Portland Coffeehouse [Card #14: Temperance (WORK-IN-PROGRESS)]

"Every college town is heaven, each one different but the same, like hoboing from Gainesville to Gainesville to Gainseville, a hundred Gainesvilles flung across the country like stars in the sky.”
— from Justin Taylor's The Gospel of Anarchy (2010)


        “Double cappuccino!”
        The guy pounded his fist on the counter in an accompaniment to this order, as if to say, Pronto!
        The barista served it up.  The guy paid, took it, and left.
        No tip (of course!).



        “12 oz. drip to go.  No, wait—” (looking over his shoulder, scanning the back row of tables, and back again) “—for here, for here.”  (Pause.)  “For here.”
        The barista looked at him, bemused.  “You sure?”  (Like ooh — big deal — shit really matters!)
        “Yeah.”  The guy gulped, nervously, as though he needed to settle himself.
        But then: as the barista went about grabbing a mug, pouring the coffee, twisting the handle with a practiced, cavalier confidence that bespoke countless previous repetitions of the same act (and, doubtless, many more to come) the guy at the counter “noticed something” and appeared to gain in confidence.  “Hey you know what you are?”
        “$1.50”
        “No — ah, oh . . .” reaching for his wallet from his back pocket, on a chain, pulling it out and forward and opening it to retrieve a WaMu™ Debit Card, “ . . . no, you know what you are?”
        The barista fixed his attention on the WaMu™ Debit Card guy, and waited as though this was another transaction, another part of the order.
        WaMu™ Debit Card Guy responded to the pause as if it were a prompt.  “ ‘Feckless',” he pronounced — as if making a “pronouncement” — and pointed the card at the guy for emphasis.
        The feckless barista took the card without missing a beat, as thought it had been offered for that purpose, and held it up.  “$0.25 surcharge for using this, you know.”
        “Oh.  Shit.”  (Pause, again.)  “Fine, fine.  Fuck it.  Charge it — er, um — ‘debit' it — er, um . . . ”  (Gulp.)  “Yeah.  Do it, do it . . .”



        There was a clamor at the doorway.  Feckless Barista looked over.  “Hey—” he started, a tentative-stab comment, akin to firing a warning shot.
        No good.
        “Hey!”
        Not quite.
        “Hey!”
        The three dudes in ill-fitting, over-worn clothes and two-[if not three-]day's stubble sniggered at him, in his general direction (he had caught their attention, at least), the burliest & tallest of the three continuing to hold the door open, letting the cold air in.  “Haw  /  haw  / mellow out, dude!”  More sniggering, as they continued to half-conceal whatever it was two of them were holding in their hands.
        They split.
        The door completed its air-pressure automated “arc” to the shut position.
        Somebody coughed.
        Order, spontaneously broken, spontaneously restored itself.
        After a “beat” or two . . .

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                   [CAUTION -- UNDER CONSTRUCTION!!!]
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