Work Text:
Monday starts with the Lululemon lady. She always arrives at 8:07 a.m., without fail, trailing just enough perfume to drown the scent of espresso. I have her drink memorized. A large half-caf oat milk latte with a single pump of sugar-free vanilla, extra hot, no sleeve. She pays in cash from a wallet with more compartments than moral depth and always leaves a two-dollar tip, like clockwork.
I like the routine. I like the smooth hiss of the milk steamer, the way the morning sun filters through the window decals just right. Shadows dancing around the seating area in fragments of the slightly worn sign out front. It reads, “The Last Shot” in vintage typeface. The café opens at six, but I don’t really feel like the day begins until she shows up and begins telling me how exhausted she is after Pilates.
Most days pass like this, me behind the counter, orchestrating the morning rush like a conductor with a milk wand. People shuffle in like they’ve been programmed to. Sleepy eyes. Scarfed necks. Loyalty punch cards clutched like talismans.
There’s a guy who always orders a plain drip coffee and sits in the same corner clutching the most recent edition of The New Yorker, as he mumbles to himself about “the state of the world”. A grad student who practically lives here, always tweaking a resumé that’s never quite finished. A couple that doesn’t speak to each other except when placing their orders, separate drinks, always, and always tense.
Above the cream and sugar station, there’s the corkboard. It’s chaotic, overpopulated with community detritus. Flyers for local band gigs, guitar lessons, dog walkers, and overpriced yoga classes. My favorites are the support group flyers, bloodborne parasites, brain parasites, testicular cancer, and there’s even one for sickle-cell anemia.
I straighten these flyers when no one’s looking. I like having control over something. Like if the bulletin board looks neat, then maybe somehow I’m neat. Maybe I’m okay. Just maybe, I’m not the sleep deprived maniac who gets up, although it’s never really “getting up” with insomnia, at 3:30 a.m. to go to work, day after day.
The playlist today is all acoustic covers of various ‘90s songs. It’s supposed to feel comforting, I imagine. Instead, it feels like someone hollowed out a memory and left it playing on loop. I don’t really mind. I like the routine. It’s warm here. Safe. People expect things from me that I can actually give.
I get in by 4:30 a.m. most mornings. The streets are the quietest they will be for the next 24 hours. There’s something calming in the way the streetlights still hold dominion over the sidewalk, and everything feels paused. I unlock the door, flip the sign, and do the opening rituals like I’m lighting candles in a chapel. Grinder on. Lights dim. Milk jugs lined up in the fridge like soldiers waiting for orders.
When it’s slow I practice latte art. Leaves, hearts, something that vaguely resembles a dove if you squint. I pour and pour until the foam goes flat and the espresso turns bitter, but there’s something peaceful in the muscle memory. A sense of control in the way that I can make something pretty, even if it only lasts ten seconds.
Tuesdays are usually quieter. People don’t need their coffee today like they do at the start of the week. I wipe the counters twice just to have something to do. Rearrange the display case. There’s a banana bread that never sells and a vegan brownie that’s dense enough to be a weapon. The barista I open with, Riley, always sneaks a corner when no one’s looking. I pretend not to notice.
Wednesday, a book club rolls in around noon. Five old women in windbreakers who never actually talk about the book. They order iced teas and argue about which celebrity is “secretly problematic”. Occasionally they whisper, spilling dirt on their husbands or their childrens’ husbands. I don’t mind them. Their voices fill the space.
Thursdays are delivery days. I like stacking the boxes, organizing the syrups by color, checking expiration dates on milk cartons like it matters more than anything else in the world. I never really get around to much that afternoon, too sore from stacking boxes and jugs. The afternoons are dead anyway, save for the college students studying or laughing with their friends.
Fridays get busy, too busy. Customers line up like a conga line of caffeine dependency. I get in the zone, calling orders, wiping spills, pretending the ache in my jaw isn’t from clenching. By the time we close, I feel like a husk someone used up and tossed out. But even then, I still clean. Still restock. Still make sure the chairs are pushed in, and the lights are dimmed just right.
Saturday mornings, it’s families. Sticky fingers and screaming toddlers. I smile anyway. They leave crumbs everywhere. I sweep and sweep and sweep. Sundays are the only day I don’t work. I don’t sleep in. I rarely sleep. With insomnia every day is a copy of a copy. Sundays don’t fit that mold because I don’t go to work. Instead, I rot on my Ikea brand couch in a daydreaming state. Not quite awake but not quite asleep.
It must be Thursday afternoon because all the new stock is packed perfectly away. The seats are empty. The syrups are all lined up and I’m at the cream and sugar station, wiping down a ring of someone’s oat milk crime scene.
That’s when he walks in.
The door chimes like it always does, but somehow the sound feels sharper this time. Like glass cracking instead of a greeting. I glance up, half-expecting a regular. I don’t get a regular.
I get him.
He’s tall. Beautiful in the way disasters are, effortless and inevitable. Red leather jacket tight around his broad shoulders. Scuffed boots and sunglasses indoors like he’s either hiding something or mocking the concept of light. Probably both. His hair is a mess of spikey sweat and chaos, and his smile, if you could call it that, looks like a dare.
I don’t know why, but I practically stumble over myself getting to the register. My coworker could’ve taken the order but I just, moved.
He doesn’t even look at the menu. “Coffee. Black.” That’s it. No smile. No questions. No irony. Just those words, sharp and clipped like he resents even saying them out loud. I could smell nicotine on his breath.
“Uh, yeah,” I stammer, scrambling for composure. “Could I, uh, get a name for that order?”
He pauses. Not for long, just enough to make it feel like a test. Pop quiz. “Tyler Durden.”
Tyler Durden.
The name sinks into me like heat. Tyler Durden. I practically swoon. I nod like it means something and scrawl it onto the cup. I try not to stare but my eyes don’t listen. He doesn’t tip. He doesn’t even take his sunglasses off. He sits at the corner table for fifteen minutes and doesn’t speak. Doesn’t touch the drink, just watches. It’s not necessarily in a creepy way. More like he’s waiting for something to reveal itself. Then he leaves.
I toss the coffee in the trash and pretend like it didn’t feel like some kind of act of blasphemy.
Tyler doesn’t come back the next day. Or the one after that. Then, on Tuesday he’s in the café, leaning against the wall like he’s part of the structure. His sleeves are rolled up, grease under his fingernails, and a smirk on that mouth that’s always one syllable away from saying something awful.
He orders chamomile tea. I stare at him like he’s said he wants to be baptized. “Tea?” I repeat, hand hovering over the espresso machine like it’ll get jealous. “Chamomile,” he confirms, deadpan. “What? Are you deaf Ikea-boy?”
“What?” I manage, slightly incoherent.
“I asked if you have trouble hearing,” Tyler growls out. “No, the name, Ikea?” I ask confused. “You look like the kind of guy who would order things on his nice and shiny telephone straight from the Ikea catalogue.” Tyler shrugs like this makes perfect sense. I make the tea regardless. He doesn’t drink it. Just lets it steep and congeal in front of him, steam curling like it’s embarrassed to be there.
The next day, he gets a flat white. Doesn’t touch it either. Three days later; an iced mocha with oat milk. Then a double espresso, then a matcha latte. He sips that one, it’s been a month since he first started coming here. One sip, slow and deliberate, while standing right at the counter like he owns the damn thing. He winces.
“Tastes like lawn clippings,” he says. “If a Whole Foods had a wet dream.”
“Let me make you a good one,” I mutter before I even know why I’m bothering. “I promise.” He raises an eyebrow, “You’re trying to impress me?” “No,” I say flatly ignoring how my heart leaps in my chest at the prospect of being found out.
I start the shot. Steam hisses like something dying behind the bar. I don’t look at him. I reach for the milk, steam it too hot on purpose, just to ground myself, and pour with more care than I should. The cup trembles slightly as I rotate it in practiced motions. I tip it just right and drag the milk in a precise curl.
Tyler peers into the cup like he’s looking at roadkill. “You made me a heart,” he says, voice tight with disdain and amusement. “It’s the only one I can do without fucking it up,” I say, too quickly. He picks up the cup and holds it like it might be rigged to explode.
“Sap,” he growls, like it’s the worst insult he can think of, and then he walks out, cup and all, without another word. I stare at the open door for a long time.
The next time I see Tyler he is lurking conspicuously by the corkboard. The following day is when I begin to notice the array of strange flyers that have begun covering the older prints. At first, they’re just odd. An old newspaper about a popular coffee shop sharpie-d over with Decaffeinate the masses scrawled in a messy black ink.
Then they turn more sinister. Live dismemberment demo: this Friday. And Group scream session, BYO crisis. They’re obviously faux but they serve their purpose I assume. Trying to ward off sensitive costumers. At one point someone’s grandmother asks me to take them down. “These flyers are heinous and disturbing,” she insisted, “I don’t know how your company can leave these up.” For the umpteenth time I explain how the company doesn’t endorse the flyers, just displays them. I end up taking the flyers down anyway.
I ask Tyler about the flyers, but he pretends not to know anything about them. “I saw you putting them up,” I point out. “Doesn’t mean I know anything about the contents of said flyers,” he argued back to me.
It’s Friday during a rush when the espresso machine starts breaking. First it whines. Then it leaks. Then, one day, I open it and find one of those frayed flyers jammed into the boiler like someone tried to send it to hell via steam pressure.
My manager blames, “an influx of anarchist energy,” which honestly might be the most accurate thing she’s ever said. Tyler keeps showing up, but he doesn’t buy anything. Not since the latte art incident. His presence doesn’t unnerve me but the way he acts does. Like he’s waiting for the right moment.
The espresso machine isn’t the only thing acting up.
The boiler breaks and the heat goes out in the building. I still come to work in a parka. Then the lights start flickering when someone ran any of the appliances for too long. Customers joked about ghosts. Tyler didn’t.
I can’t explain why I knew something was going to happen. The day just felt like the eye of a storm. Too calm and still while the darkness swirls from the outside. Tyler’s sitting in his usual corner, arms folded, a smile on his face like he already knows how the day ends.
The espresso machine gives a little screech. A puff of steam hisses from its side. I glace up, and for a second, it feels like the machine is whispering something to me. Afraid. Angry. Alive. Suddenly, a sound like a scream swallowed by metal rips through the air. A violent shudder that runs up my legs and into my teeth. Something from the basement explodes.
Not in a big fiery tornado but with black smoke and shrapnel, ceramic shards from a dozen coffee cups flying like bullets. Glass shatters. Alarms don’t actually go off but someone starts screaming anyway.
When I come to, there’s a ringing in my ears, coffee pooled on the floor like blood. The whole front window is laying, in pieces, on the floor. Someone behind the counter is crying. And Tyler is standing over me, grinning like he’s proud of the wreckage. He offers me a hand.
“Congratulations,” he says. “You’re finally unemployed.”
I’m still coughing when Tyler yanks me out the back door. I can faintly hear sirens in the distance, but my ears are still ringing from the blast. Behind us, the wreckage is hissing like a dying beast. He doesn’t ask if I’m okay, just drags me through the alleyway until we’re a safe distance away from the café.
Then he lights a cigarette with the same hand he used to pull me from the rubble. It smells like burnt coffee, nicotine, and very faintly of something lighter, is that soap? “You know what that place was?” he says exhaling smoke directly into my face. “A temple. Not to caffeine. Not even to taste. To compliance.”
I say nothing, continuing to cough, now from the smoke that’s been forcibly directed at me. My shirt is soaked in dark brown and there’s a burn on my forearm that’s starting to throb.
“That machine in there didn’t make espresso. It made dependence. It made wage cages and beige aprons and that dead look in your eyes every time someone asked for oat milk. It made you believe you were grateful for being paid in trashy tips and job ‘experience’,” Tyler continues. He paces through the alley, not straying far from me. Like he’s winding up this speech he’s been fermenting.
“They gave you a checklist and called it a purpose. They call it culture but it’s branding. They slap values on your name tag like that makes it a personality. You haven’t connected to your job. You just perform it. For tips. For a sense of community. For people who wouldn’t even know your name, or care, if it wasn’t on the company nametag. They put your soul in a paper cup and charged five-ninety-five.”
His voice drops low. “And you used to love your job, right?” I blink uselessly at him. “Yeah,” I whisper. “I did.”
And I did. I used to find comfort in the ritual. In the hiss of steam and the whir of the grinder. In the rhythm of it all. But standing there in the alley, still shaking, all I can think of is the ache in my knees. The rhythm kept me numb.
I thought the routine was keeping me grounded but in reality it was keeping me caged. I wasn’t building a life. I was wasting it. Repeating a script that someone handed to me.
I thought of the way my manager scolded me for ‘over-foaming’ milk. The way customers never looked me in the eye unless they were mad. How I once apologized because we were out of lids, and I actually meant it.
“I used to think it mattered,” I say quietly. “That the little things were worth it.” “And now?” he asks.
Now the building is half-gone. My apron’s burned at the edges. “Now,” I say hesitantly. “Now I think I stayed because I didn’t know how to quit.” Tyler grins like he’s proud of me. Then he tosses the cigarette, and watches it spark and fizzle out on the asphalt.
“Come with me,” he says.
“Where?”
He shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. There’s a project to be done.”