THE DEADLINE CAFÉ EPISODE #17

Helen’s jazzy new poster announcing reduced fees worked like a charm.  The café regulars and a few newbies lined up for “Psychic Services, Aura Adjustments, and Special Readings of Tea Leaves and Coffee Grounds.”

 Hank caught Lissa looking over to the new seer-in-residence and said, “You ask me, it’s a complete crock.” He moved his hands like a magician over an imaginary glass ball, “Oo, oo, you’re going to meet a dark and handsome man.”

Lissa faced Hank and said, “What you don’t know--”

“Oh, I know, I know.”

“No you don’t. Helen has a real gift.   Anyway, buddy boy, you’re up next.  I made an appointment for you.”

**

Helen had a coffee cup from the Yada Yada Café directly in front of her.  “Take a sip of this coffee, young man.” Hank did this. “Now swirl it three times and tip the cup upside down so that I can read the grounds left at the bottom.” Hank did this, too. Helen gazed into the cup, tipping it slightly, and began to tell Hank what she saw.

**

At his table not far away, the Professor gave the man in a suit with the thing in his ear a good hard look.

“What? Sam, speak up! Can’t hear you!” the man said loudly.

The Professor stared harder.

“Wait, you’re breaking up.  Where are you? Shanghai?  Crap!”

The Professor set his students’ papers down.  How the heck could anyone concentrate with an idiot like this bellowing into what looked like a shiny suppository attached to his ear?

“Ok, you’re back now,” the man continued. “Damn it, Sam, you’ve gotta nail this deal down. This is huge, my man. Mega-millions.  Sam?  You’re breaking up again. ”

The man in the suit slapped a fat hand down on the little café table, then looked around and found himself eye to eye with the Professor, who had commenced his infamous laser stare.

 “Sam, Sam, can you hear me?” 

The man’s voice now filled the entire café.  The crowd was helpless.   A few stared, others glanced over, then shrugged to a neighbor at a table nearby.  Some attempted to wade back into the Times or the Trib or the Onion or whatever they were reading before they were witnesses to the deal of the decade.

Mrs. Worthley, who was trying to organize the reopening of the South Branch of the library, turned away from a possible donor to “shhhh” the man with the Blue Tooth. Meanwhile, Sherman slipped down from his perch atop an old wooden cabinet in back and trotted purposefully into the café.

The man in the suit continued.  Mrs. Worthey said, “Shhh,” again.  And the Professor ratcheted his stare up a notch.

“Ok, Sam, Sam, do me a favor, por favor, will you? Are you in or are out? We need seven figures to start.  What?  No, I left the Intercontinental. I’m waiting for some hot-shot Kellogg professor in some crummy café in Evanston, a real university hangout.  You know the type--granola bars, coeds, crackpot professors. ” He looked right into the Professor’s eyes. “Nothing like our days in B-School at HARVARD, bud.”

All eyes were now trained on the Harvard Man and silence broke out as loud as thunder.

“Ok, Ok, right right, look, Sam,” the Harvard Man continued, “man up, grow a pair, pony up some dinero, don’t be such a pu…!” 

At that, Sherman, all 40 pounds of him, leapt onto the Harvard Man, who jumped to his feet with the cat still attached to his Armani.

The place erupted spontaneously, like that scene in Casablanca, where the French stand up and sing the Marseilles to the astonished Germans. The café regulars began to chant “KELL-OG…KELL-OG…KELL-OG…” Louder and louder their voices grew, proudly, like a surrounding army, like Handel’s Christmas oratorio.

The man in the suit pried Sherman off his lap, threw on his topcoat, wended his way through the crowd like a farmer lost in his own corn maze, and paused momentarily at the front door to flip double-bird fingers to all. 

A cheer erupted when Lissa cued up Blondie’s “Call me on the telephone…” as loud as she could over the café’s speakers. 

At the same time, Helen leaned forward toward Hank and said, “…and that’s what I see in your future.” She smiled, then added, “Twenty bucks, honey. A girl needs nice shoes.”

By closing time, Lissa had gotten four signs printed over at Quartet and posted them around the Café: “NO CELL PHONES. NO BLUE TEETH. AND NO HARVARD MEN.” 

And someone had put a note in the new tip jar that was bolted to the counter. Oakey opened it up like a clamshell and read, “45 DAYS AND COUNTING DOWN.”