Perfect Blend

by Sue Margolis

  “Yuk, I’ve got your lick on my face.” He pulled a face and began rubbing his cheek.

  AMY HAD just gotten off the bus and was making her way to the café when she got a text from Brian. He was going to be late because he had a doctor’s appointment.

  GETTING MOOBS CHECKED OUT. SORRY, ONLY APPT THEY HAD LEFT. HOPE U 2 CN MANAGE.

  The early-morning rush was never easy, but she knew she and Zelma would just about cope.

  It helped that when they walked in they would find the place sparkling and immaculate. On Saturday and Sunday, the café was run by two catering students, Otto and Fidel. The leather-trousered, nipple-pierced duo ran the place with such flair, panache, and efficiency that even Brian was in awe. On top of that they were both hygiene freaks. Every Monday morning Brian, Amy, and Zelma arrived to find the floors scrubbed, the loos smelling of jasmine, and the kitchen without a speck of grease. Brian thought his standards were pretty high, but these guys were in a different league. Heaven only knew what time they left on Sunday night.

  The plan was that when Brian left to set up his cutting-edge coffeehouse in Soho or the East End, Otto and Fidel would manage Café Mozart full-time.

  Today there were fresh flowers on the counter and all the tables.

  Amy took charge of the espresso machine—a task she never relished because she was always scared her coffee wouldn’t meet Brian’s standards—and Zelma served food. Whenever the queue died down, one of them would dash around with a cloth, wiping tables and clearing crocks.

  Brian arrived just after ten, relief etched on his face. “The doctor examined my moobs and says they’re just fat deposits. He said if I lose a few pounds, they’ll disappear.”

  “Told you so,” Amy and Zelma chorused.

  “So, now you’re not turning into a woman,” Zelma said, “you could maybe do a little work around here.” She grinned and thrust a cloth into his hand. “You can start with wiping the counter. I’ve got a dishwasher to load.”

  Amy watched him as he started wiping down the counter. He was actually smiling.

  “Tell you what,” Brian said, using the cloth to steer cake crumbs into his hand, “I’m feeling generous. For the next few days, why don’t we sell Crema Crema Crema at the same price as our normal coffee?”

  “Blimey,” Zelma said, “hark at John Paul Getty here.”

  “No, I think it’s a good idea,” Amy said. “With Bean Machine about to open, we’ve got to do everything we can to keep people loyal.”

  Brian decided to put up a pavement placard. This, combined with The Guardian running another piece on Crema Crema Crema in its food and drink section, meant that by midweek the queue of commuters reached into the street. Everybody wanted to know more about the coffee: Where did it come from? What gave it that amazing taste? Where could they buy it? How much was it? That much? Was there any way they could get it cheaper? In the end Brian printed out some information leaflets, which he left on the counter and all the tables.

  He calculated that coffee sales had almost doubled in three days. He and Amy were allowing themselves to think that when Bean Machine opened, they might hang on to some customers, after all. On Wednesday things were so busy that they started to run out of milk. Amy said she would nip to the supermarket and pick up three or four liters, which would tide them over until the milkman came the next day.

  She was walking past the pet shop, thinking that she might win Charlie over with a pet rabbit, when she felt a tap on her shoulder. Startled, she swung around.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you jump.” It took her a moment or two to register that the apologetic face in front of her belonged to Sam Draper. “I’ve been trying to catch up with you.” He sounded breathless.

  “That’s okay,” she said, offering him a reassuring smile. “Not your fault. I was miles away.” She paused, not quite sure what to say next. She couldn’t work out if she should launch straight into her apology for having been so rude to him the other day or wait until they’d exchanged some small talk. “So how are you?” she heard herself say.

  “I’m good … Actually, I was coming to see you. I reached the café, then I caught sight of you down the street.”

  “I’m off to pick up some milk. We’ve run out.” He was wearing an expensive-looking, slim-fitting gray suit with a narrow pinkish-purple tie. Very Mad Men, she thought.

  “Oh, right.” He was clearly feeling the awkwardness, too.

  “Customers have been going crazy for this posh coffee we’re selling.”

  “Oh, what, Crema Crema Crema? I’ve been reading about it.”

  For a moment his eyes met hers.

  “Actually,” she said, “I’m glad I ran into you. You left the other day before I could apologize for being so rude. I was completely out of order. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what got into me.”

  “You don’t have to apologize. I understand. You were just sticking up for your boss.”

  “I know, but when I realized you weren’t part of Bean Machine, I should have stopped behaving like an ass, but I didn’t. Instead, I just carried on attacking you.”

  “Oh, come on. I was just as bad. I seem to remember accusing you of being a hypocrite.”

  “But you’re right. People like me do bang on about fair trade while buying cheap products from countries with terrible human rights.”

  “Maybe, but I didn’t have to push it home quite so hard. I’m sorry.”

  She offered him another smile. “Apology accepted.”

  “But what you said about me working for Bean Machine hit home. It’s just that I only set up my company a few years ago. It’s still pretty small, and particularly with the recession, we’re in no position to turn down work. All I’d say in our defense is that we do a fair amount of pro bono work.”

  “Really?” She was impressed.

  “Actually, for the last few days, I’ve been in Africa—in Rwanda, to be precise—checking on the building of a school that we designed.”

  “Oh, God, now I’m even more embarrassed. I don’t know what to say.”

  “You don’t have to say anything. You couldn’t know.”

  “So you’re still working on the Bean Machine project?”

  “Yes, I’ve just come from the site.”

  “Any more news on when it’s due to open?”

  “A few weeks, a month, maybe. I know that isn’t good news for you …”

  His sentence trailed off.

  “Oh, I’m sure something will work out. Actually, our coffee sales are up over a hundred percent since we started selling Crema Crema Crema, so you never know. Customers who appreciate really good coffee might stay loyal.”

  “That would be fantastic.”

  She got a sense that he was working up to saying something. She let a few seconds pass before she jumped in to fill the silence. “Nice laptop,” she said, nodding toward the ultrathin Apple Mac he was carrying.

  “Thanks. It’s new. I have to admit that I wasn’t sure. I usually plump for titanium, but I thought this time I’d go for the black. Except they don’t make the black anymore, so I bought a black rubbery cover thing, which also means I can drop it from time to time.”

  “Good choice,” she said. “Black goes with everything.”

  “Doesn’t show the dirt.”

  “It’s slimming.”

  He looked down at his stomach.

  “God, no … not that I’m suggesting you need to slim. Far from it. You’re very slim. Well, not too slim. I mean just right. All I meant was that in principle black can be very slimming.” She felt her cheeks redden.

  “Amy, I was wondering. Are you seeing anybody at the moment?”

  “Me? No. Why?”

  “I just thought you might like to go out for a drink sometime.”

  “A drink?”

  “Yes.”

  “With you?”

  He was giving her an awkward grin. “Yes.”

  “Oh, right … I’d like that.”

  �
��You would? Great.”

  They decided on Saturday night at the Carpenter’s Arms in Chiswick.

  WHEN AMY got back to Café Mozart, she went straight into the kitchen to put the milk away. Zelma was standing at the stove, frying bacon.

  “I have news,” Amy announced, heaving two Tesco carrier bags onto the counter. “Remember that guy Sam who came in last week—you know, the one I had that bit of a set-to with?”

  “Of course. Lovely-looking chap. I sold him a slice of ginger cake.”

  “Well, he just asked me out.”

  “And naturally you said yes.”

  “Actually, I did.”

  “Good for you, darling. Mazel tov.”

  At this point Brian appeared. “Hey, Zelma, could you make that two bacon sarnies instead of one?”

  “Will do.” She turned down the light under the frying pan and went to the fridge to get more bacon. Zelma never objected to frying bacon. She adored the smell. Jewish porn, she called it. Her neighbors cooked it all the time. One of her few regrets in life was that her extractor fan couldn’t be turned to “suck.”

  “By the way, Amy,” Brian said, eyeing a box of custard tarts, “did I just hear you say you had a fight with a customer?”

  By now, Amy was loading the fridge with milk. “Yes, but only because I thought he worked for Bean Machine and was out to destroy the business. I was thinking of you, that’s all. Anyway, turns out he doesn’t work for the enemy, after all.”

  Brian picked up a custard tart and bit into it.

  Zelma waved her spatula at him. “I thought you were supposed to be on a diet. All that fat and sugar is bad for your heart. Don’t you come crying to me in a few years when you drop dead from clogged arteries.”

  “Deal,” Brian said, shoving the second half of the tart into his mouth. He turned back to Amy. “So who is this bloke?”

  Amy explained that he was the same chap she had approached outside Bean Machine to ask when it was opening and how, when he came into the café a few days later, they’d ended up clashing. “Turns out he’s the architect Bean Machine took on to do the renovation work. He doesn’t work for them at all. God, I felt like such an idiot.”

  “Stop beating yourself up,” Zelma said. “You were only thinking of Brian.”

  “But he does work for Bean Machine,” Brian piped up. “He’s got a contract with them.”

  “Come on, Bri, there’s a recession on. None of us can afford to be too fussy who we work for. And his firm does a lot of pro bono work. He’s building a school in a village in Rwanda.”

  He shrugged. “Bully for him. It still pisses me off.”

  “Brian, darling,” Zelma said, “tell me, what car do you drive?”

  “You know what I drive—a VW.”

  “Aha, and do you know who designed it? Adolf Hitler, that’s who.”

  “Zelma, Hitler did not design the Golf GTI.”

  “Maybe not, but that company still has a lot to answer for.”

  “I’m not sure it does anymore,” Brian said. “The war has been over for almost seventy years. The human exploitation I’m talking about is happening all over the world, and it’s happening now.”

  “Huh, you think Hitler didn’t leave a legacy of misery that goes on to this day?”

  “I know. I know,” Brian said. “Of course he did. I didn’t mean to be insensitive. This is a different debate, that’s all.”

  “You know what? My Sidney, God rest his soul, would never have a German product in the house. And if we happened to be traveling through Germany in the camper, he always insisted we stop”—she lowered her voice—“but only to do a number two.”

  Brian, who was smiling and shaking his head, could see he wasn’t going to get anywhere. He picked up another custard tart and went back into the café.

  By then Zelma was arranging bacon slices on buttered bread. “This Sam, who’s just asked you out,” she said. “I remember now what struck me most about him—his lovely brown eyes.”

  “Actually, they’re gray.”

  “You sure?”

  Amy started laughing. “Zelma, we’ve been through this.”

  ON THURSDAY, when Brian decided his Crema Crema Crema experiment had cost him enough, he decided to put it back to its old price of £5 a cup. Interest immediately dwindled, and trade at Café Mozart went back to normal. “Okay, you don’t have to tell me,” he said to Amy and Zelma. “It was a daft idea. People enjoy quality, but they don’t enjoy paying for it.” It was clear that when Bean Machine opened, the only customers who would remain loyal to Brian would be a handful of coffee enthusiasts. By Friday, he was full of the miseries again and there was nothing Amy or Zelma could say to cheer him up.

  It didn’t help that on Friday morning, Zelma had arrived waving an article she’d clipped from The Daily Mail health pages. “Here, Brian. Stop staring into that blinkin’ coffee cup and read this. It’s all about moobs.” That grabbed his attention. He looked up and took the article from Zelma.

  “Wassit say?” Amy said when he’d finished reading.

  “Seems like there’s been a surge in men developing moobs.” He explained that in Britain and the United States, doctors were reporting several new cases a week. They were particularly confused because the enlargement didn’t seem to be linked to weight. The men going to their doctors tended to be diet-conscious, slim, and fit. Even more perplexing, they were all high earners. “That’s hardly a mystery,” Brian said. “Everybody knows that the middle classes consult their doctors more often. They’re better informed about health issues, and that makes them worry more.”

  Amy scanned the piece. “Yes, but don’t you think it’s odd that out of several hundred patients, both sides of the Atlantic, not one is working class? Not a single one. I mean, you’d expect a few. You have to ask yourself why this condition is only affecting middle-class men like …” She hesitated.

  “You were going to say ‘like you.’”

  “Yeah, but that’s no reason to panic.”

  Brian downed the last of his Crema Crema Crema and asked if they could manage without him for a few minutes. Then he disappeared into the kitchen.

  “Now I’ve put the cat among the pigeons,” Zelma said. “Look how worried he is. I bet he’s gone to look it up on the Internet. I only brought the article in because I thought it would interest him. I’m so stupid.”

  “Yeah, well, that makes two of us. I should have kept my big mouth shut, too.”

  When Amy went into the kitchen a few minutes later to get some serving platters, she found Brian sitting at the counter, staring into his laptop. “I’ve been Googling ‘middle-class men, moobs,’” he said without looking up. “There’s masses on it. There are chat rooms, scientific forums, dozens of blogs from blokes with these absolutely massive malumbas. You can even click on the images. Look …”

  Amy winced. “Well, you look nothing like any of them.”

  “The piece in the Mail was right,” he said. “None of the doctors or scientists have got the remotest idea what’s causing it.”

  That day’s newspapers had just been delivered and were lying on the counter. Amy started going through them and found almost identical articles in The Times, The Independent, and The Guardian.

  Brian glanced at them when she’d finished. “This could be really serious,” he said.

  “It could, but nobody has actually gotten ill.”

  “Yet.”

  “Look, Brian, unlike these men, you are a few pounds overweight. Maybe in your case the doctor was right and there is a simple explanation.”

  “I’d say with the way my luck’s been going recently, the chances of that are practically zero.” He closed his laptop and got up. “I need another cup of coffee.”

  WITH BRIAN’S mind only half on the job, it wasn’t the easiest of days. By the time it was over, even Zelma, who wasn’t one to admit she was feeling the strain, started making noises about how she “wouldn’t need any rocking tonight.”

&n
bsp; On her way home, Amy popped into the Italian deli and picked up three portions of ready-made lasagne. She and Charlie were going to her dad’s tonight. Phil had just treated himself to a sixty-inch plasma screen TV, and Arsenal was playing Real Madrid in the European Cup semifinal. Phil had agreed to pick them up at the flat and take them home after the game. Amy said she would bring her dad’s favorite dinner: lasagne, green salad, and profiteroles.

  A few months ago, Phil had taken Charlie to his first match—Arsenal versus Chelsea. He had invited Arthur, too, but Victoria disapproved of soccer on the grounds that its supporters belonged to the lower orders. Phil was quick to make the point that at thirty quid a ticket, very few of the lower orders could afford to go these days, but Victoria was adamant. Arthur’s school played rugby and golf, and she considered those sports to be far more suitable.

  Phil had supported Arsenal since he was a boy, and the idea of at least one of his grandsons keeping up the tradition rather appealed to him. After that first game Charlie had become a bit of an enthusiast, and Phil had started inviting his daughter and grandson over to watch the big games on TV. Amy loved nothing more than seeing her dad and Charlie bouncing up and down on the sofa, cheering and yelling, with Charlie wearing the Arsenal strip his grandfather had bought him. Sometimes Phil would forget himself and start shouting: “Come on, you arse.” Then Charlie would giggle and remind his granddad that “arse” was a rude word.

  Amy was always telling Phil how much she appreciated his taking such an interest in Charlie. Phil would tell her that it was his pleasure. “Don’t get me wrong, I always adored you two girls, but there were times when I did miss having a lad to take to the football on a Saturday afternoon.”

  To say that football bored Amy was an understatement. For Charlie’s sake, she did her best to show an interest. Nevertheless, she was aware that she had a tendency to keep asking how much longer the game had to go. She could just about control her ennui for ninety minutes. If the game went into extra time or, God forbid, a penalty shoot-out, she became filled with an overwhelming desire to eat her own head.