my bets in place, I wasn’t even going to look. So I wasn’t going to bother going back to New York. But I had been to Omaha before, and I knew I didn’t want to spend two days there, sitting in my hotel room or sitting in some restaurant alone eating steak.
So I did what anyone would do. I rented a car. It was October, but it felt like a summer day, so I got a convertible, threw my bag in the back, and I started driving.
Nora
Nora Meets Timothy
Finally, it was Monday—heart-attack Monday—and I couldn’t have been happier to go back to work.
I worked at Starbox on Washburn. Not Starbucks but Starbox. There were fewer than thirty Starbucks in the whole state of Kansas, and they were mostly in the bigger cities. About five years before, at the height of the Starbucks craze, my boss, Neil, decided our town deserved a gourmet coffee shop too. When he designed the store, he used the Starbucks layout, the Starbucks menu, and (almost) the Starbucks name. The only difference was that with the name Starbox, he thought it would be cute to put stars on the ceiling of the store.
I thought it was a miracle that he hadn’t gotten sued for copyright infringement. But, then again, there would have been nothing to get. It turned out that the gourmet coffee market was not a gold mine waiting to be tapped, at least not in our town. People preferred to go to Joe’s Diner and get a cup of coffee there for fifty cents, rather than coming into Starbox and paying three or four dollars for something that, as one town resident said, didn’t even taste like coffee but more like some kind of liquid dessert. The people in our town didn’t seem to have a lot of free time; they didn’t seem to have laptops they would want to work on while sipping lattes. They liked their coffee simple, and even if they came in to take a look, they just as often left without buying anything. Almost everyone asked me, “What does ‘Venti’ mean?” I had to explain that it was a large. “So what is a Tall?” they asked. And I told them that was a small. Then they’d shake their heads and ask, “Then why don’t you just say that?”
That was a question I couldn’t answer.
As a result, a whole hour could, and often did, go by without anyone coming into the store. Then it was just my boss and me.
It was tough for the first year that I worked there. There were times I thought I might go crazy, but sometime in the second year I realized I had started to enjoy it. It happened almost without my noticing. Nothing actually changed, but somehow what had once made me miserable, now I found I enjoyed. I loved the smell of coffee. I loved the hush that descended on the store when it was empty. And I loved the big plate-glass windows that faced the empty lot across the street where the Arby’s used to be before they tore it down a few years back. Beyond the empty lot there was the parking lot for the bowling alley, and beyond that I could see the wheat fields that surrounded the town, short and shorn, the stubble a pale dull tan. Every afternoon, when the sun dropped low enough in the sky, the rays streamed in over those fields, sparkling off the roofs of the cars parked for the afternoon bowling league, straight through those huge plate-glass windows.
I loved it, but the sun on those windows drove Neil crazy. He was always trying to get the glass perfectly, spotlessly, transparently clean. He was on medication for OCD, but it didn’t seem to be helping. He’d declare the windows clean in the morning, but once the afternoon sun hit, streaks and smudges suddenly appeared, like invisible writing illuminated under ultraviolet light. Neil seemed to think that if only he found the right product, that first wipe of the cloth could produce a pure arc of clarity.
It seemed like every week Neil would come in with some new cleaning solution. This week was no different. That morning Neil came in with yet another bag. He’d been up to Wichita over
So I did what anyone would do. I rented a car. It was October, but it felt like a summer day, so I got a convertible, threw my bag in the back, and I started driving.
Nora
Nora Meets Timothy
Finally, it was Monday—heart-attack Monday—and I couldn’t have been happier to go back to work.
I worked at Starbox on Washburn. Not Starbucks but Starbox. There were fewer than thirty Starbucks in the whole state of Kansas, and they were mostly in the bigger cities. About five years before, at the height of the Starbucks craze, my boss, Neil, decided our town deserved a gourmet coffee shop too. When he designed the store, he used the Starbucks layout, the Starbucks menu, and (almost) the Starbucks name. The only difference was that with the name Starbox, he thought it would be cute to put stars on the ceiling of the store.
I thought it was a miracle that he hadn’t gotten sued for copyright infringement. But, then again, there would have been nothing to get. It turned out that the gourmet coffee market was not a gold mine waiting to be tapped, at least not in our town. People preferred to go to Joe’s Diner and get a cup of coffee there for fifty cents, rather than coming into Starbox and paying three or four dollars for something that, as one town resident said, didn’t even taste like coffee but more like some kind of liquid dessert. The people in our town didn’t seem to have a lot of free time; they didn’t seem to have laptops they would want to work on while sipping lattes. They liked their coffee simple, and even if they came in to take a look, they just as often left without buying anything. Almost everyone asked me, “What does ‘Venti’ mean?” I had to explain that it was a large. “So what is a Tall?” they asked. And I told them that was a small. Then they’d shake their heads and ask, “Then why don’t you just say that?”
That was a question I couldn’t answer.
As a result, a whole hour could, and often did, go by without anyone coming into the store. Then it was just my boss and me.
It was tough for the first year that I worked there. There were times I thought I might go crazy, but sometime in the second year I realized I had started to enjoy it. It happened almost without my noticing. Nothing actually changed, but somehow what had once made me miserable, now I found I enjoyed. I loved the smell of coffee. I loved the hush that descended on the store when it was empty. And I loved the big plate-glass windows that faced the empty lot across the street where the Arby’s used to be before they tore it down a few years back. Beyond the empty lot there was the parking lot for the bowling alley, and beyond that I could see the wheat fields that surrounded the town, short and shorn, the stubble a pale dull tan. Every afternoon, when the sun dropped low enough in the sky, the rays streamed in over those fields, sparkling off the roofs of the cars parked for the afternoon bowling league, straight through those huge plate-glass windows.
I loved it, but the sun on those windows drove Neil crazy. He was always trying to get the glass perfectly, spotlessly, transparently clean. He was on medication for OCD, but it didn’t seem to be helping. He’d declare the windows clean in the morning, but once the afternoon sun hit, streaks and smudges suddenly appeared, like invisible writing illuminated under ultraviolet light. Neil seemed to think that if only he found the right product, that first wipe of the cloth could produce a pure arc of clarity.
It seemed like every week Neil would come in with some new cleaning solution. This week was no different. That morning Neil came in with yet another bag. He’d been up to Wichita over
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