Simply Stories - Morning Coffee

Morning Coffee

by Jackie Anderson

 I smile at the barista. I’m sure all he sees is a grimace, but it’s the best I can manage given the circumstances and yet another night of rampaging insomnia. It’s early and I hate early.

“Double espresso and a light.” I know I mumble but even my lips are reluctant to move.

“A light?”

I raise my hand from the bar so he can see the slim roll up poised between my index and middle fingers. He scowls; beautiful face, smooth as a Michelangelo marble, distorted in distaste. I wonder at the lack of creasing in between his eyebrows, and the glorious smoothness of the skin on his cheeks. Youth.

“You’re not allowed…”

“I know,” I interrupt. I don’t have time to waste discussing a point of law. Not anymore. “I intend to smoke it outside while drinking the coffee you’re about to make me.”

His perfect face pouts in a barely discernible, petulant moue. I smile again, with both corners of my lips this time, if not with my eyes. In response, he tosses his fringe back, and turns to the gurgling machinery behind him. The rest of the queue shuffles, uncomfortable at the interchange, waiting in line for their green power smoothies, gut cleansing mueslis, cucumber coolers, iced lemony water and mind-clearing green teas, impatient to sit at their consoles, consciences crystal clear and washed of imbibed iniquity.

I cast a purposefully lewd glance over the barista’s tight black jeans, buttocks pert, thighs taut; I wonder if he spends his after-hours preening at a mirror, plucking his brows and perfecting his twerk in provocative poses. Then I turn to the waiting suit next to me and wink at its wearer. He twitches his lips at me, disconcerted. If I go on like this, I might actually get to enjoy the day.

 I pay for my coffee and take the cup outside where I sit at a high table on a metal bar stool that’s bolted to the concrete of the pavement so that it cannot move. It’s a bit of a struggle. I’m short, overweight and under-trained, carrying the burden of years of sandwiches at the desk and G&Ts on the way home hours later, of lengthy celebrations of new deals done, corporate battles won and high-flying City fun.

Finally settled at the summit of the stool, I sip the strong brew the barista has poured, blessing it, no doubt with his curses at my cluttering up his otherwise sophisticated watering-hole. Now, to make plans.

I have my papers in my bag. I have the recordings on my phone. Everything is  backed up, copies in the cloud, encrypted, secreted, the hardware packed and ready to leave town, the money transferred, wired here and there, invested, exchanged, linked to the right accounts, ready to grow.

Shortly I will take a gentle stroll to the Tribunal to make the deposition. Ironic that I’d worked just across the street from those who might have helped. I had been ensconced in a steel and glass tower, stretched to snapping point, ironed out till wafer thin, humiliated, sense of self-worth assassinated, human principles completely excoriated, until all that was left was this: this wrecked shell that sits, and drinks coffee and smokes too many roll-up cigarettes and leers at the rest of the world.

I look up at that tower, my personal Babel, with its labyrinth of workspaces, where co-workers reach out, it seems, collaborate, recreate, innovate, meet-up, greet-up, congregate at water-coolers  and mass debate in common rooms. All those other towers loom over the street, tearing up the horizon, clawing at each other to reach what’s left of the sky.

The traffic hums, the cleaning machines thrum their brushes against the kerb, the cranes at the construction site nearby grind their gears to growl into the working day and slot together the slabs of the new buildings around the edges of the growing metropolis. Pile drivers pound at rocks and giant drills tear at the concrete. I inhale the tobacco smoke to coat my lungs before they fill with concrete dust and benzene, and maybe asbestos from the old buildings that are being torn down to make way for more…commerce, investment, economic activity and greater prosperity. New developments, always more new developments.

The café spills out its load of people heading for work. I watch them in all their glorious varieties: here come the movers, shakers, money makers, advantage takers, techno creators, business innovators, crypto investors, dirt rakers, news fakers, tale spinners, myth narrators.

The barista interrupts my bitter reverie.

“Finished, Madam?” he lisps. I wonder what he knows. The corporate world is small and surprisingly incestuous. And I know exactly which hot shot lawyer this ambitious young coffee maker is sleeping with. I wonder if the hot shot lawyer’s husband suspects and I almost ask him outright.

But I have things to do. To the Tribunal first, to settle my case. I have agreed to an out-of-court pay-off. Why not? There will be a gagging order, I daresay, but I’m prepared for that. Life is short, and I’m leaving town. I get my redress, get to humiliate those who trampled over me, stole my ideas, ruined my career, just as I was contemplating the real possibility of retirement. Then to an old friend of mine, a newspaper editor, a media man of the old type: a hoary old hack who is eager to publish my manuscript, water-tight as it is to any accusation of libel or defamation. And I don’t care anyway, when you’ve lost everything, you are capable of anything. People should remember that when setting out to trample over each other on their way up.

When the tower crumbles I will be far away. I will regain the colour in my cheeks, the oxygen in my lungs. I will have thrown away the fags, ditched the coffee and found a way to sleep at night. At last.