#1
April 22nd. Mister Hairy-Nose is back, and he’s complaining like every Monday because his cappuccino is too hot.
“Hello, Mr. Grimshaw, as usual, cappuccino?”
“Not too hot, huh... It’s always too hot...”
Don’t worry, I’ll make it boiling hot for you, old man.
“Careful not to burn yourself, Mr. Grimshaw. Have a nice day!”
9:23 am, it’s Mrs. DONTALKTOMEH who shows up with her sunglasses, her little bun so perfect that it looks like a lump on her skull and her smartphone stuck between her shoulder and her ear. Right on time.
“Hi Veronika! Looking gorgeous, as always!”
The woman with the bun winked at him over his glasses and grabbed the little packet he handed her.
“Strawberry and vanilla donut. I kept it for you, I know it’s your favorite.”
“Oh dear, I don’t know what I’d do without you, Sam! Come on, I gotta go, I got three clients to see before noon! I’ll see you tomorrow, sweetie.”
Sam nodded and raised his hand to wave goodbye, waiting for the glass door of the shop to close behind her with a little bell jingling before wiping his palm on the apron tied around his waist. Good. If everything went as planned, he had six to eight minutes before the next wave of customers.
And in San Francisco, everything always went as planned. A little life, a calculated life, just as he calculated the position of the chocolate chips he poured on the icing of the donuts so that Karen or Jeremiah’s “breakfast selfies” would look good on their Instagram. He’d only been working at ‘Donuts Go Nuts’ for a few months - since he moved to the city, actually - but he’d already figured out that Californians were only expecting three things from him.
To feel unique and privileged, a nice pair of buttocks molded into tight jeans and as much colour as they could get on a single donut.
Sam finished wiping the empty tables. Through the window, the fog that constantly hovered over the city was devouring the red pylons of the Golden Gate between two buildings. A sigh escaped his lips, but the ringing of the bell covered it when the front door opened, announcing two new customers. If only something could happen...
***
“What a shitty town. Heads burned in the daytime and asses freezed at night.”
A small wave of grunts echoed that statement. As soon as they faded away, a few wood creaks broke the silence. Kicks in a pallet. The pieces, scattered on the concrete of the parking lot, were one by one thrown into the garbage can, from which some flames rose, projecting a soft orange glow on tired faces. The hands reached out to them in unison.
An unpleasant shiver shook his thin body and, holding his fingers with purple fingernails in front of his trembling lips, he slowly blew warm air over his pale skin. He felt as if he had frozen from the inside.
“Toes.”
He lifted his head slightly when he heard that hoarse voice, just enough to bring the silhouette of an old man, deformed by the layers of patched clothes falling on his shoulders, into his line of vision. His trousers, largely torn from his knees to his ankles, revealed two legs as thin as wooden sticks.
“Move ’em. Move ’em ’til the sun rises again, and they won’t fall off.”
He punctuated his sentence by a toothless smile and handed an open tin can to the boy. Under the black hood of his sweater, he saw his single blue eye leave his own and land on his hand.
“It’s porridge.”
A tired sigh escaped from his chapped lips before grasping the can with a pout of disgust. Without waiting for any thanks, the old man turned around and walked to the burning garbage can.
And so he found himself alone again, sitting on a moist piece of cardboard, his back leaning against the fence that separated the squat from the street, like an outdoor prison. From time to time, a few cold raindrops fell on him, escaping from the highway that passed over their heads. Hidden in the shadows, far from the light, far from the eyes of the Californians, like the rats they didn’t want to see coming out of the sewers. A rat with a box of rice porridge.
The tin can hit the ground, spilling the gooey oatmeal into the gutter.
***
“You know, if you’re that bored, I wonder if San Francisco was the best option for you.”
With his chin leaning against the desk, his buttocks at the edge of his stool and his fingers dipped in his fine black hair, Sam detached his grey irises from the wall clock and carried them to the young girl leaning against the cash register. 9:47 pm. With a loose movement, she pushed back the thick strand of electric-blue hair that fell on her nose and shrugged her shoulders.
“You don’t have to stay in California. You could go anywhere.”
“Anywhere?”
“How about New York?”
“I already have a roommate named Joey, so if I work at a New York coffee shop, my life’s about to become an episode of Friends.”
“Then all you have to do is adopt a duck and a chicken.”
Sam rolled his eyes as Colyn giggled, then she grabbed her cup of steaming coffee and showed her tongue, revealing her shiny piercing before leaving the shop with a ring of the bell. Slowly, the door closed behind her, letting a slight draft of fresh air enter the empty room.
Sam stood up with a sigh. At least his “American best friend” (Colyn had earned that title three days after they met) regularly came to visit at closing time. Otherwise, he would have been able to fall asleep on the cash counter, and with his boss sunbathing in Florida, it would have been like personally inviting all the thieves in the area to take a cup of tea and the day’s money.
All right.
His hand pulled out a small laptop from a drawer and placed it on his thighs. As the screen lit up, bathing the young man’s face in a white light, his grey eyes wandered over the shop’s wide windows. Without the few lights that covered the cars parked on the side of the street with a yellowish glow, he would have been surrounded by a black curtain. There wasn’t a cat in the streets. Not even a trace of those green parrots that flew around the neighborhood during the day. He was alone.
Good.
Sam smiled unconsciously as a long string of numbers appeared before his eyes. Alone, yes, but he had gained a few hundred more followers on his blog in the last few days. It wasn’t just the customers of Donuts Go Nuts that he had easily figured out: it was the paradox of the society itself - and Californians even more so, perhaps. An attractive, shiny facade to hide all the ugly thoughts they couldn’t express without becoming an outcast. San Francisco, the capital of Hypocrisy. It would have been stupid not to take advantage of it. It didn’t take him more than a few days in that city for the brilliant idea of this blog to grow in his mind. A blog on which he was no longer Samuel McGorygle, an exiled Irish man forced to adopt that ridiculous Californian accent and dye his hair black so his redhead wouldn’t betray him. He was no longer Samuel; he became H0ax, an American, a pure product of the Bay Area.
Better yet, he was the one who was saying out loud what everyone else was whispering. Every shameful thought, every desire, every wish, everything that made him an imperfect human being, everything that this society of appearance in which he was living during the day hated, came to light every night. No limits. Behind a mask, he exposed himself without filtering, and those who protested against his posts in front of their co-workers rushed to his blog once away from eavesdroppers.
So, he could actually allow himself to smile at that counter.
He looked at his blank page. That said, he would have a hard time satisfying his audience if he couldn’t find something new to tell them... The adventures of his most unbearable clients tended to become... boring.
Perhaps it was his destiny to leave the Bay Area, and go to New-York.
As he opened a new tab to inquire about the price of a domestic duck, a bell rang in the deserted shop. If it was Mr. Grimshaw who came to tell him he had burnt his tongue with his coffee...
“I’m sorry, but we’re cl...”
His eyes popped out of the screen when he heard a little metallic sound. Replacing the flashing white page, his eyes were plunged into the black barrel of a gun.
Oh, fuck.
