Day 3 of 31 Stories - Confessions of a Real-Life Barista

Today took a little longer to get the words out, and I'm not as happy with it as I would like. I guess that early rush of enthusiasm may be starting to wane a little, which may be a problem, considering it's all of day 3. So, erm, enjoy (with the usual caveats) day 3 - Confessions of a Real-Life Barista

Even though time in the Library didn't follow the same rules as they did out in the "real" world, even the cafe closed after a while. Grant was on the closing shift this time, which was one of his favorite times to work. There was something satisfying about clearing the clientele out and locking the door behind them, then taking a minute to breathe before cleaning up and getting ready for the next day.

It wasn't the kind of gig he'd expected when he'd answered the ad in the paper, but then, he'd been desperate. He'd been laid off from his last job at one of the mega-chain shops, and it had been long enough between jobs that he was getting to be less picky than he probably should have been. Still, he'd interviewed with the very kind, rosy-cheeked owner of the cafe, who basically just wanted to know if he knew how to make a couple of types of coffee and was fascinated by the idea of cold brew, and he'd been given a lot of paperwork to fill out before he started the next day. Things moved fast, but the pay was extraordinary, the benefits were great, they even set him up with an apartment, and he didn't have to worry about wearing a mask or quarantining so long as he stayed in the Library. It had taken a few weeks before he realized that nearly everyone he interacted with was, you know...fictional.

Clean the tables first, or sweep? Mentally he tossed a coin, and it came up tables. He hummed to himself as he prepared the bleach rags and put on his gloves. Jen, another person from what he couldn't stop calling the "real world" but she called "Prime," had been working in the cafe for a while, and she said that the gloves weren't necessary. Things didn't work in the Library they way they worked in Prime, and his skin wouldn't get dry or scratchy from the bleach they way they did back home. Grant was still skeptical, and he found himself falling into his normal habits when he didn't have someone around to tell him otherwise.

He still didn't understand why the people who worked in the cafe had to be from Prime, instead of from a book, but that seemed to be the policy for any of the places that served food in the Library. Jen had referenced some kind of manual that probably existed somewhere, and Grant was a little leery of seeking it out just yet. He wasn't sure why, but it didn't feel right to inspect things too closely. He was still convinced that this was all some kind of fever dream, and that he was likely to wake up at any moment to find himself still sleeping on his sister's couch, scrounging for change to hit a cheap fast-food joint and hoping that the phone call from the hospital wouldn't come. He winced as he thought of his father, stubborn to the end, lying in the hospital bed and still refusing to admit that the virus was as big of a deal as everyone was telling him.

Grant finished wiping down the tables mechanically, putting the seats up as he finished each table. There were some benefits to working in a location that was based in fiction - for one thing, boring chores didn't take nearly as long in writing as they did in real life, so the vast number of tables were cleaned in the blink of an eye. He tipped the bleach bucket down the sink in the kitchen, rinsing and drying as needed, and pulled out the broom and mop. Closing duties were much easier when he only had to deal with the highlights, as it were.

There were still some growing pains he was dealing with; for instance, he was unable to think the brand names of the places he'd worked or the businesses he patronized out in Prime, no matter how much he would have liked to. He didn't seem to be able to spend time just staring off into space blankly, but rather had some kind of constant narration running through his head; at least with that he got to choose what kind of voice he wanted to hear it in, and he'd had a lot of fun playing with that the first few days. He still alternated between Morgan Freeman and Dolly Parton, just because.

Satisfied that the cafe was as clean as he could get it, he finished putting his cleaning supplies away and started turning off the lights. Once he got back to his apartment, he planned to play around on his phone for a bit, maybe give his sister a call, then see what video games he wanted to play. He was grateful that Prime technology still worked in the apartments - he couldn't bear thinking about losing all the tethers to his old life. With one last sweep for anything he'd missed, he headed out of the cafe, locking the door behind him and moving swiftly toward his home. His strange, mostly fictional, possibly induced by a fever dream, home.