Special

As I sit in this coffee shop, I can’t help but look. I look at the smudges and sticky rings on the tables and counters. I look at the yellow tube lights and smile at the warm glow they give off. I look at the month’s specials scrawled in a large, legible, loopy hand on the chalkboard. I wonder who takes the time to make that sign.

I picture a young, underpaid barista clocking in for an early shift. It’s her job to open the store, turn on all the lights, rearrange the chairs, turn on the coffee machine, perhaps. She wipes everything down with a moist sponge, erasing what little dust would have coated the furniture overnight. Is she the one who draws the vines and flower petals that frame the day’s specials?

I picture her stretching to draw the higher parts of the image, juggling sticks of chalk, each one a different hue. In one hand, she holds a glossy flyer that lists the specials of the month. She looks down, wrinkles her brow, and then focuses on the board. She pauses to imagine what the final product would look like. The first time the manager asked her to do it, she had been given an outline and told to memorise it. At first, she had to keep glancing at it to make sure she wasn’t deviating from the prescribed design. She needn’t have bothered. Her manager never noticed her mistakes except for this one time when she’d lost the pink chalk. She decided to use blue instead for the vague, unidentifiable berries that grew on the vines just above the large capital “S” in “Specials”. Her manager had stared at the board for a few seconds, frowning—then turned and gave her a hard stare, saying nothing. She apologized, staring at her shoelaces the whole time, and got a curt nod in response. And that was it. Still, she was a people-pleaser. She made sure never to repeat the same mistake twice.

When she quit her job because her family was moving out of the city, she had expected some kind of goodbye. Nothing much, but at least some kind of acknowledgement. All she received were bored, half-distracted instructions to teach her replacement how to write the specials on the board.