Barista Provocateur by Valorie Clark

The heat outside was stifling, the air sticky and heavy with the threat of a storm. Clouds rolled in from the east, blotting out half the blue sky with a worrisome charcoal gray.

Two baristas stood inside an otherwise empty shop. “Gonna be a long couple hours until close,” one muttered, his arms crossed over his loud plaid shirt.

The other, a shorter brunette woman, looked outside. It would be dark soon, a green sort of darkness that only summer thunderstorms in Texas could accomplish. It was near 4 pm on a Tuesday, and she knew they might as well close right then; none of the office workers downtown would stop by as long as this storm was dumping water on the city. The coffee shop was already empty as it was, and all the pre-closing duties done.

“Tell me about it.” She mirrored his crossed arms and leaned against the counter. She felt like groaning, like complaining, but she was in charge and couldn’t.

“What if we just closed now?”

She snorted. “Please. Dan would skin us.”

He hummed.

“We’d be busy if we had a drive-through,” she added. It sounded rote; Dan said that all the time.

“Yeah, well, we don’t have a drive-through.”

They stared at the door for a few minutes longer, willing a customer to appear at it. The two baristas didn’t have much in common, so once they had gotten through the customary pleasantries and talking about work, neither really knew how to continue the conversation.

“Go ahead and go home Jamal,” she offered. “You’ve got a long drive, you can try to beat the bad weather.”

He sighed, looked around. She could see he was mentally going over their cleaning checklist, but he knew as well as she did that there was nothing left to do. The shop had already been dead for an hour, and would be dead another two.

“You sure?”

She nodded. Jamal wasted no time; barely a “See ya, Amanda,” was thrown over his shoulder as he grabbed his bag, clocked out, and left.

If you have time to lean, you have time to clean, she thought as she propped up her elbows on the counter. But the store was already clean, and at this point she would just be wasting cleaning products mopping the floor again. She mused momentarily over which her boss would find worse—not doing anything or wasting product—then decided it didn’t matter because Dan was very likely at home watching a movie and not worrying about the store.

The next sigh she let out—the second in as many minutes—was deep, existential. “Should’ve brought a notebook with me.” The sentence brought with it a few other questions and regrets, like why she was even working in a coffee shop in her late twenties, when her English degree could be put to some better use.

Not much better. Even her own thoughts sounded caustic. She’d left teaching middle school to take a job with less stress and less time commitment so she could focus on writing. She still wasn’t writing though, and felt stressed about that all the time.

She rustled through the coffee paraphernalia on the shelves under the register, pulling aside packs of filters and putting wrenches and screwdrivers back in their tool boxes until she found a pen buried in their scant box of office supplies. But the only paper around was napkins, they didn’t even have receipt paper, and she threw the pen back into the box.

“This is awful,” she muttered, her head coming down onto the countertop. She looked back up at the door, almost praying for someone to walk through it and give her something to do. She stared for minutes on end, lost in how miserable she felt alone in the store.

Then, without the warning sound of car doors slamming, someone burst through the door. Plain black suit, tailored but left a little loose under the arms. For a gun holster, she found herself thinking. He looked right at her, eyes assessing.

“Burns,” he started, eyes holding hers. “Amanda Burns,” he said slowly.

“Yes?”

“Agent Amanda Burns,” he enunciated every letter, lingering on the consonants.

“Bit Manchurian Candidate, don’t you think?” Amanda said.

“Agent Amanda Lynn Burns,” he continued in the same tempo as if she hadn’t spoken.

“Yeah, I know you, Agent Davis.” She paused, revised. “I know who you are, Agent Rothers.” She rolled her eyes. The shop of patrons around them stared, mouths agape. “Sort of blowing my cover here, by the way.” Her tone tried for light, though she couldn’t be sure whether he was there as a friendly or not.

“It’s already been blown, and you’re needed.” Rothers put a small duffel bag on the counter.  She began unzipping pockets as soon as he let go, examining the contents. In it was everything she would ever need—a new fake ID, credit cards, a handgun, some unmarked USD—courtesy of their bosses.

“What the hell—?” Dan started to ask, appearing as if from nowhere. They ignored him.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the man seated in the corner stand up. It had been shadowy there but the lights came up as if on a cue, and she could see his tan skin, and the tattoos on his arms that identified him as part of the Sinaloa cartel, once a member of the now-disbanded La Familia Michoacana. An uneasy moment stretched taught and silent as she and Agent Rothers waited to see what he would do.

“Everybody down,” Amanda said instinctively. Innocent patrons disappeared beneath tables as if they hadn’t even moved.

The gang member’s hand went to the waistband of his pants.

Rothers’ gun was already out and raised; Amanda dropped behind the counter for cover and pulled out the gun she’d seen in the duffel’s side pocket, clicking off the safety before it was even out of the bag. She heard one shot, which seemed to be coming at her, and a much closer gun returned fire. Amanda’s hands were steady and quick as she slid the rack in practiced motions and crouched to crawl toward Agent Rothers.

The shoot out wasn’t much of one. The man with drug cartel ties took a few shots that traveled just slightly wide, and Rothers returned fire. The enemy slumped down, blood on the wall behind him. It took longer for the dust from the bullet-riddled dry wall to settle than for all the shots to be fired.

A few patrons around the shop whimpered; one had passed out cold and another had his phone out, as if he might call the police but wasn’t sure who exactly to report. Dan had slid down the wall by the kitchen, staring at Amanda and Rothers as if he’d seen a ghost.

“We need to go,” Rothers said urgently. His British accent was new, or he’d just been hiding it. Amanda nodded, went to the bathroom and changed in record speed. When she came back out, Rothers had checked to make sure the gangster was really dead, and was approaching Dan.

“Her Majesty sends Her apologies,” Agent Rothers said, tossing a thick manila envelope into Dan’s lap. Amanda guessed it was full of money, or some sort of official paperwork; probably both. “Someone will be along to… clean up.”

“Dan,” Amanda said urgently, pulling on a jacket and kneeling beside him. “Dan, look at me.”

He turned wide eyes on her, full of fear. “I don’t have time to explain,” Amanda said, an accent that could have been Irish or British surfacing in her voice as well. “But I promise I didn’t lie to you about everything; we were real.”

His lips parted, as if to ask a question, but Amanda was already halfway to the door, Agent Rothers right behind her. “I can finally stop pretending at this?” She asked, gesturing to the shop. He confirmed, and they disappeared.

The girl behind the counter blinked, and the patrons faded like candle smoke blown away with a strong wind. The shop was empty again, no dead drug runners on the floor, no blood to clean up or bullet holes in the wall to patch. The storm outside had begun.

She groaned. Why didn’t I bring a pen and paper?