Mostly Cloudy

Chapter 1

‘What the hell are you doing here?’

This wasn’t the reception I normally got when handing over a maple machiatto at Jovaa Coffee House.

‘I work here,’ was my predictable reply.

‘I can see that. Why are you working here?’

‘Well, clearly not for the amiable repartee with the customers.’

This particular customer was called Ben. A friend. An interfering busy body, but a friend.

 ‘Beth is not going to be happy about this,’ Ben advised of his other half.

‘VANILLA LATTE,’ I shouted. Not at Ben obviously. ‘Look, I can’t really discuss this right now. VANILLA LATTE.’ This time I barked the coffee order with the tone of a mother asking her child to put its shoes on for the very last time.

I often wonder exactly where people go missing between the till where they order their drink and the end of the counter where they are due to collect it. Like the people who check-in at an airport but never make it to the gate. They must get sucked through the same wormhole as all the teaspoons and ballpoint pens.

On this occasion the prospective coffee drinker had evidently avoided the clutches of the worm hole. She was a large lady who threw Ben rudely off his stride with a swift nudge in her clear desperation to claim her caffeinated beverage. I smiled at her congenially, almost like I didn’t think she was a discourteous tool, then turned back to Ben.

‘Take your lovingly crafted beverage and go sit out front. I can take a break in ten.’

When I appeared outside, I saw that Ben had taken up residence at one of the tables with a large sunshade, and was rocking his iPad. I selected a different table to sit down at; one where I could get some Vitamin D production underway. Still couldn’t get enough of this Californian sunshine. It’s different for the locals, I understand.

‘Get your pasty ass over here,’ I suggested to Ben who begrudgingly began to move. He carried a few extra pounds than the average male, but he carried them well – in that way girls find cute in cuddly sort of way.

Before he’d even sat down he started.

‘Why are you working here?’

‘Why shouldn’t I?’

‘You’re smart.’

‘Smart people can work in coffee shops.’

‘They can yes. But they can also work in other places. Places where they can make a difference.’ He was mimicking me. ‘I thought that’s what you came here for?’

‘I can make a difference in a coffee shop. I’ve already streamlined their process by thirteen percent.’

‘Great. Keep it up and you might streamline yourself right out of a job – do yourself a favour.’

I dismissed him whilst I brought a tall Americano to my lips, testing its temperature. ‘Why is it so much hotter through the lid spout?’

‘Don’t change the subject.’

I sighed, resignedly. ‘Look, I’m not the smart one. You’re the one who graduated top of your class from CalTech. I dropped out of uni remember?’

Ben just laughed that one off. He knew I was working his buttons. It’s true, I did drop out of university – but I did get my degree later. This was back when I was still in England, which seemed like an awfully long way away now.

‘I’m fine, don’t worry. This is good for me. No stress, friendly. The barista profession is not so cut throat, you know. Even in Silicon Valley. Suits me right now. You know what happened the last time things got too much. All my hair fell out.’

‘No it didn’t!’

‘Well, my beard fell off.’

‘No it didn’t. There is a medically recognised difference between stress-induced alopecia and alcohol-induced shaving.’

I harrumphed at his historical accuracy. It seemed worse at the time though. That’s what happens when a girl dumps you. First you get drunk, then you say to yourself: right, I’ll show her; I’m going to be someone new and I’m going to start by radically changing my appearance … by shaving just over one millimetre of growth off some parts of my face. See how she likes them lemons.

Pathetic, huh? So Ben was right – not such a major meltdown. Not that one, at least. The other one, of course, was the elephant in the cafeteria that justified my argument more firmly and Ben backed off a little accordingly. I’d known Ben for quite a few years now. Purely a virtual relationship originally as we lived eight thousand miles apart. A lot of our online communities overlapped – and I don’t mean World of Warcraft. Not exclusively anyway.

You know that expression, you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family? Well, when whomever came up with that did, he or she did not point out that even your friends were chosen from quite a limited pool. Now, of course, not so. Now, the world of social interactions is a crazy one indeed – boundless and boundaryless in its reach. For me that meant that from all the contenders to the title of Best Friend, the lucky winner turned out to live on an entirely different continent. Only in the twenty-first century. These kind of possibilities lead inevitably to both good and bad outcomes in equal measure, for individuals and the world at large. And many opine about the implications of such a massively interconnected world. But in truth they are espousing the same arguments that have been going around since Guttenberg had a good idea. Folk were claiming that the art of conversation was dying back in the eighteen hundreds, what with all the newspapers and books and shit. In the end, you can’t do anything to hold back technological progress, even if it seems like it might erode our self-worth. There will always be change, we just have to accept it and embrace it. And I was happy to embrace the entity known as Ben-and-Beth.

They had offered me an escape.

When I needed to get away from my past, from myself, this was where I came. When I moved out here a year ago they took me under their wing like a pair of mother hens. I stayed at their place for a while, which was fun. And when I got my own place it was like they were packing their firstborn off to university.

Soppy fools.

As my adoptive American parents they felt responsible for me. They wanted me to Do Well. They couldn’t see how that could possibly begin with me working at Jovaa Coffee House.

But it did. It would.

Trust me.