THE DEADLINE CAFÉ EPISODE #27
Brian, or “Dr. Dollar” as Hank called him, Professor of Finance at Kellogg with a head for numbers and a fondness for Chai Lattes, folded the leather screen cover back over his thin new black Apple iPad as though he were a physician pulling a blanket back over a patient in an Intensive Care Unit.
“Right, well then, things are starting to look better, Hank. Not good, not yet. But better.”
Hank nodded like an ICU patient hearing the first words of hope and wished that once, just once, the good “doctor” might allow himself to utter a few more positive words of encouragement. Surely even the most hardened coffee bean counter must be capable of a few superlatives, but evidently not. They lived in two very different worlds: one in the left-brain world of hard numbers, bottom lines and cold facts, and the other in the right-brain world of romantic start-up entrepreneurs. There were times when Hank thought they might need an interpreter, so far apart their parallel worlds seemed when they met, as they had been now for about a month.
“What you need now is to win that Evanston Coffee Challenge next weekend. That might help.” Brian said. He didn’t sound particularly hopeful. All Hank heard was the “might help” part. Might. That’s just great.
They stood up and shook hands, then Dr. Dollar left the back room, picked up his waiting Chai Latte, put a $2 bill in the tip jar and headed for the door. The café seemed crowded and happy. Hank scanned the place and everyone was there, the old regulars and some new regulars, whose faces now seemed familiar.
He walked behind the display case and counted the apple turnovers. One of Helen’s suggestions, they were selling briskly. It was only noon and the morning coffee break crowd had almost cleaned them out. Helen’s suggestion that they sell Australian Meat Pies with tomato sauce for lunch hadn’t fared so well. Chicago was a meat city, but leafy Evanston was a fruit and vegetable burg.
**
Suddenly all hell broke loose. Jimmy D drove up in front of the café, lit up his cruiser, let his siren do a couple of whoop-whoop-whoops, then bolted inside to tell everyone that the professor was in trouble, big trouble.
In the back room, Jimmy explained, “I got the call over the radio. Seems like right in the middle of his Friday lecture in Harris Hall, he wandered a little off topic. I mean, way off topic. More like a long hike, if you get my drift.”
“Where is he now?”
“They got him over at the University Health Services. Under observation. No guests right now, but I think we need to get over there. He’s all alone you know.”
That was all they needed to hear. Sergei, who, as luck would have it, was in the cafe, started ferrying folks over to University Health, free of charge. It wasn’t long before the handful of Northwestern students huddled in the health center’s new waiting room were invaded and surrounded by more than a dozen regulars and old timers from the café: the Whittler, Lissa, Hank, the kid in the coffee bean outfit. Even Oakey’s old boyfriend, the engineering student, and Mrs. Worthley, who sent a Best Taxi over to the retirement home to fetch three of the Knotty Knitters. (It was well-known that one of the knitters rather fancied the professor, and as luck would have it, the professor was wearing that very pair of fire engine red socks she’d made him.)
It wasn’t long before Mrs. Worthley sweet-talked the head nurse into sharing with them the details: the professor had walked out from behind the lecturn, taken off his glasses, and stared for some minutes out the window. Students in the front row started asking, “Professor? Professor? Are you all right? Is everything ok?” and the professor had started back up again, slowly, like an antique Victrola cranking back up, muttering about deadlines, how the students needed deadlines, lines in the sand, death, and lines…and then some students helped him sit down and called the University Police on a cell phone.
The others folded up their laptops, gathered up their books, and slipped quietly out of the room. In a matter of minutes almost everyone on campus had heard about the incident on Facebook and someone had posted a video of the professor rambling on and on, not one sentence having anything to do with its predecessor.
Meanwhile, Oakey was holding down the fort at the café, where things had settled down again and Helen was talking quietly with one of several clients, who were waiting discretely at tables here and there around the place. There was a strange new tension in the air now, with the Great Evanston Coffee and Barista Challenge now only a week away now and that other deadline only two days after that. Helen was right, changes were coming.