Espresso Time

by Iain A. Hamilton

The temporal rift in Joe's Coffee House began, somewhere between the Rocky Road and the Lemon Drizzle cake, at precisely 11:04:57 and no one noticed. Even Alice Lauder the help, Joe's has never really been what you would consider 'up market' so there were definitely no baristas, missed it at first. Alice missed it because she was dealing with the 'Macchiato Cowboy'. The Macchiato Cowboy had been coming in at precisely eleven a.m. for the past fortnight. His dark coat and his white shirt were always immaculate as was the habitual black knotted silk tie, but if you looked more closely you could tell from the shine in the seat of his pants and the patches at the elbows of his jacket that he was nowhere near as well to do as he would have you think. His polished but worn black brogues told the same story. Alice didn't know his name or who he was. Nor did she know what he did. But she did know he was an arsehole. Every day for those two weeks his order had been the same: one Large Caramel Macchiato made with skimmed milk, which he would insist on calling as if Joe's were the local Starbucks. Nothing wrong with that, lots of people

did it, the problem with The Macchiato Cowboy was that each day, as she dropped the exact change he always gave her into the register, and he took his

first sip, he would complain. The Macchiato Cowboy was a bit like the Three Bears: Neither too hot nor too cold in his case, but too much or too little caramel. Jesus! Alice had thought on that first and each successive occasion, Why order a Caramel Macchiato if you don't like Caramel? At first she had tried to placate him by offering him a replacement beverage, but by day three she had resigned herself to the fact that The Macchiato Cowboy could not, and would not, be appeased. It didn't seem to matter how much caramel she included or left out, it was nigh on impossible to make a drink he was content with. On day six, and at her wit's end, she had inadvertently stumbled upon the solution. On that, and each successive day following, she had offered him a fresh cup, taken his current drink with its exactly standard contents for a Joe's Caramel Macchiato behind the steamer, fiddled with the coffee making machinery for a few seconds (usually steaming a little milk to add to the effect) and then presented him with his original drink. Remarkably it seemed to work. His 'victory' won The Macchiato Cowboy's habitual refrain of "There's too much/little Caramel [delete as appropriate]" had replaced any protracted debate on each of days six to thirteen. Today things would be very different. The Macchiato Cowboy still

proffered the exact change, which Alice slung into the draw. He then took his first sip, lifted his head to make eye contact and began "It's too..." and stopped. Quite literally. Not only did he not finish this all too brief sentence, but his lips stayed pursed from mouthing the second word and, as Alice would later

swear, she could even see a small globule of saliva that had escaped his mouth during the first utterance hanging in mid-air. The Macchiato Cowboy was stationery. Frozen. Like a statue. Inevitably Alice's reaction was that she had been working too hard on her latest class assignment and, as a result, was imagining things. (She would be the first to admit that she had been burning the candle at both ends recently). It seemed that this theory was empirically confirmed a few seconds later when she glanced at Emily Norton. Emily was still in the corner, bottle feeding baby Jason, her five-year old Billy, a voluminous child to say the least, was still bouncing a small red rubber ball repeatedly off the linoleum (there were no expensive floor tiles in Joe's) with some glee. It was only when she turned to look at the self-serve counter that her perception began to waiver. The steel flasks of whole and skimmed milk were there as usual, as were the wooden stirring sticks, the neatly wrapped plastic straws, the recycled napkins, the white, demerara and fake sugar - everything. What was unusual was the man. (A delivery driver named Jeff who popped in most mornings for a Regular Latte with two sweeteners.) There was nothing strange about his order, but as Alice paid him just a little more attention, she realised that the sweetener he had put into his coffee was now shooting out of his cup and into the two small sachets that he had fanned to break it up just moments before. He then stuffed these sachets back into the tub of fake sugar on the self-serve counter as if this were perfectly normal.

The rift continued its progress outwards from the Lemon Drizzle Cake in small ripples, like those thrown by a pebble dropped in a pond. Billy's ball, which had been bouncing happily just moments before, stopped a foot off the ground and just hung there. Alice had time enough to wonder if gravity was taking the day off when it reversed, bouncing back into Billys closed right hand. His left hand, which had until a few seconds before been examining one of natures more amusing items (at least if you are a small child), quietly hooked the greenish product back up his left nostril. Emily continued to try to feed Jason, although Alice was pretty sure that Jason had just regurgitated some of his milk through the plastic teat and back into the bottle. Can time run backwards? Alice asked herself, glad not to be holding this conversation out loud as it might push her sanity that final step over the edge. It appears so. But why arent I affected? She raced around the counter to the Macchiato Cowboy and waved her hand, back and forth between his face and the mid-air spittle, which now appeared to be flying in and out of his mouth with some alacrity. Time isnt just running backwards, she realized. Its more like a loop or a hiccup. As if to confirm her theory, the same few seconds played out before her, backwards and forwards, again and again with the Macchiato Cowboy, Jeff, Emily, Billy and Jason all locked in their macabre dance. The Timewarp? Alice wondered. And is it just the coffee house or the whole street? Looking at the huge plate glass window which formed the storefront and

signage she could see the tired red lettering proclaiming JOES COFFEE HOUSE in its fading stencil script, but no one passing. Perhaps its affected the whole City? Either way, she concluded, I have to get help! So she tried the

front door handle (several times). It would not budge. She also tried the fire escape, the stockroom door and the windows of all three bathrooms (staff restroom included) but still no luck. The doors are either stuck, locked, or something is keeping them shut. Maybe I can get help by telephone. She tried the payphone, but it was dead. Her mobile telephone flickered between 11:04 and 11:05, and then back again, but it did not even register that she was pushing any buttons. The same occurred with both Emilys and Jeffs phones she discovered when she plucked up the courage to rummage through their belongings and find them. She was not surprised in the least to discover that the Macchiato Cowboy did not carry a mobile, but she did find a small business card which proclaimed him as DR HAL CORNHAGEN, followed by a string of letters, from something called the OSTERHOUSE LABORATORY OF TEMPORAL RESEARCH. Shame youre indisposed, she thought. Im sure youd be able to explain whats going on here Doc. In the end, her options seemingly exhausted, Alice collapsed to the floor by the front door and sobbed into her apron. It was while she was sitting there, her back against the door and the CLOSED sign flapping above her head, that she heard the noises. A kind of creaking, as if the building were expanding, and

in the distance what sounded like birds, possibly pigeons. She was no expert on birds, but she could remember some grad student boring the socks off her at a party a few months ago. The graduate student, called Gavin, had cornered her in the kitchen while Annie went to put their coats in the bedroom. He had then spent several hours regaling her with tales of the research he was doing into avian calls. She hadnt been paying much, if

any attention to Gavin, but she was fairly sure that the exciting part of his work had been a test of whether birdcalls were recognised by others of the same species when the recordings were played to them in reverse. She couldnt exactly remember the result, or why you would want to know, but she thought (or hoped) that the conclusion of those four very long hours was that they could, but that it still did not sound the same. Her pigeons had made a definite coo. At least she thought they had. Which meant that time outside was (probably) travelling the correct way and that the hiccup was (probably) limited to the coffee house. Which means that if I can create a more powerful force, something that will throw open a door or window (even just a crack) I might be able to get out. Ignoring the fuzzy logic, and the number of probablys in her thinking, Alice wished, for the first and only time in her life, that she had paid more attention to Gavin the Grad Student at that party and then headed for the storeroom.

It took her several hours to set up, at least she thought it was several

hours (its fairly difficult to tell when the minute hand of your watch keeps oscillating between two separate minutes and the hour hand wont move at all). The main reason it took so long was her concern for the customers. She did not know if what she had planned would work, so she had decided to protect them, by using box after box of coffee beans, tea bags, milk, sugar and anything else she could find in the storeroom (not to mention the chairs and table tops from the coffee shop itself) to build a series of barricades. The last box was now in position and she retired to the storeroom to attempt igniting one of the gas canisters they kept in there. She hoped this would blow a hole in the storeroom wall big enough for her to escape and get help, but there was no point in taking a risk with any of the patrons: After all they were regulars. In the end the explosion was quite a bit bigger than she had hoped or wished for as the canister took several others with it. The windows blew out with an almighty crash, the front door flip-flopped its way across the street end over end, the roof tiles disintegrated, as did the walls, and (when the dust cloud settled over the still smouldering ruins) there was a strong smell of roasted coffee that some say hung in the air for weeks afterward. Very little of Joes remained. Alice herself was protected by the counter, where she had taken shelter at the last possible moment. From her prone

position she could just make out the wall clock (which now occupied a space in the centre of what remained of the linoleum) ticking slowly from 11:04:57 to

11:04:58 and then, a heartbeat later, to 11:04:59 and 11:05:00. The makeshift barricades had also protected Emily, Jason, Billy and Jeff (most of whom were later treated for shock as well as minor cuts and bruises) and The Macchiato Cowboy. The latter was still standing in front of the counter, his face black with soot and his hair and clothes liberally strewn with dust and debris. What remained of his shirt, tie and jacket were smoking where he stood. In his hand he held a broken coffee cup handle seemingly oblivious to his circumstances or the location of the aforementioned cup. His eyes held a look of horror. Only one word escaped from his lips: ...cold.