Furthermore, know that I pay attention to detail - every detail is important. If you don't understand something, the 2 previous posts in this series will surely explain. Or you can always ask me using the comments box. And, if you like it, tell 5 friends using the links at the bottom!
Ok, enuff talk. Here's part 3. Don't forget your drink!
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| The Event. Are You ready? |
“You make the best coffee in the world, honey. And I should know. I’ve been drinking your coffee for ten years now. Starbucks got nothing on you, baby.” She smiled at that statement, a cute, coy smile, and her left cheek swelled with the smile. The single dimple formed. Her husband always knew the right things to say to make her smile. He’d been doing it for years now. And he had gotten good at it. His primary tool of courtship was his words, and he used them well. She loved hearing him work magic with his expressions. He continued: “What flavor of coffee is this? I detect a hint of cherry and blackberry.”
“It’s my secret ingredient, honey. It’s called love”, she answered, smiling more broadly now. He returned the grin. She briefly recalled when they first met; he always thought he spotted her first. He thought wrong.
He had walked into her place of work jauntily, took a seat, and waited for a waiter to come take his order. She was taking someone else’s order at the time, but briefly looked up to see who caused the doorbell to ring by walking in. “Yummy”, she thought. She forced her gaze back to the customer whose order she was taking, but her thoughts were a thousand miles away. She hadn’t had a meaningful relationship in one and a half years. What was she doing?
“Go talk to him”, a voice in her head said.
“He’ll just use you and dump you, like the other men have done”, another voice quipped.
“You never know how he’ll treat you – you do know all guys are NOT the same, right?” the first voice urged.
“But all guys ARE the same, and act the same way, and want the same things, so.…” the other voice retorted.
‘The War of the Minds’ raged on inside her. Then she saw another waitress - a lady five years younger than she - going over to take his order. She stopped thinking instantly.
She abandoned the customer she was attending to, leaving him rattling off names of spices and dishes to himself like a madman at the dumpster. She moved as quickly as she could to the rows of tables and chairs on the side of the inner wall, and with superhuman calculation, shoved the first table as hard as she could at exactly the right moment. The other waiter was still moving, unaware that all the tables and chairs were tipping over each other behind her, and that the resultant domino effect was coming straight for her. It all happened in the space of two seconds.
BLAM!!
The other waiter was flat on her face and hands. Everyone laughed and pointed. Some people whose conscience chastised them for laughing moved to help the fallen waitress. She took advantage of the opening, and walked up to him smartly.
“Hello Sir. May I take your order?”
“The young lady! She just fell! I need to go help her…” He made to stand up.
“No need for that Sir. She already has people there taking care of her”, she said as she held his hand to restrain him from getting up. “Accidents like these happen every day, Sir”, she continued. “They’re not new. That’s what the job training is about, isn’t it? Now, sit down. Tell me what you want to eat.”
He was not used to women standing up to him like that. This was new. This piqued his interest. He saw her in a different light; as his wife, a mother to their kids, and the yin to his yang. Then he snapped out of his daydream.
“I’d like whatever you think would be best for me, Ma’am” he said.
She smiled; teeth white as ivory, her left cheek proudly displaying its single dimple. “One order of ‘whatever’s best for you’ coming right up”, she said. He returned the smile. A thought came to him, and he acted on it immediately.
“Permit me to say”, he started, “I’ve never seen anyone look this pretty in a uniform and apron. In my opinion, other waitresses pale in comparison to you.”
She smiled again. “Thank you Sir. You’re very kind.”
That smile was growing on him. Green light. Emboldened by her response, he continued: “I’d like to know your name, if you don’t mind.”
Well, she wasn’t going to be that easy to get. “I don’t mind”, she replied. “You’re just going to have to work for it”, she finished. As she turned to go, she left him with a stern warning: “Don’t call me Ma’am.” Then she sashayed away purposefully, for his viewing pleasure.
Her efforts were not in vain. They got married a year later, and gave birth to their first son the following year. They had discussed moving to a new environment that would be safer for them and their son; she refused. Her home was here. She was quite headstrong and persuasive. They discussed getting her a new job in the town, a job where she could earn more money. He was already earning some good cash from his site management enterprise, and it was enough for two of them initially.
When the baby came, however, it became insufficient. Then, they had a light bulb moment: why not buy the eatery where they first met? She would make five times what she was making now, and have more time to take care of their little boy, Tadashi. This meant emptying out their emergency stash to finance the project. The previous owner was glad to let the eatery go – he had been looking for someone to sell it to, so they got it at a discounted price.
“What are we going to call it dear? Is it still going to be called ‘Stop-And-Sop’?” her husband quizzed.
“No”, she replied. “I never liked that name. How about ‘The Old House Café'? ”
“I think it’s a nice name. Has an old yet young feel to it”, he answered.
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| Like I said, Graphic Design Blog, remember? (lol) Original Logo Design/Graphic for Old House Cafe. (Not in anyway affiliated with any other similar brand) Which do you prefer? How can I improve on it? Opinions are welcomed. |
She snapped out of her reminiscence, gave her husband a peck before he dashed off to work, and went to prepare Tadashi for school. “At ten years of age, my boy should be able to get himself ready for school by now, shouldn’t he?” she asked Tadashi.
He replied, “Yes Mom, I can take care of myself, but I like it when you do it. You do it so well, you know.”
“He’s just like his Dad”, she thought, as a smile caressed her lips once more.
She dropped off Tadashi at school and headed to open The Old House Café for the day. She arrived at 8.00am; none of the waiters had arrived yet. “Someone’s gonna get a pink slip soon”, she thought. She had to fill in for the waiters till they arrived. At 8:25am, a man walked into the store, dressed in a brown jacket and a baseball hat, and he held a newspaper in his left hand. Her first customer for the day. He walked up to the counter.
“The usual, please”, he requested.
“I’m sorry Sir, I do not know what you usually order here”, she replied. “None of my waiters are around today, so I’m filling in till someone arrives.”
“A Double Mochachino Latte”, he demanded. That was when she recognized him.
“Don’t you work at Tohoku Elementary?”, she asked.
“I do. I’m the bus driver for Route #AF16.”
“Really? My son attends that school! I think you must be his bus driver. His name is Tadashi Jirou. I’m his mother.”
“Yeah, I know him. He’s a good kid. Doesn’t make trouble.”
“That’s good to hear. My name is Kiyoshi Jirou. It’s good to meet you.”
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| Added noise effect to make it look old and newspaper-ish. It is called the 'Old House Cafe' after all... isn't it? |
“Shou Masato. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mrs. Jirou.”
Shou paid for his coffee, went to sit down in the booth at the far corner by the window, and dug into his newspaper.
“He's a nice man, but he seems introverted", Kiyoshi thought. Then the waiters arrived. When they saw Mrs. Jirou working at the counter, they didn’t try to enter from the front. Instead, they swerved to the left, with the iintent of using the back entrance. Kiyoshi saw them and laughed. “Amateurs”, she thought. “I was much smarter than my boss in my day. I’ll let them slide this once though.”
The rest of the day went by without a quandary. Then, at 2: 43pm, she received a call.
“Hello”, Kiyoshi began.
“Hello. Is this Mrs. Jirou?”, the male voice on the other end of the line replied.
“Speaking. How may I help you?”
“This is the clinic at Tohoku Elementary School. Your son was involved in an altercation on one of our school buses some minutes ago. He lost his 2nd lower right incisor…”
“WHAAAT!!??!”
“We just wanted to make sure you were aware. We are cleaning up the cavity created now, but he will have to see a dentist eventually. You do have the means to pay for that, right?”
Crackle. Crackle.
No answer. The man on the other end of the line repeated what he said previously, then looked at his phone like something was wrong. He dropped the call.
Kiyoshi was already on the highway before the conversation ended. She sped to Tohoku Elementary like her life depended on it.
“My son? In an altercation? He was in a fight?” she thought. She floored the accelerator and the car approached 100mph. Her mind kept racing: “When did he start fighting? Why would he do that? And he lost a tooth! Does he know how much that will cost at the dentist’s? Who was the person that knocked out his tooth? That kid needs some serious spanking! Someone's gonna hear from me today!!”
She hit a speedbump at 100mph, but that didn’t faze her - she just slowed down to 85mph. She was gonna confront someone about her baby. Then she hit another speed bump. And another. Another still. “There aren’t this many speedbumps on the way to Tohoku Elementary”, she thought. “Is someone renovating the road? Or – my tires!! God, NOT my CAR TIRES!! I have too much I’m spending on already!!”, she pleaded in her mind.
Then it began. What happened next was beyond anything she had ever seen or imagined.….
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.... (still) to be continued. (Oh boi, this story is getting more interesting everyday! I'm even excited abt reading the posts myself...can't wait to read the next one!)
Till next time, have a Kolor-Full Life!
Yours Truly.
