Espionage and a Girl (or how I became the worst James Bond on the planet).

Today I went against the system. I snuck and I snaked and I deceived. I played the double agent and sent information to the other side. It’s getting too much. The regime is relentless and I seek greener pastures. I sent my CV to another place.
But treachery comes at a high price in the totalitarian state that is the coffeeshop. If the higher ups found out there’d be hell to pay. They’d sit me down with a manager and explain in full length the wealth of “glorious opportunities” that would arise if I stuck with them. They’d show me the career ladder graph (yes it actually exists) and pinpoint where I could be on it in only a few short months. It would be a punishment worse than the gulags.
So I had to be covert with my espionage and told no one of my plans to defect. But secrecy breeds paranoia and all through the day I felt burning eyes on the back of my neck. My co-workers shot me quick glances or distrust, their noses sniffing, as if smelling out the traitor. I started to feel like I was scribbling away in my diary just out of sight of the telescreens. I was at once more liberated and more fearful than I had been in my life.
And this lead me to realize that I’m just like Winston Smith but even more pathetic. At least he scored some hot, nonconformist poontang before being lobotomized by the machine. I can’t even do that, I thought to myself.

As I poured coffee into the souls of the twittery pions that comprise our clientele and thought about how maybe I had missed the point of Nineteen Eighty-four (There is more to it than having sex with anti-establishment rebels, right?) I was blindsided by a pair of intoxicating brown eyes. They belonged to a cute girl who I couldn’t help but keep feverish eye contact with.
However my mind was soon torn back to the memory of another girl that I have previously mentioned. (See: I totally Fell in Love Today). The girl from that story had come in the store a second time and had looked at me like I had asked if I could remove one of her kidneys with a hatchet. I think the looks we had been exchanging, which I had interpreted as shy, romantic gestures she must have thought were creepy, stalker stares from a potential sex offender.
So, with this memory fresh in my mind, I finished serving the brown eyed girl and ignored her as best I could while she drank her drink. I did pretty well considering she had perched herself on a table right in front of my eye line.
I continued with my duties.
A few moments later the brown eyed girl approached the counter, her empty mug in hand and handed it to me personally. Usually we clear the tables ourselves but sometimes customers bring them back to us. It’s either a polite way of removing some of our work load or a demeaning criticism suggesting that they think us too incompetent to clean some empty mugs from tables without tripping over our shoelaces and drooling on ourselves. It really depends on the customer.
So the empty mug was exchanged from her hands to mine when I notice something beside the mug. She smiles at me brightly and then leaves the store. I look down at the little bit of paper she has given me. I unfold it and inside it had her name, her number and “Nice hot chocolate” accompanied by a smiling face.
Holy shit! I think. This can’t be. Someone is interested in me. God has dealt me a favourable hand for once. The cosmic balance of the universe is unnaturally swinging ever so slightly in my favour. I phoned her up on my lunch break and we arranged a date later this week. If this good luck keeps up, I thought, I wont have enough cruel misery to plot down in this blog.
I left work feeling upbeat and positive for the first time in a long while. However when I walked in the door of my house I was greeted with the news that my grandmother had just died.
The depressing cosmic equilibrium of my life restored itself to its neutral setting.