Venti Mocchaccino, No Whip, Double Shot of Magic
by Aimee Ogden
Coffee at Cardinal Cups always comes with an off-menu bonus.
One of Jojo's regulars pulls up to the drive-thru with his Wednesday morning office order: three frappes, two lattes, one soy mocha. He always leaves a good tip, and he always pays with a credit card. Credit card users are great for customer service witches like Jojo, who need a full name to do their best work. "Have a good one, D!" she says, handing him the carrier tray, and she knows he will because his coffee comes with a nice cantrip that'll help him send all his emails for the next week with zero typos and exactly the right number of exclamation marks.
The next guy, however, who throws his frappe (he wanted salted caramel, not just caramel-caramel!) at the drive-thru window? He paid in cash, so no credit card receipt to get his details from. The plastic cup has his first name Sharpie'd on it, though, so she sends a little hex after him. Nothing much: an ingrown hair, or maybe a mean hangnail. An hourly-wage sort of satisfaction. The owners don't know why or how Jojo keeps the right customers coming back and sends most of the wrong ones packing, but they sense she's got something to do with it. A little operant conditioning, in her opinion, could really do a person good. And in most of these cases, that person is Jojo.
On Thursday morning Jojo's favorite and most frustrating regular arrives at the counter for her traditional order of a muffin and a cinnamon spice latte. "And can I put a name on that?" Jojo asks, a reluctant smile already pulling at her mouth.
The regular smiles back. It wrinkles her nose and the corner of her eyes, making new constellations out of her freckles. Jojo wants to map out every line of the corresponding star chart. "Hermione Granger," she says. And blushes? Maybe? Jojo studiously avoids looking too closely.
"Hermione Granger it is." She scribbles in black marker as the regular drops a dollar into the tip jar. She always pays in cash, too. No real name means spellwork is silk-slippery, impossible to make stick.
Harold comes in on Friday mornings for Senior Dollar Coffee Day. Jojo pulls up a chair so he can sit close to the counter (the stools are too tippy for him) and show Jojo pictures of his granddaughter at her latest piano recital. She only has a first name--he always pays in dimes, with a quarter for the tip jar--but she does what she can and sometimes when he leaves his hand is gripping his cane a little tighter.
Later that day Mrs. Cynthia I WANT TO SEE YOUR MANAGER Nielsen stops by after her yoga class. Jojo has to make her drinks an average of three times before they're "right." Once Cynthia had the gall to tip from the Take a Penny dish; this time she signs a 0.00 with a flourish on the credit card receipt. Jojo is a little disappointed to think she'll never get to hear the story of Cynthia ripping the world's most noxious fart in the middle of the yoga studio next Friday.
