Mr. Mouthful

1 Josh My hand flailed to turn off the screeching alarm, and the metal ceiling tiles startled me like they did every morning since I’d first moved in. They were new, polished to a high shine, and the sunrise streaming through the glass balcony door bounced directly into my eyes. I was alone, and used to it, but the blinding sunlight wasn’t familiar to me just yet. My apartment was over the coffee shop I co-owned called Percolate. It was still brand new to me, and after being here for a month, I wondered how long it would be until it finally felt like home. The apartment was vastly different from my old digs. Before I moved here, I’d lived in a sterile-looking apartment complex in the West End. This place was in Oregon Hill, and the building was almost a hundred years old. While renovating the space downstairs, I had the contractors redo the apartment too. It still smelled of fresh paint and sanded wood, and I’d spent the last few days wondering how I could keep it smelling like this. Some of the workmen had been hot, too. Maybe I could come up with some little projects just to keep the smell of paint and wood around? My feet hit the cold, hardwood floor and then I noticed I had shoved all the blankets down to the foot of the bed while I slept. I had tossed and turned all night, vague dreams waking me up over and over again. Today was the Grand Opening of Percolate, and my nerves were on edge. I had sunk my savings into the renovations, and every penny spent made my anxiety levels surge higher. I heard a thud through the floor and jumped. That must have been Luke downstairs, getting ready for what hopefully would be a crowd of customers with open wallets. I padded to the kitchen hoping to make a cup of coffee, then remembered I could have all the coffee I wanted downstairs. Instead I grabbed juice out of the refrigerator and chugged it straight from the bottle. I’d lived alone for so long I rarely touched a glass. Then I spilled half of it by setting the bottle down on what I thought was the counter, but was actually the corner of the sink. “Shit.” I turned on the tap to wash the juice down the drain, then put the bottle back in the fridge. “There had better be a line of caffeine addicts wrapped around the building. Jesus, I need the cash, and a healthy deposit in my bank account would help too.” I muttered. “Oh, and it wouldn’t hurt if my day job would start.” I’d quit nursing three months ago when I found my dream job as a cellist with the Richmond Symphony. I had spent years auditioning for various orchestras around the country on every vacation day I could spare. It paid less than what I made at the hospital, but then my friend Sneaky proposed that we go into business together. She owned the bar next door and had been trying to rent out the other side of the building for ages. I agreed, hoping the extra income from the coffee shop would make the pay cut more palatable. I thought everything was going my way, but my run of good fortune ended. The conductor of the symphony, Creighton Morrison, had a stroke and died three days before I was to start rehearsals. I could have taken some temp work, but decided to just throw all I had into the opening of the coffee shop. But now my bank balance was close to zero, and I was depending on Percolate to carry me until the symphony found a new musical director. Thankfully, they gave me a stipend to hold me over, but with all the money I had thrown into the renovations of this building, I was tapped out. I glanced at the clock on the microwave. Only fifteen minutes before I needed to be downstairs, so I headed to the bathroom. While waiting for the shower to get hot, I glanced in the mirror, something I normally avoided doing. My wavy red hair was a rat's nest, and bluish circles under my puffy eyes were a reminder of my many sleepless nights. The freckles scattered over my cheeks and nose popped out, because my skin was even paler than usual. "You look fetching. Not.” I said to my tired reflection. “f**k it. I’m going to have a great day.”