THE DEADLINE CAFÉ EPISODE #3
Hank came in from scraping the 87 off the front window in time to hear the scrawny student tell the girl standing next to him in line, “Look, I’m telling you, man, I was there last fall. You want the world’s best coffee? Go to Naples. It’s like twenty times better than this crap here.”
Hank fixed the student with a withering look, unnoticed by all except Lissa.
“Well, all I’m saying is it was probably the best cup of Joe I’ve ever had.”
Lissa tapped Hank on the shoulder, breaking the trance of his death ray stare.
Hank turned his back to the rapidly forming line of customers. The hiss of the steamer and the gurgle of white froth safely masked his words. “These guys study abroad three months and they think they know everything,” he whispered to Lissa.
“Hank, let it go. They’re young and full of steam, just back from their first look around. You know, first time out of Camp Evanston on their own.” Then she added, “Don’t you remember when we met each other? That Grillfest in the Black Forest?” She bumped him with her hip and it startled him because she hadn’t done that in a while. “Has it been that long, Hank? You remember—you told everybody who’d listen you wanted to start an import business, get a concession selling German hot dogs at Wrigley. What was it? Yeah, you were going to name it, ‘Hankering for a Dog: The Wurst is Yet to Come!’”
Hank winced. “But that was different.”
“No it’s not.”
Hank followed her into the back room, which was where they had their most serious conversations, outside the earshot of the customers. Most of them, anyway.
“Lighten up, Hank,” she said, with one hand on his shoulder. A new customer seeing this might have thought she was about to put the other arm around him and kiss him. In fact, at least one new customer was watching them. But the regulars all knew that Hank and Lissa were best friends, comfortable as old shoes, as the professor always said.
“Hank, he’s just some kid showing off. You’re a man with a business. And I mean it’s not as though you haven’t got more important things to worry about.”
She let that hang out there just a moment and then added, “Like this ‘90 Day Countdown’ we’ve got going on here.”
“Gee, thanks for reminding me, Lissa. Did you see? This one was written in chocolate sauce on the front window and the back door. Froze up real nice. Some joke. Took me fifteen minutes to scrape it off.”
“Hank, this is getting serious. I think whoever’s doing this means business. Everyone’s talking about it.”
“You think I don’t know they’re talking about it?” He pulled her hand off his shoulder. “But like I was saying yesterday, it’s just some nut case’s idea of a practical joke.”
“Well, I think you’re wrong. Dead wrong.”
“Aw c’mon, Liss…”
Lissa fixed Hank with a withering look of her own. “Call it woman’s intuition.”
Hank watched Lissa return to the front, woman’s intuition and all, and then checked out the customers, sipping and chatting and typing. A short heavyset man, whom he didn’t recognize—the stranger who’d been watching him and Lissa—rose from his seat and put on his trenchcoat. He walked towards Hank silently. When they were face to face, the man reached into his pocket. Already rattled by the frosted 87, Hank took a step backwards. The man took his hand out of his pocket. “I like your café,” he said. He put a card down on the counter, turned around, and walked out the door. Hank picked it up as he watched the man slide into the back seat of a black limousine.
David Lawrence, Chairman and CEO
Yada Yada Java
America’s Fastest Growing Chain of Coffee Houses
