There’s a lot of
things that should be said, so we’re hammering six strings
-LJG
Say hello to James. He was your
local actor/musician/barista. The kind that wore a smile always a little too
tight, as if there were little strings on the insides of his cheeks that he
stretched taut when he brushed his teeth in the morning. He used the same tone
of voice that he automatically went into when he spoke to his grandmother- that
tone that went up a half-octave at least.
His shift-supervisor said he
reminded people of Steve from Blues Clues. Which, of course, made James giggle
inside because he was always stoned or drunk at work. “Sounds about right, what
adult star of a children television program could do that noise without some
mental chemistry at play?”
Starbucks would be nothing if it
weren’t for that chunk of the population that thought they could be rich and famous.
Their ranks were filled with aspiring this or thats.
“Fame” was something that the
Greeks made up, in their giant stadiums, where men were ripped apart in front
of other men by wild creatures or other men.
Or, they’d hold theatre festivals; tragic
plays performed in sets of threes would come on, a satyr at the end each to add
a bit of comedy, and viola! The reinforcement of certain ideologies would be
put in place, certain ones condemned, and the good little men of the society
would come home and pass on the word to their wives.
Of course, the women of the time
couldn’t go. No one’s entirely certain why, but many theories have been
proposed. None make a bit of goddamned sense to anyone, though, if honesty were
to be questioned.
But unless people (in the time of
when James worked at Starbucks and ran the gamut of fame seeking) were
adequately paid attention to, they were unhappy. And so this concept of perhaps
misogynistic origins came to be the only thing of value anymore.
“Thank you for choosing Starbucks
on Grand Avenue, this is James, how can I help you?” – the automated response
that a ding in the headset provokes, Pavlovian and all.
“Yeah, I’ll have a tall wet cap,
and stir it with your dick, willya?” – James hated it when friends came by
during working hours. They always came during the busiest times and they always
demanded his attention. The two-minute stop-clock insisted he rush customers in
and out like cattle, on the other hand.
“Fuckin’ Monica. Hey, lemme borrow
yours and I can swing somethin’ for you. Mine’s still at your mom’s place.”
“I’m swingin’ up front. Make me
something good, ‘kay?”
Thankfully, it was a mid-shift.
James normally fucking hated the ever-living guts out of the painfully slow
mid-day routines, but he was still a little bit groggy from the
into-the-wee-hour band celebratory shenanigans that were obligatory after every
booked “gig”, so he was actually relieved for the rare afternoon shift.
Monica was too good-looking to be
“just a friend” to James. Their platonic relationship had a finite time clock
that was winding down to the terminal moment where the other shoe would drop.
She was a ‘fan’ of his music, which made things worse, and he had accidentally
seen her naked when he walked into her apartment without introduction.
Putting together James’ love for
positive attention and praise, and his love for dark-brown nipples, he knew
this was a deadly mixture. A fight waiting to happen. The ‘friends-only’
conversation. The ‘you’re a great guy but…’ talk.
He’d had that talk before in high
school. Not too many times to become too bitter to still seek it. He was on a
constant chase for the next heartbreak. At least they made for pretty decent
songs.
He put some cream base in a blender
with a banana and some chai mix, loaded it with ice and hit the button that
gave cacophonic noise as an annoying blessing. He never made Monica the same
thing twice, which is why she loved visiting when James worked. Normally, she
was far too cool to be spotted in any store that wasn’t locally owned or a
small business of some sort, but her friend worked for the corporate man, and
she’d give him hell and take free drinks as often as she could.
Her thrift-shop suit with giant
buttons and homemade accouterments jangled with annoying tenacity and fervor,
as if they themselves didn’t want to be there, like wind chimes in a train
station, but less elegant. They were embarrassed of the pretentiousness on display.
They hated elitism. Her clutter was humble like Monica wasn’t.
Monica was proud of her snobbish
and too-cool-for-life attitude. She made fun of herself for it, stealing
thunder in a way that would piss Zeus off. She was the kind of girl who called
the place James worked at “Starfucks”, and smile as if it were all the funnier
because of how unoriginal it was. It was “meta”, she’d say.
If you told her that was
pretentious, too, she’d say that was meta as well. When you asked her when
things stopped being meta, she’d come back with something like, “When they do,
eh? Eh?” and rib you.
Their banter was legendary.
In a cute kind of way.
The blender shut the fuck up
finally. Monica was parking and coming indoors, so she had something to say or
some extra minutes to slay.
“For what is your friend that you
should seek him with hours to kill? Seek him always with hours to live” James
whispered under his breath while he watched Monica walk with a sway in her step
towards the store.
James wrote “Freeloading Bitch” on her
cup and secured the lid, snagged a straw and had it ready on the counter when
she came in. This spared him the task of making it look like she was paying for
her sixteen ounces of weirdness.
Of course, there is a thing called
sarcasm at play heavily here. And perhaps sarcasm came from somewhere deep in
the recesses of human development, wherein societies got tired of always having
to ostracize that person with a jackass sense of humor. And both Monica and he
had such a jackass sense of humor.
This is not to say these two human
beings are life mates of the intimate sort or any such thing. This is not to
say they aren’t. This is just to say that they had a jackass sense of humor.
They would have been ostracized
back in those older bits of our history, before we learned sarcasm. And how
sweet! At least they’d at least have the two of them to drive each other crazy,
and all the other jackasses before them.
But there is something to love
about certain jackass comics. A person’s sense of humor wasn’t everything,
after all. But society now lets them fly their sarcastic colors, because they,
too, have picked up a new genetic trait on their collective funny bones.
After adequate pestering, she left
James to the rest of his tedious shift, each minute taking longer to catch up
to the last. Mopping, yeehaw! Mixing random powders into various bases, woohoo!
Taking verbal abuse from superiors and customers alike, huzzah! And all for the
exorbitant rate of $9.11 an hour, can you beat it?
The music was so predictable, that
James knew where in his shift he was based on whichever mix was playing that
day.
Music and money were funny things.
Both seemed to be losing value at a much higher rate then, and no one seemed to
be able to stop it. Seemed like all of the nutrients were evaporating and
people tricked themselves into thinking they didn’t care, because otherwise the
guilt would kill them.
This is why everyone then just
needed to get together and forgive each other, unconditionally, without
prejudice, just to get back to square one. Then they could go on judging and
ostracizing again, but from a different perspective.
It was natural, you see. They just
kept doing it, and cycles are goddamned hard to break. You could almost
understand it.
But
James wouldn’t stop trying to be famous. Not rich, but famous. He had long
known that had be been born rich, he would have spent his life’s worth to be
known. To be important. To fix things, in his own half-baked way, by trying to
send more happy vibes than bad ones through whatever artistic medium the world
would listen to.
That’s what hubris will do to you.
That’s what ego was all about. That’s what happens when you mix philanthropy
and narcissism—a barista at Starbucks. Cute, too cute to be working just above
minimum wage, but not quite talented enough or lucky enough or just not in the
right place or in the right time to not be working there anymore.
Sometimes you’d get your
run-of-the-mill, just-out-of-college (or high school, sometimes) or middle-aged
salt-of-the-earth types, but not in San Luis Obispo or the other opulent towns
of the Central Coast. Beaches were a luxury, then.
What James didn’t know right then,
nor could he have, was that someone was definitely trying to kill him.
--- -- --
thursday
James used
the little bit of energy he had left at the end of his shift to push open those
glass double-doors and was reminded of a fable he was taught as a kid in Sunday
School (he was baptized Mormon, but was now a pretty firm anti-theist and
unsure of where he stood in other terms of spirituality at this point in life,
although after his initial break from ‘the faith’ he was previously more
staunchly atheist) – a story where Jonas got swallowed by a whale. He felt what
that character must’ve in terms of relief, he thought. He smiled and rifled
through his pockets for his keys.
Approaching
his car, somewhat aloof, he noticed, a little too late, that he smelled
something funny. It was kerosene, a cousin of gasoline, but James couldn’t have
known that, either. Before he could even make an autonomic response, someone
from behind him threw a Molotov cocktail, aimed directly at the car.
And that
was the last thing James remembered that day.
--- -- --
friday
The first
thing James could see from the slits of his eyelids when his eyeballs returned
to duty was Monica.
“Saved your
ass, son. You owe me somethin’ fierce, eh?”
“What were
you doing there?”
“I was
hoping you had some leftover food, the expired sandwiches and shit. Or some of
those ‘for donation’ pastries”
…sleep…
--- -- --
late afternoon, friday
James
wasn’t burned, Lady Luck on his side, he passed out immediately from a shock to
his noggin. Monica didn’t get a look at the actual event taking place, but she
certainly saw the inferno. Hard to miss in a town like SLO.
And
instinct kicked in. She wasn’t able to work off of thoughts alone anymore,
though now and again they certainly could kick in, but not override, her new
functioning mode—rescue, survival, and the ability to hang this over James’
head for however long she wanted.
She
barreled through the atmosphere- her vision now a version of infrared, thick
with smoke, now pluming up into the Western sky, and some really harsh smelling
chemicals. It was hot- hot as all holy-fuck, but there was no chance in any of
the many versions of the supposed hell, that she was going to let up. She was
saving her goddamned friend, no bones about it.
But in
retrospect, she was a little bit pissed off. She was disappointed that she
couldn’t even get a good look at the bastard that did this to the guy she’s
been closest to since she could remember.
“I don’t
suppose you secretly owe a crime boss any money or you’re secretly a CIA
operative with a false identity or you fucked somebody’s wife, eh?” she smiled
and giggled ever so faintly, really trying her damnedest to provide some kind
of soothing energy, something she wasn’t quite natural with.
“I have no
fucking clue, Monna. I really don’t”.
