by Rebecca Lee

 

I became a coffee snob in high school when I discovered that coffee didn’t always have to be muddy, the way my mother made it.  Coffee became a hobby.  I constantly searched for ways to make it better, something that would sell.  It wasn’t until the middle of my junior year that I finally found one, a secret ingredient that went unnoticed unless the drinker was searching for it.  By the end of my senior year I had raised 250 dollars selling coffee outside of the glass doors that led into my high school.  The administrators had tried to remove me from my post but after free samples of my coffee, they had settled down.

            I graduated from high school on June sixteenth and left for California the day after with only a backpack, a plane ticket I had purchased with my coffee sales, and the 300 dollars I had gotten from various family members for graduating though many people thought my lack of time spent in class would have stopped me.  My brother Jason was seventeen at the time.  He cried the night I told him in our mother’s bright red pickup truck.  The tears made his blue eye look bluer but had no effect on his brown one.  “I’ll follow you,” he promised.

            “You’d have to find me first.” I knew he would.  “I’ll see you in California.”

 

***

 

            San Francisco International Airport was a maze as, I discovered, was the city.  It took hours of asking for directions and taking various different BART trains before I finally made it to the heart of the city.  Dawn was breaking and I was tired so I lay down on a nearby bench and fell asleep, hoping for the best.  I woke around eleven when two mothers and five horribly loud children passed by.  I had the number of my friend’s cousin who lived in Berkeley, a city that was said to be close to San Francisco.  Normally, I hated calling people I didn’t know but desperate times called for desperate measures so I called from a grimy looking pay phone.  He was unusually friendly and he was standing at Rockridge Bart station waiting for me less than an hour later.

            “Angelina?” he asked.  I nodded.  “Cody,” he said warmly extending his right hand.  I shook it hesitantly.  His green eyes were welcoming which was soothing after the hell I had been through trying to get here.

            The sun was shining but the air was still cool.  It was strange to me but Cody promised me I would learn to love it.  We walked up College Avenue, made a left on Ashby Avenue, a right on Regent Street, and finally a left on Russell Street where Cody lived in an apartment with a friend who was still sleeping when we arrived.  “He always sleeps on Sundays,” Cody explained, “he likes to party.”  I nodded.  “You hungry?  I was making breakfast when you called.”  He made his way over to the coffee maker and started pouring the ground beans into the paper filter.  I watched as his shaggy blonde hair fell into his face and he instinctively shook it away.

            “A little,” I responded quietly.  That was an understatement.  “I can do that,” I said, gesturing toward the coffee maker.

            “My cousin told me about you.”

            “Did she?”

            “Only a little.  She said you liked to make coffee.  Berkeley’s a great place for that you know.”  He moved out of the way and I added a little more coffee to the filter and a tiny bit of the spice I had carried with me from New Jersey.

            “Is it?”

            “Tons of Cal students, myself included, go to great lengths to find decent coffee to help us through the nights.  There’s a café on the corner that’s hiring if you were hoping for a job.  There are probably other ones too though.  Every café needs a barista.”

            “I was.”

            The next morning, I woke up early, showered, and headed out to the café Cody had mentioned, Roma.  I knew instantly that it was not the place for me.  It was too big, the people were too rude, and the bathroom was worse than the ones at the beach.  Disappointed, I continued up College Avenue and within half a block, found the Beanery.  I stepped inside, ordered a cup of coffee and a bagel and sat down at one of the coffee-filled tables in the front.  It was a peaceful place full of quiet people who came in to study or read the paper.  It was a match.  I was pleased to find a “Now Hiring” sign in the front window.

 

            The coffee shop robberies started in August, a little over a year after I started working at the Beanery.  They were happening all over Southern California.  We wondered when they would make it here.  The stories of the robberies were all slightly different but they all said that all the robber had taken after holding the employee at gunpoint was a single cup of coffee.  Why he couldn’t have just paid for it was a mystery in itself.

            “You worried?” customers always asked referring to the robberies.

            “Not yet,” was all we could respond.  They didn’t seem too horrible.  So far nobody had died and what was one cup of coffee when we sold hundreds in a day?  I never told my coworkers but I found the whole thing funny.  For all anybody knew it wasn’t even a loaded gun.

            During the slow hours at the Beanery, I thought about my family often.  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the leaving the way I had had been irresponsible or even stupid.  What had I been thinking?  I hadn’t been.  Things hadn’t even been that bad.  I had just been desperate to get as far away from New Jersey as possible for no reason other than the fact that I wanted to rebel and had only used family as an excuse.

            Sometimes I wondered if Jason would come looking for me like he had promised.  I had no way of knowing unless I called home but that was something I wouldn’t have allowed myself to do.  I had forced myself to forget the number and had no intention of looking it up.

 

***

 

On a slow Friday night when the Cal students were out, my coworker, Joey, decided to check out early.  He had a date.  “You can handle this?” he asked.

            “I’ll manage.”

            “You’re the best!  Thank you!”  I wouldn’t tell him to his face but I saw him skip a bit as he walked out of the glass door.

            I started closing at 9:45.  Nobody was there and it was only fifteen minutes.  As I was pouring out the tiny bit of remaining coffee, the door opened.  “We’re closed,” I said as I watched it go down the drain.  Normally, the person would have left but I didn’t hear the door so I turned to check.  Standing by the door was a man dressed entirely in black, holding a gun in a shaking hand.  It was happening.  My heart pounded.

            I knew I should have called the cops, started making more coffee, do anything I could to keep the man with the gun happy but I couldn’t.  The man came closer and closer and when he could see my face in the light behind the counter, he dropped the gun.  I saw one brown eye and one blue and as they filled with tears the blue eye looked bluer while the brown eye stayed relatively the same.  From the look in those mismatched eyes, I knew the robberies were over.

            Jason turned and ran out of the café and I picked up the gun.  As I had expected, it wasn’t even loaded but that didn’t matter.  I took it home and hid it because I knew he’d be back.  His search was over and he needed time to transform from the coffee-stealing criminal into the Jason I had always loved.