Godzilla Gets a Half-Caff Frap
“Aaaaall yours,” my boss’s tongue taps her coffee-stained teeth, framed by bare lips that close exactly as her eyebrows lift, as if manipulated by some skilled puppeteer. I turn my head to see who she is talking about, and feel my eyes roll as I register which customer she is ditching me with. The bells above the doorway clang a blasphemous jingle and I feel my blood pressure rise, swelling my fingertips and pounding in my temples.
“Is that what I said? No - is that what I said?!” I mouth a prayer into the ether for the poor soul on the other end of her call. “Tell me what I EXPLICITLY told you.” She yields a nominal pause, “That’s right, negatives by midnight, developed by five A. This is your JOB.” Her Burberry poncho falls over her tennis-toned shoulders, skin just beginning to hang and belying her tenuous grasp on her disappearing forties. She sweeps the store with cutting eyes, “For now. If you’re lucky, it’ll be your job tomorrow. But not if this is the kind of work I can expect out of you.” She swiftly drops the limb of her iPhone to her side, its custom case a chromatic mirror of her snakeskin Givenchy bag, and barks over the pastry bar. Thanking god for her lack of eye contact, I repeat her order in my head. She gives it at the god damned speed of sound, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the entire glass case collapsed in a sonic boom the next time this woman comes in.
Half caff, double shot - wait, no, half shot - wait, that’s not even a thing - extra milk whipped on a foamy…shit!
As a seventeen-year-old still skeptically waiting to acquire my taste for coffee, I am supremely under-qualified to be taking anyone’s coffee order, let alone Godzilla’s. If I get it wrong (an inevitability) I imagine she’ll banish me to the dungeons beneath her lair. Once every few days maybe drag me out and force me, naked, to make her her perfect coffee order, then watch me pour the scalding drink onto my blistered skin. Hey, if I’m lucky, maybe I can share a dungeon with the employee she almost fired over the phone - I’m sure he’ll be down there by the time I descend. It wouldn’t be so bad, the two of us locked up together. I can picture her dragging him out of our cell by his hair once a week to have her way with him.
“Is that mine?” She snakes her way to the end of the counter and pesters the unsuspecting, vulnerable folks who are blessed never to have met her.
Oh god, I think to myself, they’re going to try to engage her like a normal person. She’s not a normal person! Abort! Gird your loins! My telepathy fails to land.
“Did you hear me? Is that your drink?”
“Oh, yes, yes I believe this is mine,” the balding, short, white man says in a gentle tone. I scrunch my lips - it seems she couldn’t have chosen a more obsequious victim.
“What did you order?”
“Oh well, see, it has my name on it,” he offers, turning the cup to show her ‘Steve’ scrawled in black sharpie.
“Alright, smartass, do I look like a Steve to you?! Get out of my face!”
A bewildered Steve stumbles out of the store, orienting himself after being steamrolled by the tiny powerhouse with salon-dyed grays. Godzilla is muttering to herself about a “stolen drink” when she returns to her iPhone, to cyber-bully her employees, I think to myself.
I whip out her drink as fast as my hands can work, taking extra care when snapping her compostable lid on. Lore is powerful and I’ve heard tales of customers going apeshit for loosely set lids - I don’t need to find out myself.
“Ma’am?” I breathe. She tears her eyes from her tattered cuticles and sets about seeking inadequacies in her drink. I don’t breathe while she takes her first sip, post-explosion silence clouding the cacophony. Without fanfare, and without eye contact, she is gone. I breathe out. I guess that means it was acceptable. As my heart rate returns to resting, I note to myself that she has never actually looked at me. I hope it stays that way. I prefer not to burst into flames, and I can only imagine that’s what it feels like to be seen by her.
My manager reappears, “Nice work, kid.”
Eleven hours later, I am lulled to sleep by my mind’s chorus: what’s the wifi password? Sooo sorry, but I actually said soy… Is your manager here? Oh, out of vanilla scones? Do you think you could check in the back?