This Morning at Starbucks
by Claire Daniels ‘11
“Jeremy,” she says.
She flicks the side of my head with her hand and then with a paperclip she picks up off the coffee bar. “Earth to Jeremy,” she repeats, “like what the hell?” Her hands are on her hips. I don’t even have to look, I just sort of know.
You’re a moron.
She has blonde hair that reaches past her shoulders and a splatter paint of freckles across her nose and down the corners of her mouth. Sometimes I’m tempted to take a Sharpie and stab them all out, make them bigger so that they take over her face. So she shuts up. Because she never stops talking and she never says anything and she drives me crazy. I don’t care that she’s pretty anymore. I just want her to go away.
“Frank told me you’d show me how to work the expresso machine.”
“Espresso.”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s called an espresso machine.”
“Yeah, whatever.”
The way she says it is giggly, like she thinks mispronouncing words is adorable. I don’t say anything else; instead I just walk over to the machine, twist off the top, and dump some brown shavings inside. I flick a switch. I wait until it’s green. I pour the brown liquid into a cup until it hovers over the edge like water in a test tube.
“There.”
“That’s instant coffee.”
She’s a genius this girl, a bona fide f*** genius. “I know.”
“I’m confused.”
Of course you are, I say; “It’s instant espresso.”
She screws up her face and then makes a show of punching my shoulder with her index finger in her own personal way of saying: you’re messing with me, aren’t you? And I’m tempted to say ‘Of course, I am.’ Because I don’t want you anywhere near the coffee of paying customers. I don’t care how hot Frank thinks you are. But I don’t say anything. I walk away.
And she pouts, asks me why I don’t like her, props herself up on the condiments table, and leans back so that I can see a pen’s engraving of a flower on her knee. I’ve never wanted anyone to get ink poisoning more.
It’s not that I don’t like you. It’s that you’re an idiot. It’s that Frank pays you more. It’s that you wear long necklaces that dip themselves in the tea I’m preparing at rush hour.
“I mean like, really, what did I ever do to you?”
If elbows could drill holes into the countertop, hers would have by now. She starts tapping her foot in midair and my hands turn into fists. Why couldn’t they have hired Carmen? Why couldn’t they have hired Carmen? I can still remember Frank’s excuse: “Jer, sorry, it’s just, it looks like a stapler attacked your friend’s face and that scares away customers.”
Okay, awesome. Let’s hire a girl who can’t do sh** and fire a girl who knows how to work everything. Frank, you amazing man, you.
“Come on,” she whines, kicking her legs back and forth like a little kid on a swing.
And I want to snap. I want to scream. I want to throw the biggest temper tantrum in the history of Starbucks. I’m so tired of fixing her stupid problems, of losing customers because she can’t tell decaf from caffeinated.
I want to say: “For f***’s sake, would you please stop talking?”
I want the words to bolt out of my mouth and crash between us. They bounce on the floor a bit before they settle. I want to give her a piece of my mind and watch her fumble with it.
Then I look up.
She’s still on the countertop. Her legs have stopped bouncing and her eyes are transfixed on her lap like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. I remember a day last week when she was forty minutes late because “the flowers were just so yellow.” I can’t help it. Even the thought of insulting this girl is like kicking Bambi or punching a baby. She’s obnoxious and she’s stupid, but she’s harmless.
“Listen.”
Her eyes look up. They’re cartoonish in their immensity.
“I’ll teach you how to make a cappuccino tomorrow, okay?”
I watch as she grins, swings her legs off the countertop, and pokes me in the shoulder. “You’re the best, you know that, Jer?”
Believe me, I do.