THE DEADLINE CAFÉ EPISODE #11

“Card? What card?” Hank was lost in thought and bobbing up to the surface like a pearl diver.  “What are you talking about?”

Oakey thought he was joking at first, but she could see the strain in his eyes.   True, there hadn’t been a deadline note for almost a week now.  But the citation from the city delivered in the afterglow of the overnighter was obviously weighing heavily on her boss.   Still…

“Sorry Hank, but I was just wondering if you’d gotten a card for Lissy.”

“Jeez, Oakey.  What kind of a card? I mean, I see her every day, well, almost every day. What are you talking about?”

 All Hank could think of was business cards.  Lissa had wanted to get some kind of recycled cards that had little bird seeds or something in them so you could plant them.  He’d told her they were a waste of money and besides, they were pretentious. Now what?  Had she enlisted Oakey to lobby for them?

Oakey pointed to the gaudy red and pink lace-trimmed Valentine’s Day boxes she and Lissa had put on top of the bookcase near the back doorway to the restrooms.   It was one of the ideas that had come out of the overnighter. The boxes were labeled big as Life: “HANK the HUNK”, “LOVELY LISSA”, and “SEOUL SISTER OAKEY”.

On Wednesday Hank had seen Lissa and Oakey decorating the shoe boxes, each one with a slit in the lid like a mail box, so that customers could slip in their tips or write little Valentine’s Day cards for their favorite barista and he’d muttered something about how this wasn’t Junior High School, you know, and Lissa’d said, “It’ll be fun, you wait. People just want to express themselves and we have a lot of loyal customers, you know.”

‘I know, but…”

That evening, Hank took his paperwork back to his apartment and sat in his thinking chair.  Facing enough city violations to bankrupt him, if not close the café, he’d decided to polish up his old resume.  But it wasn’t long before he reminded himself that it was the café business that he loved—that, and Chicago winters and something else that he couldn’t quite put his finger on.  So he got up, stuffed his resume into the recycling bin, and reheated some day old macaroni and cheese.

Speaking of stuffed, the next day, he noticed that Lissa’s Valentine’s Day box was overflowing with cards—cram-packed, in fact—with red hearts and white lace.  Oakey’s was full too, only a little less so.  Jeez, now they’d even put out a little box for the Professor and there were already a couple of cards in it.

And Hank’s box? --nada, zippo, zilch. He flashed back to sixth grade, when he was the only boy in Mrs. Creeden’s class who didn’t get a card from Belinda St. Germain,  the only girl he’d wanted one from. 

Oh well, he thought, the café patrons had three more days to get him a card.  Then it occurred to him that he had only three more days to get Lissa and Oakey something, too.

Sergei brushed past him on his way to the boxes.  And Hank watched as he dropped a card first in Lissa’s box, and then Oakey’s.  Then the limousine driver turned to Hank.

“I have something for you.”

Hank smiled.  Finally, he thought.

Sergei lowered his voice.  “That Yada Yada Java guy you wanted to know about?”

Curveball, thought Hank.  “Yes?”

“He bought that coffee house over by the Purple Line last week.  You know, El El Beans.”