Being Shelley. Qarnita Loxton
try to do that. I don’t get it right. Valentine’s MomFail, my most recent note-to-self of my inadequacy, a case in point.
‘What’s that about a barista?’ Di said finally. She talked while packing the cups on top of the coffee machine, turning the handles all to face to her right, the frown still on her forehead. ‘I’m sure I packed all the coffee things yesterday before I left? It looks different now – the machine is not properly clean and there’s no milk. Did you try to make coffee?’
‘Tadaaaa, I said that I hired a barista. His name is Wayde. He was here yesterday and he is coming in at twelve today. You’ll have to show him exactly how you want him to leave all the coffee things,’ I said. I felt smug. Not only had I solved our barista problem but I remembered Wayde’s face when I’d asked him if he wanted a job at Coffee & Cream. It was the last round of coffees and he’d just finished pouring milk into a cappuccino for James from the surf shop when I made the offer. He’d looked at me as if I had the powers of Wonder Woman. God knows, I want someone to think I have the powers of Wonder Woman. He’d given me a giant smile, cocked his head to the side, and said, ‘If you gave me a job here, that would be solid.’ I didn’t know exactly what he meant by ‘solid’ (my only reference was to the quality of poo in the baby years), but I took it to mean it was cool, so I told him it was a deal and that I would sort out a contract. I shouldn’t have done it without talking to Di.
She knew I wasn’t Wonder Woman.
Di cocked her head this time, standing in nearly the same spot as Wayde yesterday, but without the giant grin.
‘What were you thinking? How can you just hire someone? You didn’t talk to me … We haven’t even properly agreed to hire another barista.’ Di’s face was bright red, her hands furiously repacking the coffee cups she’d just packed while she talked. ‘What about references? I haven’t even met the guy. What if he is an asshole to Beauty? We need someone who gets on with her, since she is the only person I can rely on to work in this shop.’ I ignored the barb; I knew she included me in the unreliable ones. ‘I don’t want her to get pissed off by an idiot,’ Di finished. The ever-present, ever-competent Beauty heard her name but pretended not to and carried on dusting the shelves near the shop entrance. In this moment, Di and I were exactly like Jerry and I – that couple having a fight in full view of everyone, but everyone pretends that nothing is happening.
‘I’m sorry, okay.’ It seems that every day I need to apologise to Di for something. ‘I got excited. I met him in the surf shop the other day and we got to talking, and turns out he has a barista qualification and most of a hotel school diploma.’ I stretched the truth; he lasted three months at school. ‘And he’s worked plenty places as a barista.’ I didn’t know exactly, but I’m sure he’d said somewhere in town. I pushed on: ‘When I was here with no coffee yesterday, he came by and jumped right into making coffees as a favour. The customers loved him and the coffees. He made a lot. Like, a lot.’ I pointed out the tip jar on the counter. It was empty now, but Wayde must’ve taken home three-hundred bucks yesterday. ‘A bunch of women stayed until closing time and some of his surf friends dropped in for coffee.’ Fine, it was just surf-shop James and his cappuccino was free, but I’m sure more surfer friends will come. ‘We sold all our candles, two trays and three sets of champagne glasses,’ I pointed at the gaps where Beauty was dusting, ‘and he got on fine with Beauty.’ He’d called her ‘Beautylicious’. She’d laughed him off, flapped her hands at him – ‘Hey, wena, don’t talk to me like that,’ in a way that made it clear she wasn’t joking despite her laughter.
Di was quiet; she seemed to be thinking about what I’d said, noticing the gaps on the shelves. We haven’t exactly been doing a roaring trade.
‘You can see what he is like this afternoon. I haven’t signed anything, so I can back out if you hate him. But just think what it would be like if we had an extra person who was also reliable like Beauty,’ I knew Beauty was listening, ‘and could do the coffee? Maybe we could even have an afternoon off at the same time? He and Beauty would be that good together.’ I waited. I knew I had to get the perfect mix of pushy and quiet with Di. ‘We could try to get ABS together – it’s been forever.’ Another bout of Di silence, another wipe down of the marble counter top. I lit the lemongrass-scented ‘candle of the day’ while I waited.
‘Fine. I’ll see what he’s like. I’m not promising anything. Don’t hire anyone else without me.’
7
He came; he saw; he conquered.
Wayde arrived at twelve sharp. Hair tied in a squirt of pony at the back of his head (I’d messaged him about the hair after I found two long ones on the side of the counter next to the coffee machine. Di would fire him for that before he even started), clean grey RVCA T-shirt, dark shorts, black Vans. Still with the Pina Colada Coconut Vanilla smell but with a layer of something masculine from a bottle I didn’t know. A black rubber watch and beaded leathery wrap things on his wrist completed his look. I guessed this was him dressed to impress. I was impressed. Di too. He shook her hand, smiled those smiles, hung on her every word about how she liked the coffee area to be. He produced every coffee she asked for and she didn’t ask him to redo a single one (unlike me – she gave up on me with my twelfth bad cappuccino). He didn’t flinch when she told him that he needed to help with everything when he wasn’t doing coffee – from helping me unpack boxes, to washing cups, dusting shelves, basically anything that Di or Beauty or I needed help with. I didn’t know he had a car, but that was clearly a bonus. No reason ever to be late, and he could collect the Trecastelli cakes if we needed him to since he lived in Blouberg Ridge. I was rather proud. Given our age gap, you could’ve said I was proud as if he were my son, but I wasn’t proud like that. It was more like when you introduce someone you like to your friends, and your friends like him too. I was that kind of proud.
Di sent him and Beauty to Checkers to buy milk for the coffee, and for cream that we serve on the side with the cakes.
‘Okay, it seems like it can work,’ Di admitted as I stood there holding my breath like a contestant on The Voice. ‘He’s presentable, comes across as keen, can clearly make a cup of coffee, seems flexible enough to fit in with the shifts we want. The customers like him. Let’s do a standard contract with a month’s notice?’
‘Yeehaaaaa, Diannnahh!’ I did a little happy dance on the spot. ‘Give me some more credit. I knew Wayde was gonna be good. He is nice, isn’t he?’ I felt like my face would crack from all the smiling.
‘If by “nice”, you mean a nice personality, then it seems like that, yes. But if you mean anything different … Keep it together, Shelley. I see you seeing him.’ She raised her eyebrows at me. ‘That Wayde is a looker and charmer. Fine for when you are a twenty-year-old girl, not when you are a forty-four-year-old mom,’ she paused for effect, ‘and his employer.’
‘I don’t know what you mean. He looks good, sure …’ The smile dropped from my face and my heart thudded under my thirty-millilitre saline implants. I knew exactly what she meant. ‘And he flirts a bit. But it’s just for show – I did it all the time when I was a waitress. It will be good for business, that’s all.’
Business, I repeated in my head. That’s all he would be good for.
Surf’s up Shell’s out
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8
Saturday, 17 February
‘Kids loved it – you should come in next time. Show them Mom is more than a pretty seashell on the sand,’ he said with a little wink, coming up to stand to the side of me as I sat in my low plastic beach chair. He was two metres of lean muscle and cheeky grin in a black-and-grey wetsuit. Have I already said cheeky? ‘Surprised no-one’s tried to pick you up.’ At the punchline, he dropped his tongue out like a Rolling Stone, smiling, eyes on me. I had to laugh along, a bad joke if ever there was one,