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So, Einar works at a coffee shop.
And every time this one specific kid drags himself up to Einar’s register, he kinda wants to ring up an ambulance for him? Genuinely wants to take the guy gently by the hand and lead him down the road to the hospital, or possibly to the nearest police station.
Today, the kid wanders into the coffee shop with a massive bruise down the left side of his face, some swelling, and a faint limp.
Last week wasn’t much better, but now it looks like last week’s mess on his face is still there, and only covered with new stuff that Einar doesn’t really want to imagine how it came about. He’s been on the wrong side of a fight before. The kid just doesn’t seem to know there’s a right side, if, as Einar is hoping, the injuries are genuinely because of fighting.
The kid makes it up to his register, limp and all, to finally place his order. Which is actually His Order. It never changes. The total comes to exactly 4.50, he pays in one dollar bills, and the remaining .50 is saved up to buy one small pastry every Wednesday. Einar knows this, because every goddamn Wednesday the kid pays for a pastry entirely in quarters.
How do you end up in that kinda place in your life?
So today the kid’s placing his drink order, which Einar is hardly listening to because he’s memorized it by now. The kid’s come in every single day since Einar’s first day on the job, ordered the same ultra-strong coffee, and then just sits in his corner (it is also His Corner, now, and if anyone else sits there he has a habit of ordering the coffee to go and then sitting on the curb on the street to drink it, instead.) like a menacing, blond gargoyle. He never causes trouble, though with a glare like that, he seems like the type. Doesn’t talk to anyone. Sometimes his cellphone goes off and he chugs the rest of the coffee before heading out, without ever answering his cellphone.
So basically, just in general, Einar’s not the most sure that things are okay on that end. But it’s none of his business what the patrons do, and so the kid always comes in and is never shoved in the back of an ambulance.
Today the kid is still not being shoved in the back of an ambulance, but he may be on the verge of a minor heart attack.
He’s .50 short on the drink.
That’s never happened before, but when Einar unrolls the crumpled one dollar bills to sort them out and lay them down flat in the register like he always does, he realizes there are only four dollars this time, not five.
“Uh, hey, sorry but you’re fifty cents short,” Einar says, expecting the kid to root around in his pockets and pull out an especially crumpled straggler—he doubts it’s anything malicious, even with the impressive resting bitch face—but the kid doesn’t come out of his pockets with another dollar. He roots around for it. He roots around for it in his pants first, then his jacket’s outer pocket, and then pockets in places Einar hadn’t been aware pockets could successfully be sewn, and he comes up empty handed.
By this point, the kid’s usually icy blue eyes have gone wide. He’s definitely having some kind of minor bug-out session. And with how he always already looks like he’s been dragged through a small shitstorm before showing up every day, even the minor bug-out is really…
Fuck it. If he can’t call the guy an ambulance and help him out of whatever shit’s got him stuck at coming to the same shop every day for a 4.50 coffee and paying for one pastry per week in quarters, then Einar can do something smaller at least.
“Hey,” Einar says, shuffling the money into the register and out of sight. “Hey, my bad dude. One of the dollars got stuck together. It’s all here.”
The blue eyes narrow.
The resting bitch face twists into a very intentional scowl, the sort that says, I know I didn’t give you five dollars, I saw them all counted out. What are you doing.
All in all, it’s just a whole lot of emotions that Einar wasn’t expecting to deal with when letting someone know that they were going to get the coffee for cheaper than expected, purely out of the goodness of the barista’s heart?
Calling him an ambulance probably wouldn’t have gone down much better.
It was a slow morning, so there wasn’t a line behind the kid. So with no witnesses and a perfectly straight face, Einar turned and began to make his coffee while the kid went to curl in his usual corner.
Einar came out a few moments later with the mug, and with it, wrapped in a napkin and hidden between the palm of his hand and the mug, he also brought a small pastry that had been a little too ugly to be put out on display. It wouldn’t be missed.
He set both items down on the table, the pastry carefully hidden on the far side of the mug where the rest of the café couldn’t see. He turned and beat a retreat to the counter before the kid could realize what had just happened.
He caught on pretty quick, though. By the time Einar was back behind the counter, the two blue eyes had latched onto him and were staring at him from that corner. The whole time the kid was in the café that day. He didn’t look away from Einar until the cellphone rang and the kid got up, chugged the remaining coffee, and bolted out the door.
000
His name was Thorfinn.
Einar found out after the first time the kid ever used a debit card in the shop. It was also the first time Thorfinn bought twelve drinks at one time, all to go, with various flavorings and toppings, and one soy latte.
Thorfinn signed his signature in print, very carefully writing out each letter. It was genuinely legible. A rare phenomenon when it came to signing receipts.
Really though, what kind of name was Thorfinn Thorsson? Kids’ parents must’ve hated him.
(looking at him, though, Einar wouldn’t be surprised if his parents actually hated him. Today, Thorfinn wasn’t bruised, but he had a long, shallow cut along his cheek, and was holding his left arm close to his side, heavily favoring his right arm.)
“So, you having a wild party or something?” Einar said as he started making the first cappuccino extra-shot-esperesso with chocolate syrup and sugar substitute.
“No,” Thorfinn said.
“What’s up with this, then?”
“I was told to go get coffee so I came to get the fucking coffee.”
“You don’t sound too pleased about that.”
“It’s a stupid job and I don’t want to be here.”
Einar hummed and resolutely did not take that personally.
“You wanna pick up your usual while you’re here, too?”
Thorfinn shook his head. “I’ll come back for it later.”
“Mmh, okay. Not a social coffee drinker?”
He turned around to set the first drink on the counter just in time to see the cloud pass over Thorfinn’s face.
“I decide when I drink and I can do it whenever I decide, got it?”
“Yep,” Einar said. “No one said you weren’t allowed to come again, man. Deep breaths.”
And if looks could kill, Thorfinn would’ve been a serial murderer.