THE TWO-TEN SPECIAL

Peggy broke her toe and has to take six days off work, so I’ve been covering her opening shifts. Tomorrow will be my seventh straight day of work, the fourth time the alarm will go off at three-thirty in the morning. It’s killing me.
My day started off with a con. The baking was either in the oven or on it’s way in and I was filling up the cream and milk jugs. The front door was open for ventilation, the sandwich board blocking it.
“S’cuse-ah me, s’cuse-ah me!” I looked up from the creamers and saw this thin Asian kid, thin as a rail, doing jumping jacks on the other side of the sandwich board. He looked like a tweaker, but he was also pretty clean.
“The lady! The lady! The lady who works here! She here?”
“She broke her toe.”
“She know me. I talk to her. I work Sugar Daddy’s.” Sugar Daddies is the restaurant two doors down. “I lock keys in car and need open store.”
Despite the language barrier he still struck as kind of suspicious.
“So what do you want?”
“I need to pay tow-truck. They open door. Cost thirty-eight dollah. I need eight.”
I gave him a hairy eyeball.
“Ask woman work here. She know me. I leave license for you!”
I figured if Peggy gave him money, then I could. He only wanted eight bucks. I gave it to him. He dug into his pockets for his driver’s license. The were empty. Right there, I knew he had conned me.
“Wallet in Car. I be back five minutes.” He wanted to use the back door but I told him no.
I told Alice what happened when she came in.
“Didn’t Peggy tell you about that guy? He got thirteen bucks out of her a month ago!”
“Fuck. I hate having a conscience; it fucks you over every time. That mother-fucker probably spoke perfect English too!”
The second customer of the day was this old American who comes in every day and orders, “The two-ten special,” which is a double de-caf Americano. He’s been pedaling in every morning from the UBC campus. He’s from out east somewhere – New York or Maine or something. His arrival coincided with the last plate of cinnamon buns going into the display case.
I hate having a smoke when De-caf Americano is out there. Every time I see him I think, “Haven’t you gone home yet.” All I want to do is decompress after the baking is done and all he wants to do is talk. Not only does he want to talk, but also he wants to talk shit about blacks, Asians, and Canada.
“You’re healthcare system is falling apart,” he said once.
“It ain’t that bad. I ain’t paid a dime and I’ve never been turned away by my doctor.”
He lounges on the back patio for about an hour, the paper in front of him waiting for his next victim. He doesn’t even excuse himself, he just starts talking like he’s picking up the conversation from yesterday. Whenever he’s out there, I keep a good distance. This morning, I was especially tired, and just wanted to sit down.
“Did you hear about the machete incident on Granville last night?”
“No, I’ve been busy baking.”
“These Asian with machetes attacked some guy. They say it’s the Asian gangs but they’re trying to keep it hush.”
This guy has been here a few weeks and already he has the inside scoop on the city?
“You’re Canadian dollar went up again. That’s not good for me.”
“Yeah, the loon is really kicking in there.”
“Well if it keeps going up, Americans will just stop coming up here.”
I shook at my head at him. So we should sabotage our economy because of American tourists.
“I should get back to work,” I said, butting my cigarette despite have a good third of it left.
I told Alice about the Decaf Americano. “Did you ask if it occurred to him a stronger Canadian dollar would mean more tourism down there?”
“Damn it! No!
I fell apart about half hour before the end of my shift. I was trying finish prepping but the line wouldn’t go away and everybody was ordering the most time consuming things to make - Italian Breakfasts, Breakfast Croissants, and Continentals. I was trying to make a veggie burger but it fell apart on the grill, then Wilson ordered a Continental with cheddar instead of Swiss and I went over the edge.
“Okay someone has to take over cooking because I’m going to lose it.”
Alice patted me on the back and sent me away with a cigarette.
We were talking about my meltdown after the shift. “It was the Continental with cheddar that put me over the edge.
“Can I have some peanut butter?”
I looked up, and there was Wilson.

GarpinBC