Excerpt: The Saturn Return

“Do you want change?”
Eliot had been distracted all day but this seemingly innocuous question had more of a dislodging effect, as if some unknown force from the beyond was pulling him away from where he was now standing. Sometimes it was pulling and then other times it was as if he was being pushed. In fact, it wasn’t just today. For a while now he had felt unsettled. Change? Did he want change? On one hand, he had begun to feel this necessity to do something entirely different from what he had been doing all these years. At the same time, he had no idea what that might be. He was pondering these grander, universal questions of life when he was once again knocked out of orbit.
“For the meter? Eliot!” It was only due to the fact that Jessica was busy with customers that her annoyance with Eliot was curbed. It wasn’t that she didn’t like him. He was a perfectly cool guy and decent to work with but she tended to lose her patience when it appeared that he wasn’t listening.
“Huh?” Eliot clumsily re-entered the atmosphere and suddenly became aware that he was standing next to the cash register where Jessica was attending to the growing line of customers with a dollar bill in his hand. Jessica took the dollar bill out of his hand. He said nothing. She took four quarters out of the register and put them in his hand. He said nothing.
“You’re welcome.” Without missing a beat, Jessica took the next customer’s order without much more than a glance in Eliot’s direction. “Go! I need you in here. Sam left already.”
“Thanks.” With that short obligatory expression of appreciation, Eliot turned and took the few short steps between the cash register and the front door and walked back out into the summer heat. He had only been inside for a couple of minutes but that is all it took for him to take note once again at how damn strong the sun was that day. The temperatures seemed to be rising at unprecedented rates this summer. Eliot couldn’t recall ever feeling the heat quite like this before. Usually, by the evening hours things would cool down a bit. Not these days. As he fed the meter, he felt like he was literally being cooked right there on the sidewalk. He had been quite fortunate to get a parking spot at all on a Friday afternoon outside of the café, but to get a spot right in front was truly a coup.
The café was always busy considering that it was one of the hippest spots in one of the hippest neighborhoods in one of the hippest cities in the country. Eliot liked working there and in these hard economic times, he was simply glad to have a job. This place, however, was special and had attracted a particularly loyal cliental that was growing with each passing day. It bordered several converging sub-cultures in the city, which made for an interesting mix of people who used it as a meeting point. There were the business types who worked only a few blocks away in the skyscrapers downtown. For them, the café offered a quick respite outside of the madness found downtown and an alternative to the sterile commercial atmosphere of most of the restaurants, cafés and bars near where they worked. The big storefront windows let in the light of day where one could plop down on a sofa or get a table next to one of the bookshelves along the walls or around the miniature fountain in the center of the spacious interior. For the younger crowd, there was the brightly colored adjacent space full of board games where a muted television screen showed cartoons. Here, young hipsters could convene and revel in the caricature that was the popular culture of their childhood. In this space, young adults could act like kids and immerse themselves in the memory of an era that was not so far removed for someone only in their twenties. Because they were uneasy with their newly found adulthood, however, they were inclined to reminisce about an age when things were stable and easily understood. Old lunchboxes, vintage t-shirts from their favorite TV shows, and children’s books from their era were strewn about the place. Here they could buy a bowl of their favorite sugared cereal, a cupcake or an ice cream sandwich and watch cartoons. Here they never had to grow up.
This side room used to be the original business before the owners (aging hipsters in their own right) decided to knock down part of the shared wall and opened up the cupcake and cereal shop to the space next door, which up until that point had been empty. The whole area was going through a make over. Analysts and city planners were calling it gentrification, but the goal of many of the small business owners in the area was to create an alternative space inside the city where people who were lived non-mainstream lifestyles in general could go to enjoy music, art and food that was not found everywhere else.
In the main area of the café, the menu was equally as alluring for those people who were looking for an alternative to what was generally found in places around the city. Vegetarians and people with food allergies had found the café to be a refuge where they could indulge while still adhering to their dietary restrictions, whether self-imposed or imposed upon them. This was not a place for meat lovers, but the combinations that were available were suitable and attractive to anyone who loved good food and to people who didn’t mind taking a culinary risk every now and then. There were normal dishes like pizza, French fries or pasta but it could be made with vegan or gluten-free ingredients and was always made with soy or another protein or meat substitute. In that sense, it did cater to a particular audience, but the variety of dishes offered left nothing to be desired for a meat eater, unless they were so stubborn as to never eat anything that did not have meat in it. Those types were still primarily found in sports bars and chain restaurants rather than in the café where Eliot worked.
Eliot came to work at the café quite organically. He had been a customer since it opened several years back and when he finished college a few years later and needed a job, as luck would have it the café needed somebody. His first job was a dishwasher and then he began doing a bit of food prep and then was moved to wait-staff after about a year. It was a temporary gig for him in the beginning and in his mind continued to be merely a transitional space from which he would then move on to something else. That something else had never been a source of conflict for Eliot, because he had always known what it was. For as long as he could remember, he had wanted to be a professional musician. His passion since his earliest recollection had been music and he had spent the past ten years moving from one project or band to another, finding his creative voice. The latest band seemed to show the most promise in terms of commercial success, but conflict and a possible break-up was looming as life changes and creative differences began to seep in.