother to her brother and at his Christening all he could say was Bob. She was the reason Jane finally let go of the milk and sugar altogether in her coffee. While at Bobby’s house, Jane was visiting home during her college years for a break, her aunt explained that It is just better to drink coffee black because it inconveniences no one. It’s just easier that way.

The first cup of coffee Jane had ever had was at her grandmother’s house. Being young didn’t matter, she remembered it well. Jane was only nine and the drink probably couldn’t really be considered coffee because it was mostly milk and sugar, but there was enough coffee to change the color of the slightly warmed milk, which, as a child, was good enough. Her grandmother, wearing the same faded green sweater, soft as a flower petal,  joked that it would stunt her growth. With a wild urge to be a grownup Jane insisted she could fight through it and continue to grow no matter how much coffee she consumed, her eyes growing larger with each spoonful of sugar her grandmother piled into the mug. Naturally as the years went by her tastes changed and she began to add less milk, less sugar, until Bobby’s words sang through her thoughtful head. 

Settling into a routine was easy for Jane. It was almost unnoticeable to herself that she had become so predictable. It must have taken her weeks to notice that the funny messages between the baristas stopped, and during a down time in the mornings there was not nearly enough laughter. The girl with the old eye seemed even more tired and it showed through her every movement. When Jane would catch her eye the girl would cast her glance sideways in such a sad way that Jane felt uncomfortable. She had lost the closet thing to a group of friends that she could recall. 

It seemed to have something to do with the manager who, in his sickly yellow and ill-fitting collared shirt, would survey the coffeehouse with an air that made no one object to him. The more time he spent there, the less laughter there was, the less homey Jane felt, and the more uncomfortable she felt when she made eye contact with any of the baristas, not just the old once-comforting eyes. 

She thought the messages were a joke at first, each written sloppily in place of her name. The first few about the manager, making fun of his shirt and unsettling gaze turned to pleas for help. 

A wall was built between Jane and the baristas that morning. She felt uncomfortable in her chair, as if someone else with a very different size had sat there all night long and reformed the shape that Jane had grown accustomed to. As Jane grabbed her cup of coffee, the barista flew away so quickly it was hard to tell who had ever served her. Feeling the tension, Jane made a break from her usual morning routine and walked home thinking about how the dynamic in a place could change right under her nose. She had been the only customer yet did not feel welcome, and as she left she felt different sets of eyes on her back. She turned and caught sight once again of those old eyes which previously had given her comfort, but which were now clouded with pain, staring at the floor as the manager began to yell at them for not being more efficient or something like that. He stormed into the kitchen and just as the coffeehouse door closed Jane heard a large racket from behind the swinging doors of pots and pans and she was pretty sure something had shattered and was rolling around on the floor.

Walking home quickly, her stomach rolling at what had happened she realized she loathed the manager, not thinking it all the way through until she set her keys in a bowl beside the front door of her apartment. Bartholomew came bounding to meet her and and she felt a little better, deciding that she should not let the sickly shirt ruin her day. Sitting at her desk in front of her window, Jane began to check her Facebook, reply to important emails and watch people on the street. Losing herself in her own thoughts, the sirens blaring right under her nose, a cold chill ran through Jane. As she grabbed the cup of coffee which she had carelessly put in the recycling bin she read the message where her name should have been. Racing back to her window she pressed her face against the cool glass trying to get a look of what was going on down the street at the corner where the spiciest thai and the best cup of coffee was served. 

As the plea in those old eyes flashed through her head she watched more firetrucks and another ambulance rush by under her window. Jane opened the window to stick her head outside and smelled the sweet-spicy thai scent from the restaurant and the rotten smell of burnt coffee beans. Glancing once more at the cup she read:

Call 911...

But someone already had.