Following My Toes (14 page)

“It will be done in a moment!” Her blazing stare made me nervous. I couldn’t get the milk to foam at all, and it was probably already way too hot for her. I should have dumped the milk and started over, but a line had formed, and other people had become impatient. I poured the hot, fl at milk in the cup, and put a lid on it, hoping she wouldn’t notice.

No such luck. As soon as I handed her the cup, she took the lid off to inspect it. “Where’s the foam? Were you not listening to me? This is not what I wanted at all. You need to do this over.”

Groans and impatient sighs came from the people behind her. “Look, why don’t I just not charge you for this one? There’s a line...”

Her flat laugh cut me off. “You certainly won’t charge me for this, nor for the next one, which you will make correctly. I am not going to let your incompetence ruin my morning.”

My inclination was to run out of that coffee shop and never come back. But instead I turned around and tried to make her drink again. This one turned out no better. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s my fi rst day....”

“So in other words, you don’t know what you’re doing. Jesus! Where’s Sally? Sally!”

Sally came out from the back. She said in a calm voice, “Did you need something, Glenn?”

“Yeah, I need my coffee. This inept girl messed up my drink twice, and she was rude to me as well.”

My mouth fell open. “Sally, I’m sorry, but I was not rude!”

Sally put her hand on my shoulder. “Faith, that’s enough for today. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“But, there’s still two more hours in my shift! Don’t you want me to stay and help? There’s a line...”

“Sally!” At Glenn’s command, Sally’s head snapped towards her direction. “I’m already late. Please! I need my drink.”

“Faith, just go. We’ll talk tomorrow.” Sally said this softly, but I was in no way reassured. I left, more frustrated with myself than anything.

And then, when I thought my morning could not become any worse, I saw her standing at the front door of my apartment building, buzzing in vain to be let in. Before I could turn around and hide, she turned and saw me.

“Oh. There you are. Do you have a minute? We should talk.”

My shoulders sagged as I walked towards her. “Sure Carolyn. Let’s talk.”

Chapter 10

We walked up the stairs silently. When we got inside I was disappointed for once that Missy wasn’t home. Then maybe this conversation could have been postponed. Thomas was asleep on the couch, his big orange belly turned up and out, begging to be petted. However he got up as soon as we approached, as if he could feel the tension we had brought into the room.

Carolyn reminded me of a toothache drowned in Novocain. She was wearing a short loose dress, her hair was up and her makeup done. But she was pale underneath the artificial color on her face, and her eyes were fl at.

I didn’t ask her to sit down, and I didn’t sit myself, other than leaning against the arm of the sofa. Carolyn walked over to the window and looked out. With her back to me, she said, “How did your date with Max go?”

I refused to make it easy for her. “Fine. Why do you ask?”

Carolyn turned around, her arms crossed over her chest, as if to shield herself. “Did he talk about me at all?”

“Yeah, he did.”

“Oh. I sort of figured, when I hadn’t heard from you...”

“Carolyn, in case you forgot, I called you twice since you accused me of always doing what I want. You didn’t return either call, so I gave up. Yeah, Max told me about you and David, but that’s only one of the reasons why I didn’t contact you. You accuse me of being self-centered when you’re the one who is only thinking about yourself!”

Facing me, Carolyn picked at the hem of her dress, and avoided looking me in the eye. “This has nothing to do with you, Faith. I am kind of messed up right now. I’m sorry though, okay?”

Her vulnerability should have caused my heart to melt, but instead my temper exploded. “No, not okay. How can you do that to Charles? He loves you, Carolyn! He trusts you! How can you betray that? And how can you look to me for sympathy, when you know that.... that I was like Charles not too long ago? I trusted someone, and he hurt me, for no real reason! And now you’re doing the same thing to this fantastic guy! I’m sorry, but I can’t take your side on this one!”

Carolyn stood up straight as her arms fell to her side. “I see. And you’re not even interested in hearing my side of the story? Did it ever occur to you that Charles and I aren’t so perfect? I tried to tell you that before, but you didn’t want to hear it, because it was too important for you to believe otherwise.”

“How would you know what’s important to me? Don’t give me that. I moved down here, partly because it was important to you! And now this happens....”

“Yeah,” she cried. “It happened. I cheated on Charles, not on you! And if you could get down from your moral high horse for one second, you would see I’m your friend who needs help!” Carolyn threw herself into a chair, and her head fell into her hands. “I know what I did was wrong. And I ended it, okay?” She took a deep breath. “And if you want to judge me, fine, I suppose I deserve it. But don’t turn away from me.”

I sat on the couch across from her. “Then help me understand why, Carolyn. Why would you cheat on Charles?

“I can’t tell you why. I don’t know why I did it. I just know that Charles and I want different things.”

“That’s the exact reason Peter gave for breaking up with me.”

“Well, sometimes it’s a legitimate reason.”

“No, I don’t believe it is. If you want different things, then you talk about it. Jumping into someone else’s bed is not the solution!”

“I didn’t jump, Faith. This was a long time coming.”

“I still don’t get how you can justify...”

“I’m not trying to justify it Faith, I’m trying to explain!” Carolyn yelled this to the ceiling. “You said you wanted to hear it.”

I slumped back. “Fine, go ahead.” Carolyn reached out and placed her hand on my arm.

“It’s different, Faith. And I’m not Peter. Please, I’m begging you, hear me out.”

I took her hand from my arm, and placed it in my own. I squeezed it, which was about the best that I could do at the moment. “Okay, I’m listening.”

She exhaled, and began. “Well, I would read about the theater that’s going on in
New York
, and I would hear from friends who were there, and I began to resent Charles for keeping me here. Maybe it’s unfair, but it’s how I felt. And after that fight we had, you know, the night you and I went out? He was very angry when he came home and I was gone. I apologized many times, tried to talk to him, but all he would do is pout. Then two nights later, David came into Palomino.”

Palomino is the restaurant where Carolyn works. “Did he know that you work there before he came in?”

“I mentioned it to him at the C.C. Club. Anyway, I had been having a terrible night, Charles was barely speaking to me earlier that day, all of my customers had been rude, I had dropped a tray of food, gotten yelled at by the manager; it was bad. Then David showed up, offered to buy me a drink after my shift. I said yes.”

I squeezed her hand again. “Okay, I can understand you going out for a drink. But did you have to sleep with him?”

“No, but I wanted to. I KNOW that’s selfish. But being with David made it seem like it was possible to have the life I had always planned for myself, that maybe I could break out of here, and be someone else. I thought if I was capable of cheating on Charles, I was capable of leaving him as well.” Carolyn’s voice grew husky and her eyes teared up. “But I don’t know if I actually am. Yet every time I try to talk to him about how I feel, he shuts me down or changes the subject. He’s afraid to discuss our relationship.”

“Carolyn, it’s up to you then, to force the issue.”

“That’s easier said than done. The last thing I want to do is hurt Charles. But I’m thinking I should just break up with him.”

Even though I knew she had been about to say that, shock delayed my simple reply. “Are you sure?”

“No. But I can’t not tell him about David. It isn’t honest. And how can I think about a future with Charles if I can’t even be honest with him? But if I told him, he’d break up with me anyway, so....”

“Maybe you should tell him, then let him decide.”

“Right. Maybe. But either way, it’s going to be awful.”

Carolyn reached for the box of tissue Missy kept on the coffee table. After she blew her nose and wiped her face, she looked at me, and noticed for the first time I was still wearing my apron from the coffee shop. “Hey, why are you wearing that apron?”

“It’s a long story. A lot has gone on since we last talked.”

She forced a smile. “Oh, well, do you want to give me the high-lights?”

“No. Lets talk more about you. ”

My short-lived career as a barista, my stripper roommate, Ethan, Max, the fact I was maybe being stalked: I could wait to tell her about all of it. Today I was determined to do nothing but listen.

* * *

The next morning at 6:00am I returned to the coffee shop, fearing Sally would tell me I no longer had a job. When I walked in I found her humming to herself while restocking the paper products.

“Hey Sally, how are you?” I said, bracing myself for the worst.

She looked at me with a smile. “Faith! Good morning. Ready for another day of drudge work?”

“You mean I’m not fired?”

Sally finished stuffing napkins into the dispenser, picked up the box they come from and walked towards the back. “Of course you’re not fired. Glenn is always like that. She treats every person who works here the same. Why do you think I have so much trouble keeping employees?”

“Oh.” So I wasn’t the only one who had been terrorized by that evil girl! “Well, if she’s always like that, why don’t you tell her that she’s banned from the shop? I can’t imagine anyone would miss her. She was plain awful!”

Sally paused at the door, and the smile she had been wearing faded from her face. “I’d miss her. You see, Glenn is my daughter.”

I instantly apologized to Sally, saying things like, “I’m sure I just need to get to know her better,” and, “It’s my fault. She was probably having a bad morning, and I made it worse.” Sally nodded and accepted my words, but I worried she was just too nice to actually express her anger.

I scratched my head in confusion over the whole matter. How had someone as kind as Sally spawned someone as evil as Glenn? I found this especially troubling since I had been looking to Sally for a bit of maternal-like comfort every now and again. Plus, this meant that I would be seeing Glenn on a daily basis, and I couldn’t complain if her treatment towards me continued to be dreadful.

My thoughts were interrupted by my work duties. “Faith, can you go get the baked goods and lay them out,” Sally asked from the back. I did so, and afterwards I brewed the coffee. Soon I was absorbed in the task of running a coffee shop, and once we opened and customers came, there was no time to further discuss or apologize for my earlier mistake.

And, despite everything, my second morning of work went fairly well. I was keeping up with the drink orders, and even had a little time to make conversation with the customers. A lot of them were around my age, so I pegged a few as potential friend material. Not that I was looking for dates. Listening to Carolyn’s tormented confessions the night before had only strengthened my resolve that love was not for me, at least not for the time being.

So it didn’t matter that I hadn’t seen Ethan come in that morning. However, it did matter that I would have to deal with Glenn again. When she approached, she wore the same air of impeccability and aggression as she had the day before. The only blessing was this time, there wasn’t a line.

She marched right up to the counter, and simply said, “Same as yesterday. Get it right today, okay?”

I had been wiping the counter, so I put down my sponge, and mentally tried to dissolve the butterflies in my stomach. “You wanted a double skim latte, heavy on the foam?”

“Isn’t that what I said? And foam means foam, understand?”

I looked briefly to make sure Sally was nowhere within earshot before I made my sarcastic reply. “Actually, no. Please explain it to me.”

Without missing a beat, Glenn retorted, “It means you need to learn how to do your job. I realize it’s hard for Sally to find intelligent people for this type of work....”

“Excuse me,” I said. “Yesterday was my first day, I was still learning. And I happen to be very intelligent. In fact, normally I work as an English teacher. This is only temporary, so I’d appreciate it if you would ease up on me a little.”

Glenn smirked. “You’re a teacher? Well that’s one reason why our educational system is in crisis.”

I said nothing—I decided it was better to keep my cool. And I did myself proud. I had just finished making the perfect latte, not too hot with a lot of foam, when Ethan walked in. I concentrated and kept my mojo working, and I even managed to hand Glenn her drink without spilling it. However, she wasn’t even paying attention.

“Ethan! Here you are! I’m so sorry we missed each other yester-day!” She spoke as if she was a completely different person – one who didn’t eat kittens for breakfast.