Badly Broken Girl - A Cup of Joe in a World of Hurt

A Cup of Joe in a World of Hurt

“I’m becoming a better person.   

Maybe at first, you don’t notice the difference, but I can assure you it is happening. I’m on the road to wellness. I’m riding the superhighway to normality. Each and every morning when I wake up, I can feel it. I’m getting better, improving: nicer, kinder, more generous, understanding, compassionate, caring, thoughtful, sympathetic, empathetic, involved, concerned, loving…gentle.   

 Yes, gentle! It’s true. You’re right to be surprised. I’ve been making tremendous strides. I’ve even surprised myself. But you can see the difference right before your eyes. You see, I have a job now—a real job. And a place of my own. I don’t live on the street anymore or in a culvert under a freeway overpass. I’m in a healthy relationship—very serious stuff. The world changes when you turn twenty. I’m an adult now. I have responsibilities. People rely on me. I’m a very important part of this community.   

Just look at this job I hold. Hundreds of people depend on my every day. People in my position fulfill an important public function. Why without us, workers all over the world would fall asleep at their desks, behind the wheel of large vehicles or around some very dangerous machinery. Never underestimate the importance of your local barista. I keep people alive—alive and caffeinated—and very, very happy.   

I’m a changed woman. Isn’t that obvious?   

…Is that you shaking your head? I’m sorry. It’s just that it’s so difficult to tell. With all that thick plastering around your neck and those numerous bandages all about your face…you’ll just have to forgive me if I can’t tell if you are commending me…or…or…something else.   

Oh! Oh. I see. You’re motioning for your drink. Here I was, busy telling you I’m a changed and responsible person, and I nearly forgot your order. Hold on, I’ll get it. Oh, damn these tight barista uniforms—always riding up my ass. Just one sec. It’s coming. Here it is. One Cinnamon Caramel Dolce Macchiato on its way. Yow! That is scalding hot. It’s burning my hands just holding it. Hey, hot stuff coming through everybody—clear a path. There we go. Let me just blow on it to cool it off a little. Pheeeeewwww!

You’re about to see what a great barista I am. I think it is just great that you went so far out of your way to visit me here. I was thinking that with all the stuff that went down at the institute and then later at my apartment, that, uh, I don’t know, that maybe you might still hold a grudge against me. But let me tell you, your appearance here at Rubicon Café #2387 is doing wonders for my self-esteem. I really have to congratulate you, Dr. Kim. You’re a real professional—a credit to the entire psychiatric industry. Your presence is reinforcing all of my good behavior traits.

Now, it is not going to be easy for you to drink this. I’ll need to maneuver between your two arm casts. You know, you kind of remind me of the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz, with both your arms jutting out like that. Oops, you don’t mind if I brace myself on your leg cast, do you? There, much better. Say, you’ve got some muscular thighs underneath all that plaster. Have you been working out? You know, before your little, uh…incident? Yes, I thought so. I can see it in your exposed spots—around the stomach and just above the hips, you look very tone, very defined. It’s difficult for us chesty girls to get definition, isn’t it? But underneath that thick cast I can see it.   

There we go. Hold on. One more blow ought to do it. Pheeeewwww. Oh my. You’re shaking, Dr. Kim. Why are you shaking? I think this beverage is quite cooled off. I’d be willing to test it on my wrist. Isn’t that how they used to test baby formula? Please, stop shaking. As I said, I’m a new girl. I will never do anything malicious again. Now, I’m very sorry about your present condition, but just remember—it was you who broke into my apartment. You were the one wearing that sexy, slinky Ninja outfit. You tried to break my neck. You tried to hit me over the head with the brass umbrella stand and take out my knees with the Cuisinart. That was a perfectly normal reaction for me to toss you against the fireplace mantel, high kick you in the hip, neck and upper-arm and heave you down the stairwell. If it had been me breaking into your house, I’m certain you would have treated me the same. A home-invasion can be a very traumatic affair. I will add that although I found your surprise visit incredibly sexually stimulating, I did not enjoy beating you to a pulp. Not in the least.   

So, please, stop shaking…thank you. Okay, er, uh…this is going to be awkward. I’m thinking the best angle is for me to sit in your lap and work my way in-between your double-shoulder torso cast. Not to worry. I won’t try anything untoward. Stop shaking. Dr. Kim, you’re making this more difficult than it needs to be. You did engage the brakes on the wheelchair, right? Hold still. Soon you’ll be in gooey, caramel macchiato heaven.”   

“Gaaaaahhh! Eeeeeeee! Yiiiiii yiiii, mff, mff!”   

“Oh drat! Now, you made me spill your macchiato.”   

“Yeeeeeeeee! Haf, haf, haf, yaaaahh.”   

 “You see what you’ve done, Dr. Kim? You made me spill scalding hot macchiato onto your toes and down the pads of your feet. Why it must be dribbling down all the way underneath your cast and pooling up around your heel.”   

“Yiiiii-aaaaah! Haf, haf, haf liquith!”   

“Yes, I know it’s hot. A macchiato must be served at the appropriate temperature. It’s corporate policy. Hold on, let me think. Stop squirming around in your casts so much—it’s distracting me…I’ve got it! Stir straws! We need stir straws.” 

I ran to the condiments trolley and grabbed two fists full of long, plastic stir straws. Artfully, I piped them together forming one long, skinny straw. I ran back to Dr. Kim and poked my contraption down the toe-opening of her leg cast, in-between her soft, pink feet and the ribbed stockinet.   

“Gah, gah, woo, woo, wooft, hee, hee.”   

“I had no idea you were so ticklish, Dr. Kim. I just have to say that I find the whole idea of a doctor of psychiatry being so ticklish, well, let’s just say, ‘unsavory,’ and leave it at that. Back to the matter at hand. Hold tight, Dr. Kim. This is going to require a lot of slurping.”   

“Sloooop, gurfl, gurfl, gurfl. Sloooop, gurfl, gurfl, gurf.”   

 “Ow! That’s still hot! I can’t believe you’ve been sitting in that pool of hot caffeinated beverage for all this time. Sloooop, gurfl, gurfl, gurfl. Hey, that’s really good! I must say, you have lovely, lovely feet. But I had no idea they would be so delicious mixed with caramel macchiato. I’m gonna suggest this to Corporate.” BR>

“Sloooop, gurfl, gurfl, gurf.”   

“Alexis, what are you doing?”   

“Dotty?”   

It was my boss. Using the armrest of Dr. Kim’s wheelchair to brace myself, I stood up and brushed the dirt off of the knees of my nylons.    

“Nothing. Just helping this customer with her Macchiato.”   

“By sucking it out of her leg cast?”   

“We just had a small spill—nothing to get excited about.” I fanned Dr. Kim’s burnt foot with the hem of my barista apron.   

“Guff, hmph, hefffff, dthy, dthy!”   

Just as I feared, Dr. Kim recognized Dotty, her former subordinate.   

“Do I know that woman? She looks vaguely familiar under all those bandages.”   

“Hmph, hefff, dthy, dthy!” Dr. Kim was wiggling wildly within her casts, eyes popping for attention behind the rims of her gold-wire glasses.    

I was concerned my little mishap with the macchiato might be misconstrued.   

“Dotty, you must remember one of our dearest customers—Tiffany Hwang? Member of our Frequent Buyers Club? Had a terrible hang-gliding accident? Surely, you remember?”   

“No,” Dotty said dryly. She exhaled deeply, while Dr. Kim continued mumbling beneath her bandages. She turned to her. “Is that your nurse outside, enjoying a cigarette, Miss? Why don’t I bring her in and she can tend to your foot. It looks like the skin is starting to blister.”   

“Dotty, I can…”   

“That’s enough, Alexis. Why don’t you go back behind the counter and get our dear customer a gift to show our hospitality and how highly we value her patronage?” 

I ran back to the front counter and returned with one of our establishment’s most prized gifts. “Here you go. It’s a Rubicon Express Card. I even marked you down for two purchases. Eight more and you get the eleventh purchase…”   

“Not that gift, Alexis. You know, the Delfino Double Espresso Maker?” 

“The silver one?”   

“Yes, yes. Go get it.”   

Dotty went to retrieve Dr. Kim’s nurse, while I went to the back supply closet to get the Delfino. It was an industrial-sized espresso maker. The Facilities team was going to install it next week. Bending my knees, I hauled up the great metallic monstrosity. It weighed almost as much as Dotty. Slowly, carefully, I inched my way over to Dr. Kim, whose eyes widened in anticipation of receiving such an awesome gift. I gently placed the hulking machine on her lap, balancing it delicately upon the top edges of her long leg casts.   

“Ooooohfffff, helfffff, uuuuugggph.”   

“You’re gonna love this baby,” I said. “I mean, once your arms are all healed. It makes out-of-this world espressos.”   

“Uuuaaaahggg!”   

I turned around to notice an enormous line of impatient customers. “Sorry, I’ve got to run.” I left Dr. Kim straining under the tremendous weight of the spectacular Delfino, maker of two cups of percolated perfection, while I ducked behind the counter to take on an angry crowd waiting anxiously for their caffeine fix.   

“Who’s next?”   

A smarmy, young businessman, dressed in an expensive, tailor-made, three-piece suit, Bluetooth sticking out of his ear, stepped forward.   

“Alexis, Beautiful, I’ll have my regular.” He flashed his Rubicon Express Card, and grinned a wicked toothsome, nothing but cosmetic caps, smile that made me want to wretch in the water pitcher. I glanced at it. Handwritten in precisely drawn letters was his full name, his regular drink and a piece of information we never ask for—his cell phone number.”   

“One double Americano with extra sugar coming right up, Mr.…Mr….” I looked at the card again. “Mr. Bravestone.” Ugh! You’ve got to be kidding me?   

“Call me Tom. No need to be formal, Sweety.”   

I glanced at the card again. “It says here ‘soymilk, no fair trade.’ Sorry, but all of our soymilk is fair trade.”   

“That stuff is so rank. Can’t you get me some real soymilk, Honey?”   

“Alexis!” Dotty yelled from the front of the café, “Get the Delfino off of this poor woman’s legs, they’re crushed enough as it is.”   

“Sorry. She had no good hands to hold it with.”   

Tom leaned forward like a sly fox in hen house full of crippled chickens. “You don’t have to take that crap,” he whispered. “I’m loaded. Just hop over that counter and run off with me.”   

Gross! “Here’s your Double Americano.” I handed him the beverage as though the cup and its contents had a bad case of leprosy. “I gave you an extra large shot of fair-trade soymilk, compliments of the house.”   

Undeterred, he beamed widely, flashing his pricey porcelain teeth. “Thanks, Babe. God, I love tall women.”   

“Alexis! Help me with the Delfino.” Dotty was making no progress removing the heavy machine from Dr. Kim’s crushed lap.   

As I moved to assist her, the front door of the Rubicon crashed open and two rough and wild-haired women wearing long, black trench coats burst into the café.    

“Arms up in the air and asses up against the wall!” the fair-skinned, taller woman with the frizzy ginger-colored hair demanded of those present. She was brandishing a sawed-off, double-barrel shotgun, and sticking it under the noses of customers who were too slow to comply. Her short, dusky-skinned mate with the swirl of black and auburn tresses had a Glock pistol and was pointing it menacingly in the face of Dotty, who unwisely always wore her ‘Shift Supervisor’ badge with great pride.   

The ginger-woman forced her way to the front and shoved the sawed-off barrel of her gun in my face as I watched her companion intimidate my boss. “You too, Barista-babe, hands up in the air.”   

Oh, finally, some drama. I was getting so bored.   

“Are you robbers or are you terrorists?” I asked, rather matter-of-factly. 

“What? Are you some kind of smart-ass?” Ginger said.   

“Two different protocols. It’s all in the corporate Rubicon policy and procedures manual, which I happen to have committed to memory. If you are robbers, we instantly surrender all of our cash on hand. But, if you are terrorists…”   

“Would you shut up?” I could see that Ginger had a short fuse. “We’re insurance brokers and we’ve come to collect our premium.” She turned to our quivering patrons. “Now, I want to see everybody’s noses and knees down on the floor. No exceptions!”   

“Oh my god! Dotty, can you believe it? Real, live extortionists. We’re being shaken down. How exciting!”   

Dotty could not believe it. She was almost as surprised by my reaction as Dusky and Ginger.   

“How do I get you to shut up?” She thrust the dirty barrel of her gun into my mouth. “Am I going to have to blow your brains out?”   

With a mouthful of metal, I said, “That probably won’t do it.”   

That response brought Dusky charging to the front counter.   

“You better shut your trap, Bitch, or I’m gonna make this Glock your new boyfriend.” She made a crude gesture with the Glock and her crotch that insinuated she would insert her gun and discharge it in a very unwelcome place.   

“You better get in line behind this gentleman,” I said, motioning to Tom, who was pressed flat on the floor. He nervously shook his head, sweating bullets and wiping the carpet with his nose.   

Ginger turned to Dusky. “Alright, let’s blow her face to pieces, get our insurance money and beat it.” She looked at Dotty, and then me. “We take what we want, when we want it. And if somebody gives us shit, we blast a big whole through them.” She cocked her shotgun. “I say it’s time we made an example of you.”   

I studied Ginger. Tall, slender, soft hands, expensively polished finger and toenails, skinny legs, nice rack—been a criminal since she was 18, possibly 19. I studied Dusky. Short, unkempt hair, grit around the edges of her hand, fingernails filed down to the nub, premature age-lines, sallow eyes, nose broken and rebroken, hales from the scariest section of the barrio--born into criminality.   

Since the great bullet famine of three years ago, a double-loaded weapon job was unheard of. That meant that there was one bullet between them. Was it the six to seven thousand dollar Glock nine millimeter, lead-jacket or the twenty large, brass-hulled, shotgun shell?   

Every object is a weapon in the right hands.   

Dusky tightened her grip and moved forward.   

A long, lithe arm shot like a rattlesnake on the attack toward the boiling pot of Sumatran White Mountain. A decanter full of steaming hot coffee hit Dusky viciously across the face—second and third degree burns of the nose, cheeks and forehead, temporary blindness in the left eye.   

“Aaahhh!”   

Ginger knowing the jig was up, flipped her sawed-off shotgun around and swung the stock of the gun at me. Duck right, slide left. Follow-up with backhand of the now empty decanter across the face. Blood and glass fly. Broken nose, broken cheekbone, severe bleeding from several deep gashes over right third of face.   

“Oh, shit! Aaaaahhh!”

Dusky whirls around, skin hanging off the bones of her face, discharges Glock, which harmlessly takes out Post-Modern, pastoral, knockoff painting hanging on opposite wall. Glass scone jar clocks her in the ear, busting mandible, perforating ear drum, tearing ligaments between third and forth vertebrae. She staggers, grabs the blackjack from the holster on her hip and raises it. Triple-drip Weston coffeemaker flies off back shelf. “Tongg!” And unplugs itself from wall just before crushing Dusky over the right shoulder. “Crack! Sprock! Crackle!” Collapsed sternum, broken collarbone, decimated shoulder blade and humerus.    

“Aaaaah! Aaaaah! You fuckin’ psycho-bitch!”   

Ginger, blood streaming, pulls out billy-club, swings errantly with left-hand, unwisely revealing she is not a Southpaw. Back-up diagonally, two steps, hoist electronic cash register over head. “Tongg!” Register unplugs itself and drops down on Ginger’s right thigh. “Crunch! Snap! Criiick!” Pulverised pelvis, shattered femur, flattened patella. “Aaaiiiii. Aaaahh. Oh, fucking shit!”   

Dusky, stumbling errantly, arm out-of-socket, grabs elderly patron—Mrs. Miltonberry, by the throat. “Give us the money you owe us, or I’ll strangle this cunt!” Red shoes fly over counter, followed by long legs and skinny torso. Thick, high-heel platforms shoot through the air, landing underneath right 36 C-cup breast. “Crenk!” “Ker-tunch!” Ribs 4, 5, 7, 9 and 10 snap like twigs. Dusky falls hard on the floor, shattering right wrist and leg ankle as she lands awkwardly on newspaper rack. “Aaawwwwk! You fucking whore! I’ll keeeeel you!”   

Ginger, dragging unresponsive right leg, warbles toward an empty table, grabs a dirty cappuccino mug smashes it against the table and threatens to “cut your beating heart out of your slutty, cross-bred body…” Solid oak chair levitates off ground, twirls around and dive bombs into Ginger’s left calf—tibia shatters in six locations, fibula crumbles, ankle twists grotesquely.   

Two hundred-pound merchandise display floats off of floor.   

“Stop! Stop! You insane witch! Stop!”   

Was that Ginger or Dusky?   

“Stop, Alexis! What are you doing?” It was Dotty.   

“Don’t hit me anymore,” pleaded Dusky. She pulled some crumpled and bloody bills out of her trench coat pocket. “It’s mob money, not mine. Take it. There’s at least three to four thousand there.” She burst into big cry-baby tears. “Just stop hitting me.”   

I looked at Ginger. “I have twenty-six or twenty-seven hundred. It’s all from our other jobs today.” She dropped the dripping red currency on the floor where it scattered and stained the carpet. “I swear. I will never set foot in this place again…if I’m ever able to walk.”   

“Alexis.”   

“Yes, Dotty?”   

“Put down the merchandise display.”   

“Okay, Dotty.” I gently set down the heavy display.   

People were crying. Not just Ginger and Dusky, but Mrs. Miltonberry, most of the patrons, Dr. Kim and her nurse and of course, Tom.   

I looked around at the broken chairs and tables. “Don’t worry, Dotty. I’ll clean up this mess.”   

Dotty, exhausted, collapsed against the nearest wall and let out a deep, emotional sigh. “What am I going to do with you, Alexis?”   

“Three weeks of toilet duty?”   

Dotty, silent, went tomato-red in the face.   

I slowly tiptoed back behind the counter. “I’ll just go back to what I was doing.” I brushed the chips of furniture wood, decanter glass and human bone off of my barista’s uniform and placed the horribly dented cash register back on the glass counter and plugged it in.   

“Ahem, can I help whose next?”   

Tom, dry-eyed and more composed now, slithered forward. “I love a tough gal. Go out with me.”   

“I could geld you with my toenails in three seconds flat.”   

Knees chattering and hands around his groin, he reached for his cup of Double Americano and slowly shuffled out of the coffeehouse, his back to the door, the entire time.   

I felt something burning into the side of my face. Immediately, I thrust my hand up to discover no implement or ray of heat. Then I saw it. It was Dr. Kim, her scorching glare piercing my heart and soul. I had once been her proud experiment—her shining project. She was going to put an end to violence in the world.   

Jesus—how I failed her.   

The grin of self-satisfaction from telling Tom off, melted from my face.   

“Tomorrow, Dr. Kim. I’ll be that better person tomorrow.”