An Untitled Story Part One.

I'm gonna write a story on here. I'm at work today, and I am not feeling particularly clever. I just finished reading Neil Gaiman's journal for the day, so I dedicate it to him. See if you can catch the influence he has on it.

ok then. We'll see how long this keeps my attention.

Have a great day & Stay Awesome.

Andy

In the North, there were stories the people called Sagas. That was what they called epic tales involving Gods and Goddesses. Usually the sagas were told to teach some sort of moral to the young, and they more often than not, would be rather scary. Just so the children would be frightened into behaving themselves until the time came when they could frighten their own children with the tales of lying, trickery and beheading. All in the name of getting them to go to bed at a proper time and eat their vegetables…Or to remind them that stealing gold from strangers in the woods or breaking city walls by giants was generally a bad thing. And doing such things would only lead to

Andrew wasn’t from the North. Technically. He was from the Mid West. Or what people decided was the Mid West. He never understood why the powers that chose names for things called them what they did. Minnesota was in the Mid North as far as he was concerned, but no one really listened to his argument because he never made one. At least, not about things like mid America. The only argument he ever made was about proper tipping in restaurants, coffee shops and the like. Andrew was a Barista. A very fancy term for people who made coffee drinks all day. He relied on tips that people would put into his jar on the counter to buy things like food and drink. And rent. He needed to pay rent. Stupid rent… So the people would order their large mochas and medium skinny latte’s with a shot of vanilla and whip cream (which was decidedly NOT skinny) and sometimes they would put a dollar in his jar and sometimes they would put nothing in his jar. “Tippers make better lovers” was his favorite sign to put on the jar to make customers take pity on his dire economic circumstance. Only occasionally, when he was feeling particularly sorry for himself would he post “Help me pay rent” or when feeling honest: “I need whiskey after my shift” he often wondered what would happen to his employment if he let the people know “Your drink will taste better if I see you tip me”

He eeked out a living at the small coffee shop that was nestled in a part of the city where there were two other coffee shops on the same block. And two blocks down the street, there were two more. And so on and so on, until you reached downtown, where the smaller, independent coffee shops were replaced with Starbucks and Caribou coffee at the bottom huge skyscrapers. Those weren’t really threatening, because they were only open as long as the typical work day for someone working in the Target corporate offices. He wondered if the baristas who worked there fretted about tips as much as he did. Were they even called ‘Baristas’? Maybe in the big corporate chains they called them ‘Team members’ or ‘Essentials’ No, the only threat to his little coffee shop was the other two coffee shops that surrounded him. They were the enemy, and if people ever asked his what he thought of them, he would pull them aside and say under his breath that those other coffee shops served Folgers or Maxwell house as their specialty blend. And that they chopped up orphan puppies and put them into the scones and pastries they served. He was sure that someone from the other shops would hear of his subtle destruction technique, and hurl a brick through the glass front door. And then it truly would be war.

That was something he hoped would happen. He didn’t wish the owner of this particular establishment the bad luck of having to fix a big pane of glass, but he did wish that something would happen that resembled excitement. The coffee shop industry had been suffering a dry spell lately. The early 90’s had made the coffee shop a cool and hip place to prove that you were artistic, or that you were a writer that actually wrote. The more notebooks you had in front of you at the table, and the more hunched over you were, worrying about your ‘art’ made you part of the atmosphere. As the 90’s wore on, the notebook was replaced with the laptop computer. And since no one could see what you were typing, the writer was more often than not just checking his facebook page to see who was noticing that he/she was online. There were the regulars who actually did write something, but for the most part, they just annoyed Andrew with idle conversation, when he could be reading his book. If they actually worked on the screenplay they claimed they were always working on when they came in, the movie would be about five weeks long.

Most of the regular patrons were rather moody and eccentric, which seemed to have subconsciously affected Andrew’s dress and demeanor. Always in some shade of black, although he would say that is was to prevent stains on his shirts. He used to wear bright colors, though he was particularly fond of anything in the khaki spectrum, a throwback to watching Indiana Jones movies until tapes wore out, and associating shades of light brown with high adventure. The years working in various coffee shops had trained him to always wear black, since coffee and espresso tended to splash. Black was always in fashion, he would say, justifying his look of ‘poetic ninja’. And he never had to change his clothes if he were to spill. It was a win win situation, because the regulars regarded him as one of their own. If anything, he was eccentric, but he never thought he was one of those ‘Artistic types’ But his friends and Acquaintances did consider him ‘Moody’ He made a vow long ago to never be seen sitting in a coffee shop looking like a stereotype. There were too many of those who came in. There was the kid who thought he looked like a young Bob Dylan. Sunglasses on. At night. Inside. And he wasn’t blind. Or from the Matrix. He even made sure that he had a copy of War and Peace sitting on top of the pile of notebooks which were in turn, sitting next to his laptop. With facebook opened up as a home screen. The kid played the part of ‘tortured artist’ very well, but was so consumed by keeping up the appearance, that he failed to move the bookmark in the copy of the Tolstoy classic. At present, he had been on page 120 for over a year now. Nor had he created any kind of art, however, the number of cyber friends he had were in the triple digits. Fast approaching One thousand. He had actually met five of these people at the coffee shop, but they thought he was an asshole.

The days drug on and on for Andrew. The job was supposed to be a temporary one for him. Something he could do during the day, and do what he wanted at night. But what he wanted to do at night was considered illegal. Andrew wanted to be a Vigilante. Unfortunately for him, he had never had what some would consider ‘The Athletic Physique’ He liked butter on his cinnamon toast, and he liked butter on his butter. Thinking that his love of dairy was homage to his Nordic roots, Andrew slept better at night. When it came to exercise, he felt all he needed was his bicycle. But lately he only rode that to get to work in the morning and home from work in the mid-afternoon. “It’s on my to-do list” he would think to himself. “I’ll start riding my bike around the lakes as soon as it’s nicer outside.”

It wasn’t that he was morbidly obese, but he was running the risk of becoming so every time he saw those chocolate éclairs packed in sets of four at the grocery. And he saw those quite a bit. Especially when he was feeling down.

Time seemed to both drag on for him and go hurtling by if that made any sense. It turned out that he wouldn’t be in his twenties forever, And before he knew it, he had become 30.

Being Thirty years old isn’t so bad when you ride your bike around the lakes every day. Nor is it such a bother if you happen to go home from a high paying job and the home you enter is one that you have a reasonable mortgage payment on. However, being Thirty years old, and going to the apartment you have shared for years with a roommate after doing the opening shift at a coffee shop on a bike that has become a ‘commuting vehicle’ does not brighten your mood. After work today, Andrew was going to see about those chocolate éclairs…

(To be Continued in Part 2)