I'm not sure what this is, I was considering saving it for Halloween but I lack patience, hope you enjoy it.
*****
I'd wanted a job I could walk to and as the money wasn't that important i'd found this one easily enough. Then I'd been working for about six months when I'd been put on the late shift full time. This wasn't an option for new starters as it was solo working and you had to know your way around the equipment and everything else first. Plus you had to be trusted to do the job properly without being supervised and to leave everything tidy for the poor fucker coming in on the early the following day. Lastly of course it didn't suit the people with partners and families to get back to in the evening, but naturally that didn't bother me.
My life was pretty simple by those days, reduced right down now to the cafe and my flat, although there had been a time when it had been a lot more complicated. I used to have to go to places and people had used to tell me things they thought were important, like I should eat more to keep my strength up, or I should maintain a positive attitude. Gradually they stopped saying things like that though and then gradually they stopped saying anything whatsoever and finally I didn't have to go to see them at all, just pick up my little bag from the pharmacy once a fortnight. In the end that was their final and greatest lesson, it wasn't as I had imagined one of the thousand things they had told me, but rather the secret stealthy message in the silence when they stopped.
Anyway this was perfect for me now, we were closed before the pubs started to kick out so I didn't have to deal with rowdy drunks, and we were a bit off the beaten track,so the evening traffic was fairly slow generally and you got to know the regulars. Not their names that is, we're still talking London here, but the bloke with the laptop bag, the lady with the beagle, the girl who can't read, and suchlike. And it was the girl who can't read who really intrigued me.
I'll admit I can't recall the first time she came in no matter how hard i've tried to do so. I know that the time I do remember first seeing her must probably have been her third visit though and she certainly stood out. She was dressed in some kind of greatcoat which looked more army surplus than it did high street label, its bulk concealing her so that all I could have told you about her figure at the time was that she must have been slender. Her hair was really curly, red, a bit long and chaotic, not affectedly windswept but genuinely tearaway. Her eyes were that very pale grey-blue which had always reminded me of woodsmoke until then, and her skin was dark, like terracotta or maybe teak.
So yes, she might have come in earlier in the day the first couple of times as I couldn't bring them to mind, but I remember the third time she came in.
She pointed up to the menu on the wall and she said, "Number three please."
Her accent was distinctive, southern England for sure but subtly unusual, maybe with a hint of the middle east, and with an old fashioned formality to it, each syllable carefully voiced. I set my casual musings and nosiness aside though, this was a professional relationship after all and third down on the list was a flat white. I asked the usual, big or small (big) eat in or take away (away) and served her the drink. She paid with a small pile of coins dumped onto the counter, quite a bit more than the coffee cost but when I tried to hand back her change she waved it away and I dropped it in the tip jar instead with thanks.
When I handed the paper cup over she was like a child, enthralled by it. She popped off the plastic lid, inhaled the steam, then took a tiny careful sip and the look of delight which came over her face made it seem she'd never had a coffee before. It really brought my attention to how much we take all these little things for granted.
Next time she came it was fourth down, mocha, and i'm sure you're starting to see why I could figure out how many times she'd been in.
A few days later, fifth was cappuccino and then only a couple of days after that sixth was macchiato and I think she really didn't like that because she then returned to mocha for five visits in a row. She'd always pay with coins, always a different amount and usually over the price, the difference going each time into the tip jar. A couple of times she was under, once laughably so, but I let the transactions go through without comment, reasoning that she was probably in credit overall, and anyway what the hell, she obviously got so much out of those coffees that I was happy to help her keep up with her exploration. I was quietly looking forward to seeing what would happen when she made it past the coffees and reached our showpiece, the exhaustively detailed variations on the theme of hot chocolate listed below them.
While she was working through that handful of mocha visits I learned something else. I'd been wiping down the tables over by the window one evening when out of the edge of my eye i'd spotted that unmistakable shock of hair outside. There she was, sitting down on the pavement, leaning in the doorway of the boarded up shop next door and holding out an empty coffee cup to the people passing by. I returned to my post and a few minutes later the bell on the door rang and in she came, brandishing her motley collection of change and asking politely for another 'Number four'.
I'd started to look forward to seeing her again as my regulars and the walk-ins came and went. Man with the laptop again, single mum, office cleaners on their way to work. One night a sweet little couple, all dressed up, obviously on their first date. They were too young to go to the pub so she'd brought him here for a fancy hot chocolate. It didn't look like she had much money and when she came up the counter to buy drinks I threw in one of the cakes for free. I lied to her and told her we'd have to throw it away at the end of the evening anyway. I was allowing myself the occasional lie these days, though I'd have to pay for the cake. She took her treasure back to her boy at the table and they put their heads together and cooed over it as they divvied it up between them. I hope maybe it brought them a tiny bit closer, made things a little less awkward, steered them nearer to happiness.
Then every few days i'd look up when I heard the door chime and there she'd be. After a while it must have become obvious to her that I was looking out for her because she'd smile when she caught me looking across the room. It transformed her face that smile, dropped my defenses like they'd never been there at all, and that's saying a lot with me.
I should have been worried I guess. I wasn't really supposed to be making friends, that was part of the whole deal these days. But somehow it didn't feel as if it was going to be a problem with her and I found myself just letting it slip slowly into being through conspiratorial smiles swapped shyly across the counter as we went through the otherwise unaltered ritual of our transactions.
