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The punk didn’t look like one of those living statue guys from the square outside who wandered in sometimes after their professionalism lost to hunger. But it had been almost a minute of the beanie wearing punk girl standing stock still in the middle of the cafe. It probably wasn’t a coincidence that Max was on the other end of that gaze.
Lisa sighed, and calmly walked a pot of coffee over to young Officer Daniels and his almost empty cup of coffee. Just the kind of guy you wanted around for creeps. Everyone liked young Officer Daniels, enough that he didn't always like cuffing people.
“Lisa, no, no, ugh…” Daniels moaned.
“I know, I know, sweetheart, we’re so cruel to you,” Lisa said agreeably as she walked away, leaving him another cup of coffee to get down.
She handed off a muffin, rolled her eyes at the business guy’s phone number on the check, and went behind the counter and snuck herself a palmful of dry cereal. When she looked up, punk girl was stepping up to the plate.
She flicked the check into a drawer full of other papers and shoved it back in with a grunt. They were running out of space. Janie nudged her as she refilled a sugar tin and gestured at the punk girl, who was now straightening her shoulders back, and raising her head at the counter.
Lisa rolled her eyes in solidarity, and they nodded at each other as Janie walked by with a donut to heat up for young Officer Daniels.
“Ah yeah, can I get the special,” the girl drawled, “The Super Max?”
Janie squinted in confusion and slight disgust, and raised an eyebrow at Lisa. Lisa thought this approach of flirting was a bit much, and she’d grown up in the 80s.
“Sure, you want The Max on a bed of…” Max said, not hearing closely and continuing to whisk vegetables into an omelette bowl. Then her eyes widened.
Max looked up. Her whisking fork stopped moving as she seemed to realise who the girl was. The punk girl’s eyes widened, and her face softened, like she wasn't prepared for seeing Max's face eye to eye. Lisa caught all of it, and even thought the girl almost took a step back in the face of whatever Max’s eyes were doing.
Max mouthed something. A name. Chloe.
The girl, Chloe, swallowed, and took a deep breath. She seemed to be standing at attention, like she’d been called up for duty. She didn’t look like a punk. She…
Oh, Lisa thought.
“Yeah, I’d definitely like The Max on a bed,” Chloe said hurriedly, too fast and too slurred, a train tripping on it’s wheels, like she’d been saying it back again and again in her head. Her hands were shaking.
Oh, honey, Lisa thought.
“God,” Janie sighed, “Another on a bed one. We should just change the name when she’s up front.”
“S-Super Max?” Max said, seemingly a few trains behind.
Chloe flinched, and swallowed.
“I mean, yeah, you liked it, I mean, used to…” Chloe said, taking her beanie off and running her hand through her hair.
“You-you have blue hair now,” Max said, her eyes wide, hands flexing like she couldn’t wait to run her fingers through it.
“Now? Oh my dog” Janie murmured, and Lisa inclined her head in agreement. There was history here.
“Chloe, I…I’m sorry, I know I was unfair to you,” Max said, and Janie and Lisa leaned in, shocked.
“Was Max the breaker uper? Did Max break up with a blue haired punk?” Janie said.
“Might not have had blue hair back then,” Lisa murmured out the side of her mouth.
“No, no, it’s fine, it’s not like a big-I mean it kind of is, my dad died and my stepdad’s kind of abusive and you abandoned me like a week after the funeral, but,” Chloe said, rushing to continue as Max’s eyes teared up, “But I forgave you!”
“You did?” Janie and Max said, one lowly, the other in a cracking voice, “When?”
Chloe opened her mouth to answer, and then blushed furiously and closed it.
“About five minutes ago when she walked through the door, looks like,” Lisa snorted.
A regular in the line caught Lisa’s eye, and gestured to the waiting crowd. Someone in front of him was trying to cough into her hand noticeably, but Chloe and Max didn’t even flinch.
Lisa sighed and beckoned the other customers over. The morning rush was gone in an instant from her register, and Max didn’t even notice.
“Who’s the degenerate?” said Abdu, a scowling man aiming his brooding eyebrows at Chloe.
“Max’s ex-girl, we think,” Lisa said, glaring at him to keep shut. Other regulars, some of whom had been here for years even back when Ryan, Max’s father, used to wait tables at the cafe Max’s grandfather owned, were similarly placated and leashed.
Officer Daniels came up from the side, head cocked at the other register down the counter.
“She’s good, kid,” Lisa answered, “Thanks for sticking around.”
She then punished Daniel for his kindness with another donut and sent him off on his bemoaning way. That boy could stand to lose some sex appeal in her opinion, it would be good for him in the long run.
Then, Lisa walked over to Max, handed her a The Max on a bed of fries, and told her to take a break and go catch up with an old friend. She stressed old friend, and when Max just thanked her without batting an eye, Lisa frowned.
She caught Chloe’s eyes, and made a show of studying her. Poor girl swallowed and shrunk, and only then seemed to remember she had an attitude that went along with the look, and raised her jaw and eyed her back. Lisa grinned at her.
They went and sat at a booth, and in a moment their heads were leaned in towards each other. Lisa smiled and got back to work, and let her shoulders drop from her ears.
“Go help unload out back,” Lisa said to Janie, “We’re good here.”
The hours of the day went by for the cafe and the city. For Max and Chloe the years went by in their booth as they caught up.
It was mid afternoon and the sun was pink stripes through the blinders on white tile, when Max came up to the counter for snacks.
“We could make a wall, you know,” Lisa mused, flicking through the drawer of checks and napkins and business cards with names like Christie and Mike and Doug with corresponding phone numbers sharpied and scrawled on them.
“Yeah, totally,” Max said, leaning over the counter to scrabble at the coffee mug. She couldn’t quite reach. Lisa watched Chloe’s eyes widen at Max’s rear, and then quickly snap away to her hands. Lisa sighed and passed it to her.
“Yeah, make it all feminist and shit. Let working women work, you know?” Lisa continued, because if she had to hear Max and Janie mutter and bemoan about that shit the whole day, she wanted it to go both ways.
“Chloe’s a feminist,” Max said, reaching for the steamed milk. Lisa watched as Max executed a flawless foam rendition of a tulip. Funny, she’d been banned because she kept burning herself few months ago.
Lisa rolled her eyes and did not mention how close Max’s girl had been to being considered one of the drawer people.
Max was flicking her eyes guiltily at the last lemon tart. Lisa’s favourite. At the very least, she could approve of Chloe for her taste.
“Go on,” she sighed, and continued ringing up the register. It was Jim’s turn on the board, but he was dyslexic and scared of people knowing, so Lisa let her eyes strain at the ledger while Jim washed up and let his hands chap and dry.
Janie came up to her, flicking a couple sugar cubes into Lisa’s coffee.
“She’s gone,” she said, stirring the cubes in, “she’s sooo far gone, like…”
“Which one?” Lisa shot back, eyeing how Max was sitting on her hands so she wouldn’t pick at them in view of Chloe. Chloe was carefully and politely eating her tart, clearly out of a sense of propriety from being in Max’s view. She wasn't very good at it, she was cutting with her fork and eating with her knife.
Janie barked a laugh as she handed Lisa her coffee.
“Good point.”
“Wait, I forgot to ask,” Max said, “Why’d you come today?”
Lisa and Janie leaned in, ready for the most important answer. Chloe blinked. It seemed as if the hundreds of miles she’d driven seemed to become real to her. She looked out the window and was confused, as if she expected to see the forest from her childhood room. She swallowed and hunched down.
“Oh yeah, I don’t really have a place to stay?” Chloe said, looking down at the table, fists tight under the table, “I kinda found all of my stepdad's hidden cameras in our house and my room and I remembered your family’s cafe and uh…”
Chloe shrunk down at the end of the confession, shame in every line of her shoulders.
There was silence in the cafe as everyone eavesdropping (which was everyone in the cafe) absorbed what had just been revealed. Then Max was scrambling around the table to hug Chloe, blurting comforting words. The rest of the cafe was standing up and turning to Chloe in various states of fury and protectiveness.
Abdu, who Lisa was quite sure was missing a Thursday shift at the community centre, was loudly declaring he had a friend whose nephew was a Supreme Court intern.
Lisa and Janie stared at the abrupt mayhem from behind the counter. Janie added three spoonfuls of powdered sugar to Lisa’s coffee, and chugged it. Lisa pulled a flask from a drawer Max was definitely was to never touch, and emptied what little was left down her gullet.
“Someone should call Max’s parents, right? She has parents, doesn’t she?” Lisa said as she turned the counter.
“I’m calling Officer Daniels,” Janie said, pressing two on her phone’s speed dial.
Later Janie would think about Janie having Daniels on speed dial and snort. Later, she would think about Chloe shrinking into her shoulders under Lisa’s intimidation joke bullshit and shame would pool in her gut. Later, she would smile a tired smile as she realised in the panic she’d forgotten Ryan Caulfield’s name when she’d in fact watched him grow up.
For now, the cafe converged around a very small, hunched over Chloe Price, and an even smaller, defiant Max Caulfield, telling them all to sit down and really, Abdu, really?