Free The Journey Prize Stories 27 by Various

the only one who doesn’t open my mouth or close my eyes.

    Suddenly, the gates of hell open wide. It is an absurd horror show. Het couples make out in the booths; some fight and cry.Drag queens dance on the tables and the crowds of generally wasted zombies come looking for coffee after getting stoned. Two girly het-girls are necking and feeling each other up while their boyfriends are banging out a rhythm on the tables with their fists, cheering them on. There’s an itchy junkie at the takeout counter. I watch him scratching the track marks on his arms, then trying to twist his fingers around to the unreachable itch between his shoulder blades before I realize I’m digging my own nails under the back of my bra strap, scratching where the sweat and polyester meet. Every so often he twitches as if to shake off a bug. I twitch too. I realize I’ve been staring at him and make myself look the other way.
    Cocoa Cherry sashays in. This is her kingdom, and she always makes an entrance. She yells out, “We real cool. We left school.” A middle-aged man, who has spent his single-malt evening at the Rose and Thistle, yells back in a thick Glaswegian brogue, “Lerrnsum rrree-al English, yabitch!” We shout out our Gwendolyn Brooks tribute with our own twists—a different rhyme each time. I yell back to Cocoa Puff, “We work late. We tempt fate.” She stands on a chair and points at me: “You jail bait. You can’t wait!” We high five as I stack the coffee cups in my left hand. She turns to Michael, who’s running his ass off, and we get Brooks’s poem back on track: “We jazz June. We die soon.” It’s true.
    No one’s making more coffee—every station has run out. I brew more, running from station to station while my unclaimed food orders start to wilt. Once there’s some coffee going, there aren’t any cups. The dishwasher can’t keep up. I grab some dirty mugs, quickly wipe the lipstick off the rims, and fill them up again. I glance back at the kitchen. “Kumar,” I yell, “weneed more cups.” He doesn’t understand English, but I have to say something so that maybe the invocation alone will make the cups appear. I can see the bread on the sandwiches curling up under the heat lamps and feel a panic of urgency as the bacteria breeds: mmm salmonella sandwiches—the perfect ritual end to a night of debauchery. I have a table of eight reasonably sober women who all want more coffee, and they’ve been waiting forever for their food: four skinny-mini salads, one Mu-Mu Hawaiian burger, and three orders of chicken Wing-Dings. I can’t bear to say “Wing-Dings” again over the PA system, it’s just too humiliating. But I realize that Stacey-Jane has unwittingly picked up my order from the kitchen and is serving it to a table of jocks who are flirting with her.
    I have a table of drunken hockey fans. “Go Leafs Go!” they chant. “Leafs all the way, the Habs are gay.” I figure they won’t even notice if I give them dirty spoons, they’re so loaded. But there are more people coming in, and the hostess is seating them at dirty tables because the bus boys are hopelessly behind. There’s a drunken Leafs fan following me into the kitchen looking for a clean spoon and, reaching down, he makes a sloppy grab at my thigh. I accidentally kick him in the lip and he starts bleeding. Steve is coming toward me and I know I’m in trouble for assaulting a customer. I pretend like nothing has happened and dash away with a coffee pot, giving the last thick dregs to the semi-sober women. I pause at the pickup window and yell at Billy, “Where the hell is my Mu-Mu Burger?” “Moo,” says the grill man. “Moo Moo,” says the next line cook. The kitchen exists in a different time zone that’s two hours behind. “Why don’t you ask the fucking cow?” asks Billy. “What am I, a psychic?”
    I grab more dirty teaspoons out of the bus pan and run them under the tap. There are never enough utensils. The clan from