Barley Marble

As the man drove to work, he daydreamed about his view. He noticed the leaf piles along the street and reminded himself of youth raking up piles to jump into. He also noted that he had to get his own yard raked soon. He noticed a PT Cruiser and wished he had one, he didn't know why but they appealed to him. He swerved the car just a bit to steer clear of a youngster biking on the side. He wasn't close, but moving the car that way should have let the kid know that he saw him. He smiled about a pictured memory of the time he smacked his face into the sideview mirror on a truck because he had been biking looking behind. He had been more embarassed and surprised rather than hurt.

He thought about work. He would get to the cafe he co-owned around 200am. He was the baker/ breakfast chef working until nine or ten am. The early baker was there already mixing the doughs for Eugene to bake. He hoped for a normal day being that it was midweek.

He had been part owner for 15 years now and the cafe was booming. Eugene still did the bread baking after all that time because he liked the job. The business had grown into four other locations and the bottled sauces they had created were going to be sold retail locally in a few months. Eugene had some sort of foreboding about the day despite his optimism, but he mentally noted, "I've had those sort of feelings before and nothing happened."

He arrived at the original downtown location, parked his car, grabbed his bag of personal items and unlocked the back door. Ed saw him come in and yelled "Hey You!"

Eugene went over to Ed thinking about that "Hey You." It was a play on his first name Eugene. When he was little he was called "you" about as often as "gene" and "Eugene." So "Hey You" became another name as he aged. He had even signed his name with the first two letters of his name, Eu, for many years. He welcomed the play on words and letters to his name.

Ed told him that all the dough mixing went well but also informed Eu that he wasn't feeling well with a nauscious stomach. Ed joked a bit, "My stomach's churnin' but I'll keep burnin'...bread."

"Suuure, Ed. You wouldn't burn bread if your stomach was exploding."

Eugene headed over to get started. He generally had the same order of day. Pan up the dough, ready sweets (begin coffeecakes etc.), start baking breads from the panned up dough, yadda, yadda. From five to six Eugene would convert into breakfast chef making crepes, french toast, stylish omelets for the opening customers. He knew many of them in some sort of way. He would cook and then meet with customers for quick conversations, winding down from the night.

His partner Ray shows up about this time. He runs the busy time of breakfast and sets up the lunch shift. The cafe didn't serve dinner and closed by mid-afternoon.

Eugene thought about Ray. They needed to meet this morning about the business aspect, dollars to donuts stuff. This was the best meeting time as Eugene was near done and Ray getting started. Eugene thought about how the meetings USED TO BE one of the best parts of the week, now they were quick info-filled discussions. There WAS the monthly ideas meeting, where new product interests were bantered about.

Eugene tuned into his task at hand, rolling sweet dough for shaping later. Ed and Eu didn't talk much, their work areas were somewhat separate. Eu saw Ed coming up and listened to him, "Hey You, I'm REAALLY not feeling so good."

Eu was worried, "How bad? Can you still work? Do you want to sit down for awhile?"

Ed shook his head. "I'll lay down out in a booth for a few minutes, but I'm not too optimistic about a fast recovery." Ed brightened a bit "But You, you don't have much to cover, I'm almost done."

Ed told Eugene what wasn't finished and was laying down. Eu combined his regular timeline with the work Ed left and he sped through an hour or so of work. He had caught up his day and went looking for Ed. Eugene couldn't find him out in the dining room and then noticed the front door was open. "That's strange. Did Ed make a run for it or something like that?"

He dug out his cell and tried calling Ed. No answer, just the usual message. Ed thought "How odd, Ed didn't even say goodbye."

Eugene hurried back to work. He passed the day in that robotic manner of completing tasks in a standard time and order. He heard the door alarm and knew (as he always knew) that the opening phase was starting because Linda was coming in. He greeted her with a joke as he passed by carrying the cheese flavors to the grill, "You know why they call today Tuesday don't you? Because it's two times as bad as Monday."

Linda liked to complain about work, yet always showed up, ever faithful. Eugene knew his joke would get her going on a complaint. "You Know? I'm grumpy because I woke up on the wrong side of the bed...TWICE...just because it's Tuesday."

They smiled at each other in passing. They had pride in their morning banter and Eugene thought that that was a good exchange.