“Twenty minutes left,” Drea said with a smile.“What can I get you?”
“Oh, I’ll have a decaf latte to go, please.If I have caffeine at this time of night, I’ll never get to sleep.”
Marco placed the mop and bucket by an empty table, his uniform replaced with a pair of cargo shorts and black T-shirt, and shouted his good-byes.
“Have a good night, Marco,” she said over her shoulder.
Drea filled the portafilter with the Swiss decaf ground coffee and set the machine to prepare the espresso.
“So, what brings you out tonight?”Years of working in the café had made her the queen of useless small talk.
“Just the coffee,” the woman said with a laugh.“I was watching a documentary when I realized you’d be shutting soon, so I bit the bullet and hustled here.”
“You’ve got a tough accent to place,” Drea observed while she waited for the steam to heat the milk.
“I get that a lot.Travelled around the country for different reasons for close to twenty years.”
Drea placed the coffee on the counter.“I’d love to go to college or travel,” she said wistfully, but at the ripe old age of twenty-seven, that was looking unlikely.Caring for her mom for all these years had quashed her plan.At this rate, she’d have the same amount of debt as a college graduate, without any of the skills to get out of her dead-end job.
“Well,” said the woman, placing a twenty-dollar bill on the counter.“I encourage you to make that a reality.Please keep the change.”
The woman wandered to the back corner of the café and sat down.
Drea looked at the clock—fifteen minutes until closing.She should’ve asked Marco to stay a few more minutes to give her time to call her mom again.Hopefully she’d fallen asleep watching whatever reality TV show she was bingeing on.But what if she hadn’t?
The woman was engrossed in her phone, the coffee untouched on the table.José had a firm policy.Locking the door to stop more customers coming in was fine.Kicking customers out before they had finished their drinks, not so much.If she was going to be here a while, Drea needed to call her mom.
Tapping her nail on the counter, she considered grabbing her phone.The woman looked harmless.
“Excuse me,” she said as she approached the table.“I just have to grab my phone from the back.I’ll only be a moment if you need anything.”
“I’m fine.Have yourself a hot date tonight?”
“If only,” Drea said with a sigh “My mom is really sick.”
“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.You’re a good girl to want to check in.”The woman let out a long, weary sigh.
“Do you have children?”Drea asked, curious about the sudden shift in mood.
She shook her head.“If I did, I would hope they’d call me when I was sick.”
Drea popped into the break room to get her phone.
Five minutes, no more, she promised herself as she walked back into the hallway to get a signal.With a quick “sorry” in her head to José for breaking the rules, she dialed her mom.
“Hello?”
The sound of her mom’s voice brought a rush of relief.“Hey, Mom.How’s it goin’?”
“Are you home soon?I’m lonely,” her mother griped.
She’d heard the complaint a million times since high school when she’d received the devastating news about her mom’s lungs.As she’d become more housebound, it had gotten worse.But in moments like this, as her mom’s situation deteriorated, Drea took a small amount of comfort that she was still here to berate her.
She looked around the break room to the tatty bits of paper adorning the staff notice board.Gone from an A student to a job at José’s.Drea remembered those nights when her friends had invited her over for study groups and she’d had to say no because she was working.She’d been lonely then, too.The nights when she would sit in her room, trying to cram all her revisions into a few miserable moments, and the smell of cigarette smoke would drift up from the porch.Not even the fear of dying was cause enough for her mom to quit.
“I’ll be home a little later tonight, Mom.I have to clean and lock up.”
“Well, hurry.And bring some chocolate cake with you.”
