Page 3 of Latte Girl
I step inside and an inevitable “Oh shit” leaves mymouth.
The shop is inchaos.
Customers fill almost every square inch of the room, crowding around the cash, where Trisha, a new hire who really shouldn’t be handling the register on her own yet, is being buried alive under a growing string of receipts as she punches manically at thescreen.
One of my co-workers, Brittney, is trying to simultaneously stock both the napkin dispensers and cutlery bins. I walk over and ask what’s going on. She doesn’t even glance up at me at as she throws forks into the bin at turbo speed while ripping open a napkin package with herteeth.
“It’sbeencrazyGiselledidn’tcomeintoday.”
“Giselle what?” I ask, and she snaps her head towards me to fix me with a glazedstare.
“Giselle. Did not come in. So busy. You have tocater.”
Her head snaps back to thecutlery.
“I’mcatering? What doyoumean?”
I’m already pulling off my jacket and digging my apron out of my bag. Britney stacks the napkin and cutlery boxes in her arms and zooms back towards thestorageroom.
“NO TIME!” she shouts over hershoulder.
I head into the kitchen where Lisa, the baker and shift supervisor, is glazing cinnamon rolls that should have been on the shelves an hour ago. Like Brittney, she doesn’t look up from what she’s doing when I ask her how Icanhelp.
“Giselle called in sick this morning, and the Dark Brown ship is sinking, Hailey. I’m going to need you to cover the Knox meetingatnine.”
Dark Brown provides catering services for a few nearby businesses, most often at the Knox Security Company building next door. Giselle is the catering manager, although manager is a bit of an overstatement, seeing as she’s the only person on thecateringteam.
“I mean, I’ll help with whatever you need me for, but I’ve never catered. I have no idea what to do,” I tell Lisa, as she starts moving the buns onto aservingtray.
“Frankly, neither do I,” she answers. “You’ll just have to wing it. I’ll get everything packed up for you. I’m sure there’ll be someone there who can at least tell you what Giselleusuallydoes.”
“Aye aye, Captain.” I hold the kitchen door open for Lisa as she carries the tray ofbunsout.
“Oh and Hailey,” she adds as she passes me, “could you get the cash under control before you go? I’m afraid the new girl will quit if we leave her stranded there anylonger.”
I spend the next twenty minutes manning the register and by the time I’m ready to head to the meeting, things have started to slow down. The store is still a mess, but the line has thinned out and only a handful of people are standing around waiting for theirorders.
“Are you okay to take over for me now?” I ask Trisha, as she sets a freshly poured latte down on aplate.
She eyes the cash register like it’s a torture device. I think back on how overwhelming my first few weeks here were and decide to give her some encouragement. “You did really well this morning. Even I would have been in over my head, and I’ve been here for two years. The rush is just about over anyways, and things will be dead for the next hourorso.”
She flashes me a weak smileandnods.
I head back into the kitchen to find Lisa tucking the last few items into the Catering Mobile, a wheeled flight attendant-style cart that I’m sure no one but me refers to as the ‘CateringMobile.’
“Oh good,” Lisa says when she spots me. “Everything is ready. Just head out the back door and go in through the Knox rear exit. Fifth floor,suite105.”
I wheel the heavy Catering Mobile through the back door and down the delivery ramp. Steering proves to be a bit tricky. While carts like this might be fine for the aisle of an airplane, moving in anything other than a straight line is a challenge; large rectangles on wheels do not handle cornersverywell.
I make it into the Knox building without any mishaps and find myself in a giant lobby, complete with glossy black marble walls, a gurgling water fountain housed in a pool the size of my living room, and a huge, gold-plated Knox Security sign looming over thereceptiondesk.
I feel myself shrinking up at the sight of it all, trying to become as small and unnoticeable aspossible.
I spot the elevators on the other side of the fountain and start to wheel my way over, shoulders hunched, eyes glued to the floor. The room is silent and empty except for a handful of people hurrying across the floor and the two receptionists glued to computer screens at their desk. Every step I take echoes. I angle the cart around the edge of the pool, but I cut the corner too tight and I end up having to lift the back end up to make itaround.
As I’m lifting, one of the drawers slides open and several dozen spoons clatter onto the floor. I wince as the sound reverberates aroundtheroom.
I’m on my hands and knees, crawling around to pick up the scattered utensils, when I hear footsteps approaching the elevators. They stop directly in front of me and a man’s voice, edged with amusement, asks, “Is thisyours?”
I look up. The second I do, I let out one of those wide-eyed, round-mouthed, eyebrows-arching-up-to-my-hairline kind of gasps that can’t be interpreted as meaning anything other than, ‘You’re so attractive I feel like I just got hit by atrain.’
I know what fantasy man does for a living now. He’s not a cook. He’s a six foot tall business man with tousled, chestnut hair falling into his eyes, wearing an Italian suit as finely cut as hisjawline.
He’s standing right in front of me, holding out aspoon.
