The following is part of a serialized story, Everyone Thinks I Dream of Chocolate. You can find the first chapter here.
Despite the sandwich shop being a front for the Chocolate store, we still had to treat it like a real business. It did have its busy days, especially during the weekends when we got the mass of visitors and tourists. During the week, however, it functioned more like a cafeteria restaurant whose prime function was to feed an office building.
Like how Dick spent much of his time at the Old Town Mill, so did all of the other business owners. This was their livelihood without a corporate safety net. Their businesses were their first and last line of defense in surviving the capitalist crisis. These high stakes made their work hours longer than the 40 hours I ever put in.
Because of this, owners and employees often needed food. Lunch, dinner, or even a snack. They all had their preferences and their routines.
From the west end, Brenda often came around 3 or 4pm, after any lunch rush. She always ordered a side. Fries, onion rings, or cheese sticks. These didn’t take too long. Just stick ’em in the fryer and pull them out when they have that nice, crispy brown. I used to have to check the insides of the onion rings or cheese sticks with poker to make sure it was cooked all the way but after a while, I had gained a sense for it, both in time and looks.
Brenda was an older woman who worked at a beauty parlor. She provided beautician services to adults and face painting for kids. She often placed her order by phone or came personally only to say she’ll “be right back” only to disappear over at the East End for 10 minutes to gossip with Miss Kathy.
Dick found this to be annoying.
“By the time she gets back, the food will be cold as shit,” he would say.
I personally didn’t care, one way or the other. I just wanted to get back to making the chocolate. Take too long and the chocolate would set into that chalky bloom, an indicator that I fucked up a batch.
Speaking of The Gift Shop, Melissa usually came for a meal at least twice a week. She often asked me to give her the website for all my writing, which I never did. She quit (or got fired, I never found out) before I left so I will probably never get the chance. She was a (single?) mother of two or three kids. Still, she had an almost youthful way of conversation, something I always appreciated about her. She never let the long days get to her.
Next to the Gift Shop was The Clock Store. Despite analog timepieces continuing to go out of fashion, those guys never seemed to run out of clock to repair. They had a backlog that always seemed to stretch years, the waitlist famous among timepiece collectors for being a long wait. Yet, the list kept getting longer so they must have done good work
The clock guys were a bunch of old heads, working away in an old fashion shop with an old-fashioned work ethic. That’s probably why the owner, Rob, and Dick had such a tumultuous friendship. The short man, about 5 foot 4 inches, always wore a blue button-up shirt tucked under tan slacks. He wore large glasses and a white beard. Dick is of similar stature but often wore shorts over his button-up and had an apron. They both came from a time when men expected to be mean and irritable. I could expect a shouting match between them one second than a good laugh the next.
I don’t blame Dick for getting annoyed at Rob either. Rob had a specific habit of wanting custom orders. He always removed or added something to fit his fickle, ever-changing taste. Other, he wanted us to completely dissect a recipe until it was completely unrecognizable from the original blueprints.
We once had a secret menu item titled “Rob’s Salad.” Spinach, tomato, chicken, with dressing on the side. He ordered this every Saturday for a while and we hoped this would solve all of our problems. After a while, he started making modifications to this, too.
One especially busy Saturday, when we had a line that snaked around to the eatery, Bob cut the entire line and went over to one of our employees personally. We took his order. I can’t remember what it was, a testament to whatever Frankenstein creation he wanted us to make that day. I took his order to the back and gave it to Dick. He took a mean look at it. Sweating under the haze and smog of the fried oil clouds, he directed the look to me. At first, I hoped he wasn’t pissed off about my handwriting, again.
“Is this Rob from the Clock Shop?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
He took a deep breath then yelled at the top of his lungs.
“God damn it, Rob! Seriously? Today of all days?”
“What?!” Rob said, screaming over the crowd. He peeked his head over the counter and lifted his hands up in a defensive shrug.
“You’re gonna have to wait, Bob. There is too much going on today.”
“That’s fine.” Bob put his hands up, again defensive but this time in confirmation. “I can wait.”
The East End also had an upstairs, where they had a game store, popular with the locals for board games, tabletop roleplaying games, and trading card competitions. The owner, Bill, was a crotchety old bag of resentment. I always imagined that his debilitating body was held together by his glasses like a pin that tied a laundry bag together. His son-in-law, Mark, was also held together in a similar way, except his body was filled with poor nutritional choices. Mark had the body and the face of a goblin and the voice of a chain-smoking Keebler-elf, resulting in a neutral nasal. He seemed to buy lunch almost every day and return later for a snack and soda.
“Why don’t you ever bring lunch?” Dick asked once. “It would be cheaper and doesn’t clog your arteries.”
“Too delicious,” Mike said followed by an awkward laugh. It wasn’t the moment. Mike was just awkward.
After he left, Dick whispered into my ear, “I’m surprised he isn’t dead yet.”
As much as Dick and I found the Game Store owners annoying as shit, we couldn’t deny that they also brought the most customers. Wednesday night was for Magic the Gathering. Thursdays were for Dungeons and Dragons. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were for everything else. Even though nerd culture has become somewhat mainstream thanks to the internet, this was a rumpus room of some good old-fashioned goblins whose main diet was greasy sandwiches and anything fried in dirty oil at over 400 degrees. They seemed to come right around early dinner. Our last hour of those shifts was often a scramble between finishing orders and cleaning up so we could go the fuck home.
Next to them was the woman over at S&S, a thrift boutique primarily run by the owner, her daughters (must have had at least three), and a consistent group of volunteers. Most of them just got coffee. One of them, Tara, came down every once in a while. Having a strict diet due to a gluten allergy, she opted for a salad and fries. I always made sure to give her an extra dose of mayo that would have made every European proud as they spat on the soul of ketchup.
Back over at the West End, there was the Royal Quill, an arts and crafts store that puts every Michaels and Hobby Lobby to shame in the face of their Christian god. While they were smaller and didn’t cater to certain hobbies like miniatures or homemaking, the things they did have were top-notch. Specialty pens and markers from different countries. Notebooks, journals, and planners that had to be specially imported from Japan. Beautiful craft papers and tools of all kinds. This wasn’t your grandma’s art supply store (although most of the clientele were grandmothers). This was for the hardcore artist who took their tools as seriously as their craft. As the name suggested, the Royal Quill was almost a museum that displayed the best that one could write, draw, and create with.
Every weekend, the Royal Quill held classes for different arts. They would send Dick an order at the beginning of the day with everyone’s orders and the time. There was no chocolate production on the weekends (much to Dick’s disdain) so we spent the mornings getting all of the food prepped, then set them in the fridge. Then, we would time it so that we would take out the sandwiches, cook them, and plate them right when the classes broke.
Some of them were mean, others forgettable. Many were kind. The owner, Patty, was a tough old lady who walked with a cane. Her hair was always dyed (my favorite was deep purple and green, like psychedelic flames). She always told us about the pain in her legs but never of the long days she spent catering to her customers.
There was also Diane who occasionally brought her mother, Martha Lawrence. Both of them often spent their time after classes passing out homemade potholders. Then, there was Leah who always had a boisterous smile and a laugh to match, her usual being a Grilled Cheese with cream cheese and jalapenos (hold the cayenne pepper flakes) and a side of tater tots.
There is so much I have forgotten since the year and a half that I worked there. Surprisingly, there is a lot that I remember, too. Perhaps one of the reasons that I write this story is to try and immortalize these moments as best as I can. Even though some of my interactions were hard and sometimes painful, often I remember them with nostalgia and melancholy, too.
I wonder who is there now. I’m sure much of it is the same, despite knowing that businesses come and go. I myself am trying to move on from this place. There are a lot of bad memories that seem to hit me like lightning flashes and psychic nightmares when I do think of the Old Town Mill. As much as I try, however, I still have bits and memories that forever play in my mind when I least expect them.
Perhaps, I am still processing it all.
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13. Smile for the Customer
Danger Wonka 