Jason is hungry. Not for a scone or a croissant or a madeleine. He wants lunch: a big sandwich at least, if not something hot, with a salad on the side. Paychecks won't come in until 3 p.m. at the earliest—more likely it will be 5—and his shift mates know better than to float him lunch money in the meantime. Someone looted the tip jar during the morning rush—not him, this once—so he'll have to wait, who knows how long, until there's enough to buy him a sandwich and then until he can pocket it without being caught.
In the last twenty-four hours he has opened his refrigerator thirty times. Last night, after having a fried egg on toast with a jar of pickles on the side, he sneaked his roommate's leftover mac and cheese one forkful at a time until so little was left he had to finish it off and wash the casserole so Jimi would forget it had been in there. Jason continued to gravitate to the fridge, hopeful each time he opened the door that he would find some forgotten morsel he had missed. But after he made a ketchup sandwich with the last heel of bread, there was nothing but a jar of tomato sauce overtaken by a mold culture, a jar of horseradish, a loaf of tofu, two unexposed rolls of film, and Penelope's macrobiotic wheat germ concoction, which made him gag even when it was just sprinkled on beans tossed in olive oil. His six-three frame is starving.
As Jason wonders if he might be able to scrounge up some protein powder, make some kind of smoothie with the wheat germ and tofu and some honey, a woman a head shorter than himself walks in. Her shiny black hair is caught in a loose braid that hangs a little below the middle of her back. She seems to be a little nervous, or perhaps just energetic. Her hands rest on a fat brown wallet. Her thin, pale fingers taper to pointy oval nails painted a glossy beige. Her fingers look incredibly soft, are wrinkled only at the knuckles. She can't keep them still. They drum the counter, flip and spin the wallet around. She doesn't remove her sunglasses. The wallet bulges with more receipts and business cards and bills and credit cards than there are slots and compartments allotted for. Jason nods a hello, juts his chin in her direction to invite her to place her order.
"Hi. I'd like a double decaf low-fat, low-foam mocha, please. No whipped cream, but a dash of cinnamon on that, if you would." Jason bobs his head twice, slowly, to let her know he's registered all that. Her phone rings.
This woman is perhaps the only person in the world capable of speaking on a mobile phone so discreetly that her words are unintelligible. Jason can't even tell whether the call is business or personal. She could be ordering a hit on him, or describing him to a girlfriend, he thinks, staring at her face while he steams the low-fat milk, then he realizes she could also be watching him watch her, for all he knows, as her eyes are obscured behind her shades. She abruptly turns away from him, leaving her wallet on the counter beside her. She continues to spin it with her free hand. Business is slow enough that Jason can take his time concocting her drink. So he does, all the while watching the wallet and willing the bulging mass to spring open, for that stack of credit cards to spill onto the counter, so he can slip one under the register as he helps the distracted woman reassemble her affairs. Then he realizes this won't work if she has an Asian last name. His gothness couldn't pass for being her husband without showing ID. The best he can hope for is a big tip.
Just as Jason is running out of ways to draw out the drink-making process, she taps her phone off and turns to him. He slides the coffee across the counter to her, along with a plate on which he has placed a biscotti, and points her to the condiment station, where she can garnish her beverage. She retrieves a five-dollar bill without compromising the rest of her stash and hands it to him, then sees the biscotti.
"Is that mine? I didn't order it."
"It's on me. Special today." He places a napkin on top of the plate with a casual wink. She just smiles at him and dumps whatever change he returns to her into the tip jar—as he knew she would. Her phone rings again, so she grabs the plate and the coffee and hurries over to a table to take the call.
A buck-fifty-seven in the jar—not a bad start. Two more of those, and he can get an egg salad from the sandwich truck; three more, and he can add a cup of soup. As long as he makes the dough in the next forty-five minutes, before Angelina comes in. Anyone else he can scam, but not her. The first thing she does is count the jar. She may not need the money like Jason does, but she wants it just as badly. She's a stickler for dividing it fairly.
The next two customers are an elderly white couple: the woman, short, round, and rosy; the man, tall, drawn, and peaked. She does all the talking, orders them both hot chocolates, one croissant to share. When he pushes their drinks to them, Jason makes sure to accidentally jostle the tip jar. The woman doesn't appear to notice, but does drop her coinage into it—all of thirty-five cents. The next two customers have exact change for their orders. Rarely do people bother to fish in their pockets to tip. Jason sees he has fifteen minutes on the clock. His stomach barks a plea.
A man wearing what appear to be brand-new athletic shoes and a woman carrying a large Gumps bag and a Lonely Planet guide enter, arguing in a foreign language. Two types of people who never tip are arguing couples and foreigners. What Jason does not realize is that they are not arguing, merely animated, and they had read in the book that it is considered rude not to leave a tip in an American restaurant. They leave him a dollar for each drink and all their coinage, eighty-seven cents. As they turn to go, the woman shoves something toward him and says, "Someone forget." Jason looks down at the bulging wallet, slides it behind the register, and nods a solemn thanks.
He feels just one crisp note in the billfold. On second thought, it's two twenties stuck together, born together from the ATM. He removes them and folds them in one deft flick, pushes the wallet deep under the espresso machine with one hand as he slides the other to his pocket, seemingly to remove his lip balm, which he nonchalantly applies just as Angelina comes in the door. She doesn't pause to ask her question or even look at him as she saunters behind the counter.
"You skim your tips yet?"
"Oh, that's right." Jason leans around the register, plunges his hand into the jar and retrieves four singles and four quarters, leaves one single and a mound of pennies, nickels, and dimes. "I almost forgot," he says to the cloud of perfume Angelina has left behind her. "It's been pretty slow."