The Machine Always Wins on a Holiday Weekend

July third is a weird shift day. Everyone who comes in is already halfway somewhere else in their head, they order their drinks distracted, they tip in a hurry, and by ten in the morning the whole café smells like sunscreen from people stopping in on their way to wherever they're going for the long weekend. I am not on my way anywhere. I am behind the espresso machine, which jammed twice before noon and which I have started addressing under my breath like it owes me money.

I've been picking up shifts here for a few weeks now. It's not glamorous. The apron is unflattering and the milk frother makes a sound like a very small angry animal when it's not cooperating. But there's something about it that I don't hate, the rhythm of it, the way a busy stretch goes by fast, the fact that for four or five hours the only question I have to answer is 'what size?' instead of anything actually complicated. Given that my nightstand currently has a notebook with two half-finished pro-con lists and my phone has a folder of screenshots I haven't named yet, simpler is pretty good.

getting the machine to cooperate. sort of.

Around one o'clock the rush dropped off and I had maybe two minutes of actual stillness, both elbows on the counter, staring out the front window at the street. Someone was walking a dog in the heat. A car with a cooler strapped to the roof drove past. Everything felt very summer-afternoon-before-a-holiday, that specific buzzy, expectant energy where the whole town seems to be holding its breath. I didn't do anything profound with those two minutes. I just stood there.

the two minutes between rushes that feel like an hour

Shift ended at three. My feet hurt in the particular way feet hurt when you've been on tile for hours, which is different from the way feet hurt after a run, a dull, flat ache instead of the calves-and-shins thing I've gotten used to from mornings at the rec center. Tomorrow's the fourth. I have the day off. I don't have plans yet and I'm going to try to be okay with that.