Expectations

                           

Oliver Charlton

 

                              a delicate tea in a fancy cup

 

“Jones! Jones! I got a bone to pick with you.”

Larry Jones was unperturbed by the tone at which his friend was shouting at him across the very public tea shop. He merely placed the porcelain cup neatly on the saucer, and straightened his jacket and he sat up.

“Ah, so good of you to join me on my lunch break. What can I do for you? How’s the design-temp working out?”

“Well” said the man, taking a seat “that is exactly why I have come to find you on your lunchbreak Jones.”
“Oh, you did hire Ms. Boggart in the end, then?”

“Yes, mostly upon your recommendation. Sight unseen, I might add. You made such a fuss that you’ve used her so often over the years, and you yourself being so meticulous. Raving endlessly that no matter the task, no matter how wild the need, she has always met your famously high expectations.”

Larry Jones nodded in response. “Indeed I did my friend, she’s only ever been exemplary in any capacity I’ve hired her in. Always met my expectations.”

“So you say” continued the other man, shifting his weight in his seat “So I too, naturally, trusted in high expectations.”

“As I said you should” re-affirmed Larry.

“So you say, Jones, so you say. But I started to have doubts as soon  as she walked through the door. She really didn’t look like your standard suit designer. All alternative and dumpy. With weird necklaces with all these wooden charms on.”

“Oh really?”

“Her voice put me off too” continued the man “very nasal, really weird accent. Not professional at all.”

“Was that all that put you off her?”

“No, actually, as soon as she came in she started telling me she’d been in the business for six centuries, I wasn’t even sure what to think anymore. She barely picked up a pencil all day in the end. An utter waste of space. So really, I have no idea what you recommended her for Jones.”

Larry Jones raised his cup to his mouth and finished the last dregs in one gulp. “I don’t know what to tell you, pal. She’s a real interesting creature, that Ms. Boggart. She always meets expectations.”

About the Author

This is Oliver’s second submission to café lit, and he promises the next one won’t be set in any sort of hot drinks shop.

He is also currently writing for a fake radio show on Youtube. It’s about a radio host, a radio show and a dust cloud http://tinyurl.com/guzxcnk

A Perfectly Ordinary Coffee Shop

A Perfectly Ordinary Coffee Shop

Oliver Charlton

Hot chocolate with marshmallows and cream

“I just can’t understand” said the girl, gazing out the coffee shop window, watching the rain drops run down the window pane, “where all this belief in the supernatural comes from.”

            “I know what you mean” replied her companion, stirring his own steaming hot chocolate with a twirl of his finger, which in turn turned the spoon, despite a good inch between his digit and the utensil. “It seems idiotic that in this day and age, people are still wasting their time with monsters and the impossible.”

            “It’s as if—” the  girl paused, swatting away a giggling pixie, which was trying to take off with her sugar sachet. “It’s as if,” she resumed, “they simply can’t accept that we live in a perfectly ordinary world, and that there’s no room for all this made-up nonsense in our modern times.”

            “It’s a symptom of the infantilising of society,” replied the boy, his spoon clattering against the side of his cup, as the sudden materialization of a patron from thin air behind him broke his concentration.

            “True, true…” said the girl, lifting her coffee to her lips. Then, finding it had cooled a little too much, set it down gently upon its saucer. Then, she let a flame from her fingertips licks against the side of her cup. “It’s as if our whole generation never really grew up.”

            “I mean I could understand it,” said the boy, “back in the olden days, before we had explanations for all the perfectly natural phenomena around us. But in this day and age, it’s just pitiful.”

            “I just don’t get why they bother. Why go see an old gypsy for a supposedly magical healing crystal when you can just transmute your own bezoar at home.”

            “Yeah, yeah,” agreed the boy. “It’s not as if you can’t just Google the runes anytime you want.”

            They both looked away from each other as the conversation lulled. The irregular beat of rain drops against glass accentuating the silence.

            “Having said that,” the girl said, almost to herself, “I’d very much like it if there were such a thing as horses.”

  

About the Author

Oliver Charlton is a Yorkshire resident who writes for fun and the occasional rejection letter.    (Note from editor: not rejection letter this time!)

Published June 7 2016