Deep Green: Color Me Jealous with Bonus Content (21 page)

My dog and I are way too alike in the mornings.

It’s seven thirty, and it’s a gorgeous October day.

“Eat up. We’re going for a jog.”

Calvin’s ears perk up at this, and he gobbles up the food I pour in the silver bowl while I go back to my bedroom to pull on some workout clothes.

The apartment I share with Jen is just perfect for us. It has two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a big living room, and a kitchen that is more pretty than functional but fills our microwaving needs.

Aside from an occasional cookie fiasco, neither Jen nor I is a big cook. Jen claims she’s too tired after legally assisting her lawyer boss all day. I tell the truth and just say I don’t like cooking.

My plan is to marry Emeril Live.

And, yeah, I know that’s not his last name. It doesn’t really matter because I have a pretty good feeling that’s not God’s plan for me. So,
bam!
I’m just going to have to be content with TV dinners.

Which I am. Sometimes the little chicken nuggets are shaped like flowers, and this makes me happy.

I flip on the light in my room and flop down on my unmade bed. I slide my Bible and a pad of sticky notes over.

God has been attempting to teach me to (a) be more thankful and (b) keep my mouth shut more often.

This is hard because (a) while I am a positive person, I don’t always remember to be thankful; and (b) my second favorite thing to do is talk.

So, we’re working on this, me and God. Obviously, because today’s Bible reading is Philippians 4:6: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”

I reach for a sticky note.

Today I Am Thankful For:

1. Cushioning wood floors as opposed to cement. No broken bones.

2. Proudly wearing my college and graduating year on my face.

3. Mochas. Milky Ways. Cocoa Puffs. Hot chocolate.

Cold chocolate….

4. Chopping my hair off last week. It will not take forty minutes to dry it today.

Calvin is back in my room, fed, awake, and, as the Dixie Chicks would say, “Ready, ready, ready, ready, ready to ruuun!”

“One sec, Cal.”

Most people assume I named my dog after my school. This is not the case, however. He is named after Calvin Klein and my first pair of $80 jeans — marked down to a gorgeous $23.50. I bargain shop.

I have on a pair of gray jogging shorts and a bright pink T-shirt. Calvin starts to go ballistic when he sees me pulling on my jogging shoes.

“Let’s go, bud.” I hook his leash on, and we half-stretch, half-walk toward the door.

Twenty-four minutes later, we both drag ourselves back into the apartment. I’m sticky from the humidity and coated with a thin layer of dirt, compliments of a Nissan pickup. Little Calvin is wheezing harmonically. He ate a cricket, so I can understand why.

“Shower. Must shower.”

Calvin is right on my heels.

“Yeah, right.” I nudge him out of the bathroom. I turn the faucet on full blast and start shampooing. Yet another reason I’m grateful for cutting my hair. It now bounces right above my shoulders in a curly, layered style. I won’t use half the shampoo I used to when my hair was halfway down my back.

I yank open the tinted glass door and stop, inhaling through my nose, arching my back, and achieving what my Pilates instructor would call “core stability.”

French roast.

I close my eyes now. This is apparently our dark roast for the day. I sniff harder, focusing on the scents. Maybe Italian? I can’t distinguish the medium roast, which disappoints me greatly. But the decaf is definitely my own creation: half decaf French, two sprinkles of cinnamon, and the rest is a light Breakfast Blend.

Ahhh …

You know how in those sappy romances, the people are always like, “I knew he was the one because I felt like I was coming home when I was around him”?

Cool Beans evokes that feeling for me.

See why I love my job so much?

“Hey, Nut-job! Close the door.”

I open my eyes and squint at the tall, skinny, dark-haired guy behind the counter. Jack Dominguez is grinning, wiping his fingers on a towel, and causing a little group of twentysome-thing women sitting at the table closest to the counter to start twittering.

“Totally ruining the moment, Man versus Wild.” I frown at him a minute longer and then close my eyes again, breathing deeply.

That’s it…. Feel your navel pressing against your spine….

I’ve always wanted to ask the perky Pilates lady if she’s ever really felt the inside of her belly button pressing against her spine. I mean, she’s skinny enough that she might have, but really, wouldn’t that sensation kind of creep you out? Like, oh my gosh! Where are my intestines?

I don’t know. Just a thought.

I let my breath out finally and close the door. Cool Beans is not crowded this time of the morning. Aside from the women, there’s a bald guy with a laptop and two guys in suits discussing something about stock presentations.

Here’s how Cool Beans is set up:

There is always a blend of fifties and big-band music playing quietly over the speakers. Everything is decorated in retro colors: cerulean blues, cherry reds, lots of white leather and silver. There are five art-deco bar stools by the counter, near the fireplace.

Jack throws a towel at me as I walk through the little swinging door next to the counter. “Morning,
Sciurus,”
he says, smirking.

I catch the towel and pop it at his leg. “Hey, how’s the zookeeping?”

Jack is still in the process of majoring in biology with an emphasis in animal behaviors. A degree like this will open doors.

Zoo doors, at least.

Just so you know,
Sciurus
is the Latin name for
squirrel.
I do not appreciate him calling me this, especially since he does so because he’s convinced my brain activity is a lot like a squirrel’s. Quick, pointless, and scattered.

Which is also the reason he calls me multiple related nicknames: Nut-job, Nutkin (from Beatrix Potter), and Pattertwig (compliments of C. S. Lewis and
Prince Caspian).

“Just fine; thanks for asking.”

He takes a red-headed girl’s order and starts making an espresso while I tie on my cherry red apron. He grins over the machine at me. “I think I might get that internship at the Hudson Zoo for next semester.” The automatic espresso machine is humming quietly.

I can’t help the smile. “Awesome! That’s really good, Jack.”

“A friend who works at the zoo said that if they don’t like your application, you find out in a week. It’s been nine days.” He smiles into the espresso. “It’ll look really great on a résumé for the san Diego Zoo.”

I’ve known Jack since the second grade. We were both assigned to the same lunch table — which was fortunate because his mom always packed him tamales for lunch, and my mom always packed me tuna fish. I hate tuna fish. Jack doesn’t like tamales. So, we became lunch-swap buddies.

We lost track of each other through high school, but both ended up in the same fitness elective junior year at Cal-Hudson. And we both started working at Cool Beans that same year.

So, we’ve been friends for a while.

Jack has wanted to work at the San Diego Zoo since he visited there as a third grader. Hudson is about an hour northeast of San Diego.

Once my apron is on, I start grinding a fresh batch of the Italian medium roast.

“So guess what?” Jack asks over the buzz of the grinder.

“You decided against a career in shoveling manure?”

“Funny, Pattertwig. No, I’m parrot-sitting this weekend.”

“Won’t that hurt the bird?” I ask, tilting my head.

“What?”

“If you sit on it.”

He sighs.

I grin.

“I thought you were working on the sarcastic comments,” he says, joining me by the coffee grinder.

“I have been. I thought that was a smooth delivery.”

“Nutkin.”

“Sorry.” I smile toothily at him. “Don’t expect miracles overnight.”

Sometimes, my sarcasm can be more … um … hurtful than funny. I’m attempting to work on this because I don’t mean to hurt people. And as a Christian, it’s probably not the best witness to go around insulting people all day.

So Jack decided to be Jiminy Cricket and help me keep my mouth shut.

“At least it wasn’t mean,” he concedes.

“You might want to let the parrot owner know that you don’t think it’s mean to sit on the poor bird.”

“Maya!”

“Sorry!” I tuck the coffee filter filled with grounds into the basket, slide that into the coffeemaker, and snap the switch to On. It immediately starts gurgling like Free Willy out of water.

Jack’s laughing.

“So, what’s the parrot’s name?” I ask.

“Polly.”

“Please tell me you’re joking.”

“I’m joking.”

I nod. “Good. How unoriginal can we get?”

“The bird’s name
is
Polly, though.”

“You said you were joking!”

“You asked me to say that,” Jack says.

I cover my face. Talking with Jack hurts my head. I start making myself a mocha. Cool Beans lets us have as many drinks as we want while we’re on duty. It just makes us huge enough caffeine addicts that we’re constantly coming back for more, even on our days off.

I pour milk into a metal pitcher and start the steam wand in it. Bubbles float to the top as the espresso lightly trickles into a mug for me.

“So, Polly. Does she talk?” I ask.

He makes a face. “More than you, even. It will be a loud weekend.”

“It’s good for you.” I smack his shoulder. “Makes you tougher.”

“And deafer. The bird screams. And sings. And whistles.”

I laugh. “When are you becoming the proud guardian?”

“This afternoon when I get off work.” He glances at the clock. “Five hours, forty-five minutes, and counting.”

“Hey, this is good experience for becoming an overseer of wild beings.”

“No, it’s not. This parrot is an
Amazona aestiva.
Blue-fronted Amazon. Those are commonly kept as pets. If parrots could be domesticated, this one would be.” He hands the girl her espresso. “This one is not wild.”

I roll my eyes and pull the wand out of the pitcher. I start pouring the milk into my espresso and chocolate syrup, holding most of the foam back. “Well, maybe next time someone with a hyena will go out of town, and you can hyena-sit.”

He immediately brightens. “Do you know someone with one?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“You have problems.” I stir my mocha and inhale, sighing. He smiles. “Probably.”

My lunch break is at one thirty, but by one o’clock, I’m starving. My stomach is trying to eat itself, and I keep patting it, attempting to reassure it that I’ll feed it before I die of missing organs.

Note to self: Regardless of the label, Snickers bars do not satisfy your hunger all morning, thereby making them bad breakfast food.

“Whoa, Maya. Miss breakfast?” Jack asks, after my stomach rumbles in protest of a late lunch. He just got back from his lunch break and is retying his apron over his black collared shirt and straight-cut dark jeans.