THE DEADLINE CAFÉ EPISODE #16

After closing up on Friday, Hank told Lissa about the new café countdown someone had written on Mrs. Worthley’s greeting card. Then his face froze in what Lissa called that “I must go down to the sea again” look. She tried her usual remedy of waving a hand in front of his face with a  “Hey, snap out of it, buddy.” But this time, nothing doing. 

“This is serious, Lissa. Really.”

“I know it is, Hank. Don’t think I don’t know. But you’ve got to focus on the essentials, the things you can control, the things you know, the things you’re good at, the things you love.”

“Like what?”

Lissa thought a moment, “Like coffee.  You remember that coffee house you told me about in New Zealand?  Just fresh coffee, old mugs, a couple of chairs, a table, an old record player and a cat named Latte. You said it was the best coffee you ever had. You called it ‘wabi-sabi’ coffee.”

“So what’s your point?”  Hank said. 

“I think you need to get out of the café.”

“Not the old afternoon in the Art Institute field trip, where we go see the Japanese tea cups?” 

“Nope. I’m saying we should go see the competition. Maybe it’s showdown time, Hank.”

Hank turned to look at Lissa and a smile slowly grew on his face.  “You know what, Lissa, you might just be onto something.”

“Ok,” she said, “Monday, after the morning rush. Before I come in at noon.  Oakey can handle things. It’s a date, then?   How about I meet you there around 10:30?”

**

By the time Lissa stepped off the Purple Line at Davis, Hank had found a corner table in the Yada Yada Java café and ordered a cappuccino, a piece of whole wheat toast and marmalade for Lissa and a black coffee and blueberry muffin for himself.

“Pretty busy, huh?” she remarked, draping her coat over the back of her seat. She noticed Hank was doing his best to keep his face hidden behind that week’s Reader.

“Could say that,” Hank said as the waitress picked up the number from the table and dropped off Hank’s order.

“So, you find your soul mate in there?” she quipped. Hank took a closer look at the Personal Ads the paper was opened to and quickly folded it up.

“You look different,” he said. 

Lissa smiled but didn’t reply.

“Your hair?  Is that it?  I mean, you look good and everything, but different.”

“Nothing’s different, Hank, we’re just not used to seeing each other out of context,” she said.  “Your hair looks different, too.”

Hank decided not to mention he had just gotten a fifteen-minute Super Cuts early bird special that morning.  More important to concentrate on the business at hand.

“First of all,” he said, “will you get a load of these little French Bistro aprons they make their staff wear? And their little name plates?”

Lissa took a long look around then said, “Well, they’re doing something right, because they’re packing ‘em in, Hank. Gotta give them credit.” She stirred some sugar into her cappuccino and took a sip. “Not bad.”

Hank was too busy analyzing his muffin. He had it splayed open like a dissected frog in a high school biology lab. “Look!” he whispered, “two, three, ok, four blueberries in the entire muffin!” He pierced one berry with one tine of his fork and held it up for Lissa to see. “Good Lord, and they’re Michigan blueberries!”

Hank, from Maine, knew blueberries, real blueberries, and to him these were hot-house specials, fakes. “Look at it, Lissa, it’s big as a golf ball. All size and no flavor. In twenty years they’ll have blueberries big as basketballs. Jeeze Louise. And this coffee…you call this watery stuff coffee? They’re not changing their filters.” he hissed.

As he spoke, Hank noticed a large shadow, an obstruction, a veritable eclipse of all available light, sliding over the top of their table. Then he heard a voice say, “Nice to see you, Hank. You, too, Lissa. You applying for one of our openings?”

And Hank looked up into the smiling face of none other than David Lawrence, Chairman and CEO of Yada Yada Java, America’s Fastest Growing Chain of Coffee Houses.