Free A Trifle Dead: Cafe La Femme, Book 1 by Livia Day Page A

paranoia, but hey. Who doesn’t screen new friends these days?
    I swung myself out of the comfy couch, swatted a stack of Doctor Who novels out of Ceege’s office chair, and got online.
    Two hours later, I was still reading.

9
    T he absolute suckiest thing about running a café is working on a Saturday. I can’t avoid it. Sundays, the town centre is legitimately dead, and that’s the one thing that makes me glad Darrow didn’t set me up in Salamanca, or the espresso strip of North Hobart. My weekly sleep-in is sacred.
    But everyone shops in the centre of town on Saturdays, and they need their foamy Fair Trade vanilla mugaccinos, oh yes they do.
    So every Saturday, from 5am when I get up, 6am when I start the day’s prep to 8am when I open the doors, I hate everybody. I think that’s legitimate.
    Today I hated everybody slightly less than usual—I had spent a ridiculous number of hours in Ceege’s precarious office chair before crawling to bed with Kinky Boots and a trashy novel, but at least I hadn’t been downing over-priced cocktails until after midnight. I hadn’t had to rinse purple glitter spray out of my hair, and I was able to do that complicated braid that kept my hair out of the side salads on the very first try.
    I got to the café fifteen minutes early, and Nin had still managed to beat me to the kitchen. ‘How do you do that?’ I complained.
    She shrugged and smiled a little, her hands busy with what could only be her chocolate scone recipe.
    There is no universe in which chocolate scones should work, but—well, Nin has her own universe, and sometimes she lets others visit. ‘Mm,’ I said happily. ‘Chocolate scone days are always good days.’
    ‘You gave your Scotsman a key, then,’ said Nin, breaking her cardinal rule by speaking before ten in the morning.
    ‘How did you know about that? Did he steal the furniture?’
    Nin had a definite smirk on her face. ‘Go look at your wall.’
    I went out to the café, switching on the lights as I went. It wasn’t the brightest of days outside—it looked like we were in for winter a month or two early this year. Climate change has a particularly menacing sense of humour when it comes to Hobart.
    I’d seen some of Stewart’s artwork as part of my Friday night Googlefest. There was a mural at a high school in a Melbourne suburb, and a couple of graffiti-style pieces in Dundee and Glasgow from his teen years. There was a web-comic from a couple of years ago that cracked me up with its surreal characters and offbeat sense of humour—displaying much better writing skills than his Sandstone City ‘journalism’.
    But then, there was this.
    It’s a total cliché to have a café mural that depicts people in a café. You know the sort of thing—cartoony umbrellas and stick-thin girls sipping coffees in Paris haircuts. Blank, static faces.
    This wasn’t anything like that.
    This was a glorious, giant sketch of overturned tables and damned cheek. My favourite poster girls and boys were squabbling for room at the central table, the only one still on its feet. Wonder Woman was arm-wrestling with Holly Golightly. Sean Connery as James Bond was slipping something into Ursula Andress’s drink, while making eyes at Barbara Windsor. Doris Day rolled her eyes at them all as she texted a friend. Elizabeth Taylor’s Cleopatra flipped through an authentic 1965 issue of Vogue . Steed and Mrs Peel snogged in the corner.
    Hobart was there too, in the background. The bright water, cloudy skies, the looming mountain, the little patchwork suburbs and winding streets. The shiny metal office buildings jammed up against colonial architecture.
    ‘It’s like he can see right inside your shallow but stylish soul,’ remarked Nin, as she came through the kitchen doors to join me.
    ‘Ssh, don’t talk. I’m bonding with my wall.’ The artwork was all still in outline, though there was a promising splash of candy pink across Cleopatra’s frock. I couldn’t wait to see