Coffee

I was in a cafe staring at the California sunset when I met her. She looked very zen at first, but also puzzled, like a lost puppy. From the way she stared at me, I knew she was trying to start a conversation, but was too shy to do so. I decided to help out, and pushed my cup of coffee in front of her. 

“Thank you. That is very nice of you.” Sally said. She pulled up a chair and sat in front of me with such nonchalance, as if we were besties for years. That’s how I knew she craved company, but had an ego that dragged her actions. “But I don’t drink coffee. They gave me mad headaches.” she said. 

“You get headaches when you drink coffee?” I asked.

“No, afterwards. The withdrawal symptoms.” she answered.

“So you’re looking out for a problem in the future.” I said.

She spread her hands out. “Aren’t we always?” 

“Not really.” I shrugged.

She paused before speaking again.

“I am not from here,” said Sally. Her voice was floating. She was here; in front of me, but her eyes were wandering. Not present.

“I can tell.” I said.

“I am a visitor,” Sally said. She was avoiding eye contact and scanning the place without a focus in her pupils. She stirred the tea spoon in the cup without any rhythm, and after some time, decided to take a sip. She gave out a quiet and quick moan and leaned back, relaxed. Her eyes cleared up a bit with a glow, but in the blink of an eye it was gone. I had a sense that something else might cheer her up even more.

“Smoke?” I pulled out a cigarette from my purse and reached into my pocket for a lighter. Again, Sally was giving me that look of hesitation. “Headaches again?” I asked her as her lips were half open. She shook her head.

“Fine.” I lit up, inhaled, then exhaled. Sally tried to breathe in the smoke, despite her refusal, like a man in a desert inhaling the cool night air. 

The chatter around us died down. 

“What do you do?” Sally asked aggressively. 

“I drink coffee and occasionally smoke. I skateboard a lot. I like palm trees and dogs.” I answered smoothly.

“That’s cute.” She scoffed. “But what about your occupation?”

“What’s an occupation?” I asked.

“A job.” she answered curtly.

“What’s a job?” I asked.

“What you do for a living.” she said.

“I just said it.” I said as I lazily made whirlpools in my coffee with the tip of my nail. “I drink coffee and occasionally smoke. I skateboard.” 

She rolled her eyes. “Is that all you do?” 

“What do you mean?” I asked. “What do you do?” 

“I’m a janitor.” She said, “I make sure that no malicious people enter the neighborhood. I make my community a better place.” She took a breath. “I get paid minimum wage.”

“Sounds like a Robocop.” I said.

“What’s a Robocop?” She asked.

“If you mean the specific mechanism behind it, I don’t know. What I know is they’re half living machines that make us safe.” I answered to the best of my ability.

“Cool—like they catch thieves and robbers and stuff?” She said quickly, suddenly getting more invested.

“What are thieves and robbers?” I asked.

She sat back down, blinking. “People who take away your property, like money, without asking you.”

“What’s property? What’s money?” I asked.

“Nevermind.” She waved her hand, like the question was a mosquito in the air. “What do you mean a Robocop makes you safe?”

“They make sure we don’t get killed. They guard our lives.” I said, finally able to answer her questions. “Isn’t it super cool? They protect our most important possession.”

She tapped her nails against the table. “So, in this goddamned place, your life is your only property?” She slammed a fist on the table. “No tangible units of wealth? God, it’s so fucked up.”

Sally rambles on in some jargon I don’t understand and reaches for my smoke. From the way she takes care of it, she has to be a chain smoker. She is so hypocritical. She knows what she wants, yet she keeps delaying her pleasure because of some unknown future possibilities. Sally is not respecting her present, her biggest gift, the single most valuable package that came with her the moment she was born. She is trying so hard to constrain herself, and I know it is going to backfire, from the cup of coffee to inhaling my smoke. But I will let her, because I am only saving her from destroying herself. It’s not unrealistic that one’s most feared consequence eventually comes back to bite them in the worst yet most predictable way. 

I know Sally is fucked up, and I think she knows it too. 

Sally is Silly

The silence wasn’t long. Sally’s eye lit up again as if she was suddenly charged after days of starvation. 

I said: “I can’t think of any more things that deserve to be claimed as your own except your presence.”

Sally was shocked. So shocked that she chugged the entire cup of coffee. She apologized and told me she would pay for a refill. Before I could say anything, she sprinted to the counter, but, of course, she was shocked again because no one was there. Sally turned her head at me, looking confused again with her doe eyes. Silly girl. I walked to the counter and told her she could simply pour herself another cup. 

“No payment? No barista? What the hell.”

“No.” I told her. “What’s a payment? You always give me these strange-ass concepts. It sounds so brutal—as if you need to give up something to get something.”

“But what if some greedy person decided to fill up all the coffees that he does not need, so everybody else has no coffee to drink anymore? 

“Why would they do that? How would they take anything out of it? They would have too much to carry in their hands, and they can always come back for another cup if they need more. People would come back here if they need a fresh cup as well, rather than getting expired, stinky drinks from those so-called greedy people. Why would they want to have more?”

Sally was again so confused. I felt like she was about to cry. She was asking if I was serious. She could not believe that in this random town, one does not need to work their ass off for a surplus of supplies. She simply could not believe that security was guaranteed for everyone. No property, no job, no chain of command based on total compensation and last names. No nothing. Individuality was praised in a non-religious, non-biased, perfectly healthy way. Sally was tearing up. Now I am the person who was panicking. I remember my psychiatrist told me that venting is a good way to cure mental diseases, a term I only hear from out-of-date textbooks with broken covers and missing pages. 

Sally asked for another smoke, but I only had one joint left, so we shared. 

Sally’s eyes immediately started bulging with veins. She said she was a disgrace in her community because she could not afford the so-called luxuries, and she was not contributing to her family and society. I asked her: “Isn’t keeping your neighborhood safe a significant task?”

“But it’s such easy work.” She said, “Everyone can do it. Machines and Robocops can easily do it with such efficiency.”

“So it’s important and easy, and you choose to do it.” I said. “Why does it make it a disgrace?”

“No one wants to do it.” she said sourly.

“No one wants to do it, yet you choose to do it.” I said. “Doesn’t that make you a great, selfless person? You would rather stay at home and do nothing, but you choose to contribute to public safety. In fact,” I smiled. “Sally, I think you’re great.”

Sally’s eyes started drifting away again.

“But this work does not pay as much.” she said quietly.

I spoke up. “Say it’s easy work and it does not make you feel valuable, so what kind of work is valuable?”

She thought for a moment, then said: “Finance, technologies, marketing…”

“Do those works make the world a better place?” I asked.

“Maybe?” She said, unsure.

“Tell me.” I asked.

She started listing off different pieces of helpful technology. “Your phones, products, malls …” 

“Sounds like charity work.” I said.

“No!” she shouted, before calming herself. “In our world, you would need to pay for those things. Every single penny goes to buying those services. If you have more, you get to enjoy more. Vice versa.”

“So those highly important works provide your community with ways to make people pay rather than enjoy things.” I said.

“No, they enjoy things as they pay …” she said.

“That does not sound very valuable to me.” I said after thinking for a moment. “Those who work invent products that people need, but come with prices that I assume are not easy to compensate for.”

“I wouldn’t say people ‘need’ those things.” Sally said. “Some of them are just fluff.”

“So,” I said, putting the pieces together. “Those who do important work invent products and services that people don’t need and make those who don’t need it trade for those with their own work, and that’s what makes those works important.” I held her cold stare in my eyes. “Is it right, Sally?”

“… Sort of.” She glanced away for a moment before returning to my eyes.

I continued: “In the meantime, you do relatively simple work that is not challenging but secures a nice, safe community, where people enjoy without trading anything off for it, right?”

She looked away again. “People think low of me.” she said.

“Do they scold you? Hit you?” I asked.

“… No.” she said.

“Then what do they do?” I asked.

“They don’t do or say anything, because I don’t belong with them.” Sally said, speaking up. “They talk about terms that I don’t understand and think low of me for not understanding them.”

“Did they tell you that?” I asked.

“No,” she mumbled. “I just figured.” 

“You didn’t know that you don’t need anything to trade for coffee here. I had to tell you this new piece of information. Do you think I think low of you? Sally, the truth is, I don’t understand your people. I don’t understand the value system there. People are proud of the sophistication levels of their skills. It’s like a super fancy vase that cannot hold much water. A vase that is so fancy that you need multiple levels of encoding and decoding just to take little sips, and you need to act all high and mighty because you believe that it’s those convoluted steps that make the resource scarce, and scarcity equals its value. But you, holding a paper cup with ample water that can quench many thirsty mouths, are considered valueless because you decided to do something that is very accessible and understandable by your people. It’s so unfair. No one should judge you based on how you provide service to people.”

Sally put down the joint and took a very serious look at me. 

“You should tell them. That you matter.”

She was silent for a couple of minutes, and I was silent too. 

Sally stood up. I noticed there was grease on her hair, and her shoes were full of dirt. I never asked where she came from, but I guess it was too late. She was leaving. 

Sally Left 

The joint was burned till it was only the length of a nail. There was a stinging pain in my fingertips. I crushed the remaining sparks and dropped them inside the coffee cup. 

The pager inside my pocket rang abruptly. Time for my shift. I reached for a couple of wrinkled dollars from my pocket and stuck them under the coffee mug. I couldn’t fight my addiction after all. The headaches were killing me. 

I walked towards the exit and pushed open the front gate. The auto bell chirped.

“Bye Sally!” Said the barista behind me. 

I nodded at her and continued going.