STARBUCKS 10

Another rip-off cloudy cool summer morning here. It had better get sunny later or I’m gonna sue one of my neighbors just for fun. The house across the street, the cool log cabin from the ‘30s, is finished being destroyed so a new home like mine that will sit forever overpriced and never sell can be put in its place. I really liked that house. Yes, I know it is my fault it got knocked down. I get it.

Before I start my morning of scanning blurry and damaged photographs into my computer so I can ruin my eyes a little more trying to fix them, I do a Starbucks run, to the one downtown. Of course, this is suburbia, so downtown is really rather tame. I am surprised that traffic is so light this morning. Maybe this is Monday Sleep-In Day and I was uninformed. Ah well. So I park, frown grimly at a car going the wrong way in the parking lot and go inside. It is very busy, for the usual reason – some poor dude getting trained as a barista is slowing it down. I would make a shitty barista because I would feel such pressure to get the drinks out fast that I would throw beans all over and spill 2% milk on the floor and just end up drinking all the drinks myself in a perfectionist panic. I can’t even really make change without feeling like the Wrong Change Police are looking. “Here’s five, ten, fifteen and three cents, ma’am.” “WRONG! YOU SHORTED HER A CENT! FOUR FOUR FOUR!” Then the Wrong Change Police would hit me in the head with a bag of nickels and take me to a bank vault to count pennies while listening to a loop of “Money” by Pink Floyd.

Everyone is cheerily chattering away at the Starbucks, except for a couple of guys who are clearly a little irritated that their drinks are slow in coming up. Interestingly enough, they both ordered short extra-hot lattes. I guess they just want to toss that baby down, like a burning sake or something. Does the trick. There is a pair of elderly sisters with almost identical short squat rectangle bodies. I have déjà vu thinking I wrote about them already at Atrium Starbucks, but maybe that was a different pair of elderly sisters; I am too lazy to go and read back. It’s nice anyway, that sisters go to get coffee together. I am pleased to note that the brush-cut muscle-y lesbian woman running one of the cash registers is proudly growing a new moustache. It is still dubious, but I imagine with time and more hormone therapy it will be looking all Snidely Whiplash in no time.

In front of me is a really truly gorgeous young woman, holding a toddler girl on her tiny hip. She is bird-thin but still with a shape, with expensive jeans that show the slight skeletal bow to her legs. Her long layered dark brown hair is perfectly cut, colored, and styled. Her face is pretty much perfect: gorgeous white smile, pretty green eyes, smooth tan skin, just movie-star pretty, but prettier than that. I think most movie stars are actually sort of odd looking. They all seem to have large heads. Anyway, a slightly older boy comes up to her from a table and starts stamping his feet and whining at her. I looked at her, thinking, oh come ON, she’s got two little kids? Damn. Some people just sail through, huh. But when I hear her say to the boy that he has to wear shorts today because that is what his mommy put out for him to wear, then I get it. Nanny. That’s a dangerous nanny to have there, I say! Later as I walk to my car with my Venti Latte and ham breakfast sandwich, I see her in the parking lot, hugging and kissing a man standing next to a huge shiny black Navigator. Such is suburban life.

Now I am home, watching the orange digger across the street swing back and forth, dumping loads of dirt into a dump truck. The sun came out, so no frivolous lawsuit today. The coffee should perk me up soon. The scanner is warming up, too.