Saturday.

The alarm stationed at the head of the Plaid Puffball erupts into harsh buzzes. Fuck, I keep forgetting to turn the damn thing off – and Mother Dearest's 'Friday Night Fun Companions' hate the noise. They get violent.

I sigh and slam my hand down on the rapidly blinking snooze button. Great. I've just lost three – maybe four – hours of my weekend sleep. Well, at least I can take advantage of that time to….

To…

Do homework.

And then I'll have to clock into work for the remainder of the day.

Wonderful.


"Fowty-hundwed bottles of beew on da wall, fowty hundwed beews, you take one off and paff it awound, den tirty-tree beews are leff!"

A child's maddeningly skewed perspective on the "beer song" has left a headache pounding in my skull for the last hour. She's been sitting in the booth closest to the front counter for the whole afternoon, singing in her high-pitched, squealy, lispy toddler voice.

"Twenny-ate boddles of beew on da wall, twenny-ate boddles of beew, you take one off and paff it awuond, den eighty-tree beews aw leff!"

Oh, my god. I reach behind me and turn on the coffee grinder, just to drown out her voice. The loud whirring noise accompanies the smell of fresh-ground java, though the grinder's empty. Ah. Pure bliss.

"Max?"

Great. It's Dylan. He's a West-Carr boy who's too good to be true. And he works. With me. In a lowly coffee shop. And… he's kind of above me. Like, he could fire me, for breaking the coffee grinder, which isn't supposed to run without coffee in it.

Oh. I guess someone would realize I was doing that eventually. "Oh, um, hey. Yeah, I know it looks like… um… yes. I am grinding coffee."

"But I thought I ground it all this morning…?"

"Yeah, um, you did. I was just…"

An amused expression settles on his face. "You were running it. To drown out the noise of children?" He drops his voice here, staring at the annoying, blond-haired devil-child past the counter.

Almost immediately, his expression drops, replaced by an ugly sneer as he sees the boy accompanying devil-child. The company has his back to me; his hair is stuffed in a black hat, and he's typing away at approximately one-hundred words per minute on a computer. He's hunched in a position that will ensure a humpback by age twenty.

The devil-child glances at our picture-menu that hangs on the walls. Oh, no. Then she pauses in her song.

"Fag! Fag! I wan' beer!" she says to her – babysitter, probably – and points to the foamy iced tea illustration. "Just like daddy!"

Okay, so up to this point, two things have mystified me. One; how could a child keep singing like that for an hour without giving up? (The beer song has enraptured all children, I suppose.) Two; what kind of five-year-old (or so) calls their babysitter a fag? And, in addition to that, wants beer?

As I'm puzzling over these two occurrences, the babysitter dude slams his computer shut. The noise pulls me from my revere and I start eavesdropping on the two again.

"No," he says in an angry voice. "No beer."

And then, in a quieter voice: "Promise me you'll never be like your father."

The scared-looking little girl nods at his serious adult-voice.

He looks relieved. "Come here, Angel," he says, turning in the chair to face the little girl. She gets up and throws herself into his lap, cooing. He wraps his arms around her and sways in the chair, hugging her like a life rope.

God, I wish I'd had a parental figure in my life. At least this little girl has a… somebody. They don't look related. But they're close. And he's obviously somebody to her.

And they seem to have the same father-situation… as I do. I mean, not to make assumptions, but…

Somebody taps me on the shoulder. Dylan.

"You need to get back to work," he says angrily.

And so I do, dutifully serving out a child-size lemonade when the little devil-child comes up to the counter, holding a handful of crumpled dollar bills. She looks proud. "I can order all by myself!" she squeals.

I nod as I fix the lemonade and give her the change. As she heads back to the table where her acquaintance sits, I can tell that he wears the same proud expression as she does.

I find myself staring at the back of his head too long, until my cheeks feel warm. Shaking the strange feeling from my face, I sit down on the floor behind the counter and start organizing the cups by size until I feel normal again.


They're in the café again on Monday. It's slow on Mondays (especially holiday Mondays) – they're the only ones here as of now. The little girl colours absently in a colouring book and the boy is once again glued to his computer.

"You wanna know what Miss Maw-teen-iz told me today?" the little girl says out of nowhere. I stop squeezing lemons for a minute, nosily listening to their exchange.

"What, Angel?" says the boy, ungluing himself from the computer screen to ruffle the girl's hair. "What did Mrs. Magical Martinez tell you?" He says this jokingly; but his immediate attention to the girl is just… sweet.

"Miss Mawteeniz said dat mommies and daddies and broddas and sistas are for lovin' little girls like me," she says, leaning over the table to be closer to him. "Why does my daddy not love me? And why don' I have a sissie? Or a mommy?"

The boy thinks for a little bit, swirling his coffee – black, strong brew (I fixed it for him about an hour ago) – and then, tentatively, starts talking.

"Some people don't have mothers and sisters," he says, looking sort of cornered. However, the little girl seems to accept his words without confusion.

"And daddy?"

"Well… Dad's just a… not-nice person."

"But do I get enouf love wifout him?"

The boy laughs. "Sure you do. See, I'm your favorite brother, right?"

Oh. Brother! Duh. Hey, they didn't look related. Don't blame me!

The girl giggles, wrapping her arms around him. Once again, a pang of jealousy – at the close gestures between family – cuts through me. "So you love me enouf for the both of you?"

"Yep," he says, suddenly scratching at his neck suspiciously. He whips his head around a few times, and I guiltily go back to squeezing the lemons; hissing as my chewed-down fingernails and self-inflicted hangnails come in contact with the juice.

The café is silent for a few minutes, save for soft classical music playing in the background. If Dylan wasn't here, it would be classic rock, or maybe alt, but anything other than fucking elevator music.

"Angel, you do realise that tomorrow I have to go back to school until Friday, right?"

The girl – now dubbed Angel – nods and sticks out her lip. "I hate that. I wish I could keep you foweva."

"Hate's a strong word, Angel," the boy says knowingly, taking a sip of coffee.

And everything about that is true.