by Pamela Morsi
This time there had been no gifts. Beth Ann had made it clear that Eli had bought both the house and the business. That couldn’t have been cheap. And how much money could a person make building one piece of furniture at a time? The poor guy was likely cash strapped. And now he was paying extra to employ her son.
Mazy firmly declared to herself that she would not be a grasping, selfish girlfriend. Under no circumstances would she demand expensive evenings out or have expectations for gifts. The tenderness of his kiss and the shelter of his arms made her feel valued. So many men had offered so much less.
With that small speed bump ironed out in her mind, she faced her workday with a smile on her face and a burst of enthusiasm.
She was excited about her new idea and wanted to get over to Charlie’s coffee shop to pitch it to him. She wanted to show him what she’d done. She couldn’t race over in the morning, of course. That’s when he’d be most busy with customers. She wanted his undivided attention when she talked with him.
So she spent the first part of her day looking through the Garvey file and attempting to make direct contact with some of her clients. The latter was not going so well.
“Hello, this is Mazy Gulliver from Farmers and Tradesmen State Bank. Could I speak with Ronald Peavy, please.”
The voice on the other end of the line, she was pretty sure, was Ron Peavy.
“No, uh, no, ma’am. We haven’t seen him in...months, I guess. This ain’t even his phone number no more.”
Mazy wasn’t about to call out the bank’s clients as liars.
Even less promising were the responses from those like Mitzi Gassman.
“Me and my man done split the sheet. If you’re wanting to take this mobile home and throw my young’uns out in the woods, you just come ’head. But bring a dadgum army with you when you do!”
Mazy wasn’t intimidated. And she didn’t lose her temper. She felt a kinship with these people. If it were not for her mother, she and Tru might very likely be homeless themselves. And she would have lied or threatened or whatever it took to try to keep that from happening.
What it was going to take for these people was some commitment to change, some creative thinking and some good luck. She tried to offer what help they would let her.
As the noon hour approached, her intent was to cross the street to talk with Charlie. But a pair of unexpected visitors showed up. Travis and Lacey Wallender were both in their early twenties. Nice looking, well-dressed and well-spoken, both had jobs and a combined good income. Shame-faced and nervous, they had come on their lunch hour to lay out their financial chaos on Mazy’s desk. It was breathtaking.
“We were making payments on the bank loan with the credit cards,” Lacey explained. “But these are all maxed out. I’ve applied for a couple more that I haven’t heard back from.”
Mazy lined up the plastic cards, a sinking feeling in her stomach.
“Okay, you’ve got the home mortgage and the second equity loan. Two car notes. And nine maxed-out credit cards.”
They were nodding.
“And the hospital,” Travis said as an afterthought. “We still owe fifteen hundred to the hospital from when the baby was born.”
“I guess the good news is that nobody can repossess the baby,” she said, offering what little levity the situation provided.
There were always going to be people that she just couldn’t help. She seriously feared that this couple might be one of them. But she was willing to try.
It was after two-thirty before she finally left for the coffee shop. She made a point of announcing her destination to the tellers, to save them the trouble of needing to speculate.
She carried the examples of her new idea in a brightly colored beach tote, hoping the sunny optimism that it represented was a portent of the future.
The little bell over the door tinkled as she walked in. Charlie was not alone, but the man sitting at the counter abruptly cut his long story short and headed to the door.
“Who was that?” Mazy asked after the man made his escape.
“Jimmy Ray Esher,” Charlie responded.
“Ah,” Mazy said, nodding.
Charlie cleaned off the foam cup and napkin that the man had left and wiped down the area with a rag.
“So what can I get for you?” he asked.
She pulled the retro mug from the tote and set it on the counter in front of her. Emblazoned across one side of the white cup was the name Mazy.
“May I have a cup of regular coffee, please?”
He picked up the mug and nodded. “Sure.” He filled it from the thermos carafe before setting it back in front of her. “This mug reminds me of the ones they had at Schmeltz’s Diner.”
“Yeah, my mom thought so, too,” Mazy said. “That place was before my time. But my father had a chipped one that he used for a shaving mug.”
“I like that you had your name put on it,” Charlie said.
“I didn’t have it put there,” she told him. “I put it there.”
From within the tote she brought out what looked like markers.
“Oh, you just wrote it on there.”
Mazy nodded. “I wrote it on there with a porcelain marker. You have all these colors, and you can put whatever you want on it. And then you bake it in the oven and it becomes permanent.”
“That’s pretty neat,” he said.
“Yes, it is. And I think your customers will think so, too.”
“My customers?”
Mazy unloaded the other two cups that she’d bought. “I got these at Walmart,” she said. “But I checked on the internet. They’re available for almost nothing from several restaurant supply places. Of course, you have to buy a case of them. But one case ought to be a pretty good trial.”
“You want me to start using dishware?” He shook his head. “That’s what the cafés use. This is a coffee shop―our role model isn’t Denny’s, it’s Starbucks, and they use foam.”
“I’m not thinking that you change your coffee,” Mazy said. “Just add a twist to your presentation. And don’t give up foam, cut down on it.”
“Cut down on it?”
“For the regulars,” she said. “How much does this stuff cost?”
Charlie thought for a moment. “Honestly, it’s about seventy bucks a case.”
“So that’s seventy dollars that you throw in the trash.”
A groan escaped him, but he shook his head. “That’s what we use. Not just us—Starbucks, Dunkin’ Donuts, Seattle’s Best, they all use foam cups.”
“And why do you think they do that?”
“It’s clean. It’s convenient. People are on the go. They can carry it out and get into their cars.”
“But here in your place, most people aren’t rushing into traffic. They’re sitting down for coffee and conversation.”
“True.”
“And a lot of people, like the guy just here, would probably prefer to sip every day from a nice clean china mug than from an eco-unfriendly and God-only-knows how potentially carcinogenic polystyrene container that cost you way too much.”
“Maybe,” Charlie agreed.
“Starbucks gives their customers the option. If they’re going to be staying a while, they can get a mug instead of a disposable cup. Why not give that option to your customers?” Mazy said. “Those who choose can opt for a foamless cup.”
“I’m listening.”
“You sell these mugs to the customers. Just enough to get your money back. You have them write their name on the side, or you write it for them. Then you display them in plain sight, maybe on hooks or a shelf or something. When Joe Blow comes in, you pull his mug down, fill it with his choice of coffee. If he drinks just one or if he refills five times, there is no cost to you but the coffee and the labor,
probably your own, to wash them out.”
Charlie nodded slowly. “It would save money,” he admitted. “Legally, I can’t refill a disposable cup. Sometimes I do, but I shouldn’t.”
“With this you’d have no worries.”
“It might change the feel of the place, though.”
Mazy shrugged. “It might change it for the better. Make it feel friendlier.”
He gave a thoughtful moue. “It might,” he agreed. “I do like that they look like Schmeltz’s Diner. There were lots of good vibes in that place. Those that remember it recall it with a smile.”
“Not a bad legacy to evoke,” Mazy said.
The bell chimed over the door. Before Mazy even had a chance to glance in that direction, she was being greeted.
“I was just wishing that I could sneak you out of the bank and here you are!” Karly declared with delighted enthusiasm.
“Hi. You’re here early. Did the high school go out of business?”
She laughed. “Not as long as there are fertile young minds that we can fill with more than manure.” Karly glanced over at Charlie. “The usual, please. I’m desperate.” She turned back to Mazy. “Early dismissal today. You didn’t get the note?”
She had not. “Maybe he gave it to Beth Ann,” Mazy theorized. “Although he’s not good on that kind of thing. He mostly thinks he can handle his own life without my help.”
“I think that’s in the definition of teenager,” Karly told her as she took the seat beside her at the counter. “What’s this? You brought your own cup?”
Mazy gave an abbreviated version of her presentation to Charlie, who offered his own addendum.
“It won’t save me enough money to put a dent in my debt,” he told her. “But Mazy is right that every little bit helps.”
Karly agreed. “I think it’s a great idea,” she said. “It’s what this place needs. I always thought the interior looks a whole lot more hipster than hillbilly. And we have a real shortage of hipsters in this town.”
That statement made them laugh.
“Are those the pens?” Karly asked, motioning Mazy to hand them over. “You know, I could do a lot with these. Charlie, sell me these other mugs and I’ll decorate them for me and Che. Mazy’s done hers very minimalist. I’ll do one really artistic and the other one...” She pondered for a half minute. “The other one I’ll let the kids decorate for their dad. That will show people what they can do, maybe spark some interest.”
“That’s a great idea,” Mazy said.
“You really think this will work?” Charlie asked her.
Karly nodded. “I do. I think it will work great. Of course, people will need to be able to see them.”
All three of them gazed at the wall across from the counter. Except for the blackboard listing Coffee Flavor of the Week it was completely blank. The dark wainscot paneling was ten feet high and topped by a narrow ledge.
“You could stack them there,” Mazy suggested.
Charlie was doubtful. “As long as there are a half dozen or less,” he said. “Beyond that, it would be a hassle getting to them and we’d have more breakage.”
“What about hooks?” Mazy suggested. “You could arrange them in some kind of pattern and add more as you needed them.”
“No, hooks would look cheesy,” Karly said. “It needs to be a shelf. A shelf that you can add other shelves to.”
“Where can we get a shelf? I saw some of those wire ones at Walmart the other day.”
“No,” Charlie said. “It would need to match the place better than that.”
“Can you build something?” Karly asked him.
Charlie chuckled. “I got a C in shop class forty years ago. And I’m not much improved.”
Karly turned to Mazy. “Could we get Eli to do it? I was going to ask how that girlfriend/boyfriend thing was working out for you two.”
Charlie’s jaw actually dropped. “You’re dating the Termite?”
“Well, we’re, uh, we’re seeing each other...some,” Mazy hedged.
“Could you get him to volunteer to do that for us?” Karly asked.
Mazy immediately thought about the money thing. Eli would do it if she asked him. But if cash was tight, he should be working on things he could sell.
“I hate to ask anybody to use the labor that they live on to do things for free,” she said.
“I’d trade him all the coffee he could ever drink,” Charlie vowed.
Two new customers arrived and he went to wait on them.
Mazy turned to Karly. “I don’t want to ask it of him,” she said. “I don’t feel like...like we’re close enough for me to beg a favor.”
“If you can’t, you can’t,” Karly said, patting her on the arm. “I’d ask Che, but he’s working out of Johnson City this week. And the weekend, he’s got two Fall League teams to coach. How about that boy of yours? A mom can certainly ask a favor. It would probably be a good project for him.”
“Tru? Build a shelf?”
“He’s working at Latham’s shop,” Karly pointed out. “He must be learning to do something. Ask him.”
Mazy had grave doubts about her son’s capabilities. “Well, I can ask Tru about it, anyway.”
26
Eli was yawning all through Tuesday. He’d had a “booty call” again on Monday night, and this time he’d waited until well after ten o’clock. Mazy had hurried right over. She hadn’t mentioned the time or that he was going to send her home as soon as he was done with her.
She did, clearly, want to talk to him. She was enthusiastic about a project she was working on for Charlie McDee’s coffee shop. So much so that he literally had to take her breath away to keep her from conversation. She brought it up again during the afterglow.
Eli changed the subject abruptly and definitively.
He gave her behind a hard smack.
“Ouch!”
“Don’t bring another man’s name into my bed,” he growled. “When you’re in my house, with your bare ass on my sheets, it’d better be all about me.”
She was stunned, her eyes wide with disbelief. “I...I...”
For one shiny, hopeful moment, he thought she might tell him where he could go and how he could get there.
But she didn’t.
“Sorry,” she managed to choke out.
Eli moaned aloud at the memory. It was like slapping a puppy.
He didn’t know how long he could keep this up.
“What are you groaning about?” Clark asked him. “Don’t tell me you’re getting too much sex these days. There’s no such thing as too much.”
“My sex life is my own business,” Eli answered. “What are you working on today?” He hadn’t seen his brother stir from his workbench all day.
“Nothing much,” he admitted, holding up a tool catalog from Lie-Nielsen. “My back is hurting a little. I decided to give myself a light duty day.”
To Eli’s mind, thumbing through a catalog wasn’t “light duty,” it was no duty.
“Would you like to find us some winter storage?”
“Sure, sounds great,” Clark replied. He got up from his spot and walked to the rack to get his coat.
“You’re leaving?”
Clark looked at him as if he were an idiot. “You want me to find storage, I’m going out to look at storage.”
“I thought you’d call around first, get some prices or whatever.”
Clark shook his head. “Best thing is to see what’s out there, then worry about whether we can afford it.”
Eli didn’t agree, but he let him go. It was a safe bet that Clark was, in fact, going straight home and he’d make his phone calls from the comfort of his couch.
His brother was becoming less and less of a help to hi
m. He could do the work, but it was rarely up to Eli’s standards. And things that he found tedious, like sharpening tools and grain filling lumber, he simply wouldn’t do. Those chores were always left for Eli. He didn’t mind doing them, he didn’t mind doing anything. But he did mind doing everything.
At least with Clark gone, he could bevel the door fronts of the music cabinet in peace. He actually got quite a bit accomplished for the day, more than he’d expected.
And he was able to restrategize on his bad-enough-for-her-to-fall-for-me plan. After the past few days of some very doltish behavior, it was time for a kinder, gentler Eli. He recalled in the self-help blogs how the women kept saying that aside from all the crap, their boyfriends weren’t truly horrible. For sure the yo-yoing was more difficult to deal with than constant bad dude. He needed to spend time being nice to Mazy so that when he wasn’t, it would be more startling.
He was eager to be good to her. He loved the sound of her voice, her laughter. He loved the excitement in her eyes when she talked, the enthusiasm for life that even the crappiest of circumstances couldn’t dampen for long.
Yes, maybe he would take her on a real date in her short skirt. Show her off to the world and gaze at her in candlelight.
By the time Tru showed up in the afternoon, Eli was in a happy mood.
Mazy’s son was actually working out pretty well. He came in every day with no fanfare. He seemed to understand that concentration was required. He would hang up his coat, put on an apron and start cleaning up. He didn’t talk, whistle or sing. And his phone didn’t go off with text notices every other minute.