Smart vs. Pretty (3 page)

“Let’s just think of some possibilities before we decide against it,” suggested Clarissa.

“The name has to scream sex?” asked Frank. “We might as well call the place café au Lay.”

“Or how about The Grind?” Amanda suggested.

“Maxwell Ho’s?” Frank came back.

Amanda: “Javagina?

Frank: “Starfucks?”

The sisters tittered at their own cleverness. Clarissa laughed politely and held up her hand. “I was thinking the name should be more romantic. More poetic. Something that will lilt the customers into a feeling of misty, old-fashioned fantasy. How about café Love?”

Amanda said, “Romancing the Bean?”

Everyone stopped talking. Romancing the Bean. Frank nodded amicably.

“That’s it!” said Clarissa. “When you said that—Romancing the Bean—I got a chill. Have you even considered being a writer?”

“Frank’s the writer,” Amanda said, fanning away the idea like smoke, but loving the compliment. “What do you think, Frank? Romancing the Bean? Not too tawdry. Not too frilly.”

Clarissa and Amanda watched Frank. She seemed to struggle with it at first. Frank wasn’t—and probably would never be—a go-with-the-flow, adaptable type of person. Finally she said, “I like it.”

Clarissa stood and said, “Does this mean I’m officially hired?”

Amanda nodded yes, but Frank said, “About your fee…”

Clarissa said, “I already told you I’ll do it pro bono, with the understanding that I have complete control.”

“I thought it’d be a team effort,” said Frank. “You said ‘shoulder to shoulder.’”

“Why don’t we call it an informed collaboration?” Clarissa said.

“You can call it whatever you want,” said Amanda. “I’m just so thrilled you’re here!”

“Thrilled you’re thrilled,” Clarissa said, downing her Sumatran. “I’ve got to go. Class starts in a few. Don’t worry about getting a new awning. I’ll take care of it. You can repay me when business is booming—or should I say
brewing?
” She glanced at her watch. “In the meantime, why don’t you”—she pointed at Amanda—“write copy for the fliers and the ad about the contest. We’ll have to convince the local paper to run the ad for free. And make a poster to hang in the store window.” Then Clarissa slung her bag—Kate Spade—over her shoulder, and left without a backward glance. Amanda almost called after her to ask her phone number. She hadn’t asked for theirs.

“She probably lives nearby. I guess she knows where to find us,” Frank said. “What was her last name? O’McFlayertyO’Leary?”

Amanda couldn’t remember either. But she was more concerned with the tinny sound of discord still hanging in the air. “You’re not convinced,” she said to her sister.

Frank said, “The contest seems pretty sensationalistic and plebeian.”

Amanda nodded. “I bet she’s a Leo.”

Frank said, “Javagina. That was a good one, Amanda.”

“Maxwell Ho’s—now that’s inspired.”

Frank absentmindedly wiped the table with a rag. “Honestly—and spare me your rosy tint—do you think this is worth a shot? Right now, we can go quietly into that good night. Or do we go out with, potentially, the greatest humiliation of our lives?”

“How can one fail if she’s succeeded at trying her best?” Amanda posed rhetorically.

“Fortune cookie?”

“Louise Hay.”

“Hmmm.” Frank said, “Let’s throw some pennies.”

Amanda was happy to, but surprised Frank suggested it. Frank usually dismissed the I Ching. She grabbed the six pennies she’d tossed before Clarissa came into their lives. She cupped them gently and held out her hand. “You toss. If we see any yin come up, it has to be good.”

“I always get yin,” Frank said.

“You never get yin. You’re confused. Yin is the tails side. Openness, flexibility. You’re the queen of yang—rigidity, inflexibility. Most people have a healthy mix in their lives. You’re all heads.” Amanda tended to be all tails.

“Are you saying I’m unhealthy?” Frank asked.

“I’m saying you’re unbalanced,” said Amanda. “A coin with one side.”

“Flat chested, but still top-heavy,” said Frank.

“I never said flat chested,” Amanda replied. “But now that you mention it…”

“Just give me the pennies.” Frank took the coins and closed her eyes.

Amanda said, “Ask a question.”

Frank said, “Will this be one more failure in a lifetime of bad calls? One more humiliation on top of all the others? Will this desperate act be redeeming—or mortifying?”

As Frank shook the coins in her cupped hands, Amanda chanted, “Breathe. In, out. See the waves on the beach. The rise and fall of the sun. The dark night, the bright morning. The moon. The stars.”

“Will you shut up?” said Frank.

Amanda quietly stepped back. She breathed in, out, as Frank shook the pennies. The I Ching was Amanda’s secret weapon, her way of testing her instincts or reinforcing her doubts. The practice sharpened her intuition, led her down one road or another. As a rule, Amanda didn’t think it was possible to read the future—free will could trample on even the best psychic’s predictions. But she did believe in a happy afterlife for good people. As the I Ching espoused, there was no death, only transformation of continuous and everlasting energy. Amanda kept these ideas to herself. She realized that most people would dismiss her worldview as flaky. Frank said her theories smacked of naïveté and wish fulfillment. Frank was certainly entitled to her opinion, however mildly discontented it might be.

Frank flipped the coins in her hands as if she were playing onesies in jacks. Then she flung them on the countertop. The coins rolled and spun and fell. Frank arranged them in a line. Amanda found her pocket I Ching chart. As usual, Frank’s toss was nearly all heads, or yang. Only the coin at the bottom was tails. The trigrams—the top three and bottom three coins—read Sky over Tree. Amanda consulted her chart and then had to keep herself from gasping out loud. This configuration could be interpreted in dozens of ways, none of them good. Amanda’s take: stable, solid trees will be disturbed by sweeping winds from any direction, and the skies will pummel the ground with storms.

Amanda struggled to flatten her forehead muscles. She didn’t want to tell Frank the truth—her older sister didn’t need any encouragement to be pessimistic. Amanda reminded herself that free will could override any toss. Frank stared at her sister expectantly, waiting for an explanation. Of the sixty-four possibilities, this configuration was one of the most ominous. Amanda smiled as bright as a bulb and lied to her sister, not wanting to burden her with the truth: “If this reading is any indication, we’re going to be just fine.”

Frank seemed satisfied with that, but she said, “It’s bullshit anyway.”

For the first time, Amanda hoped Frank was right.

REINVENTION CHECKLIST—ROMANCING THE BEAN

1. 1. Menu (specials, sizes—Francesca)
   
2. 2. Furniture (Claude)
   
3. 3. Atmosphere (walls, fixtures, etc.—Claude and Mabel?)
   
4. 4. Uniforms (all black—too slick or severe? I like.)
   
5. 5. Help (preferably a sexy guy)
   
6. 6. Contestant interviews (we do together)
   

The next afternoon, a Tuesday, Clarissa showed up with the plan. She spoke briefly to Amanda by the condiments stand (Frank thought it looked like whispery girl talk—were they excluding her?). Then Clarissa clickity-clicked in closed-toe heels over to Frank at the register, her smile growing as she got closer to the older sister. She handed Frank the Xeroxed sheet. “What about Amanda?” asked Frank while glancing at Clarissa’s list. “Doesn’t she get one?”

“She’s composing the flier,” said Clarissa.

Frank was annoyed that she hadn’t been assigned to the writing duties. “You know, Clarissa, I used to be on staff at a magazine. I wrote book reviews for a living.”

“What magazine?” she asked.

“Bookmaker’s Monthly.”

“Gambling?”

“It’s for the book-publishing industry, so I guess it is gambling, in a way.”

“Really,” said Clarissa, impressed. “Maybe I should have given the writing jobs to you, Francesca. But that stuff is really elementary. This”—she pointed at the Xerox of her schedule—“is a lot harder. I need your organizational skills desperately.” The implication that she alone could handle the heavy lifting flattered Frank. Clarissa seemed to understand immediately each sister’s true worth.

“Fixtures and furniture? It’s all so superficial,” Frank said.

“We’re giving your store a facelift,” Clarissa explained. “Not performing open-heart surgery. Everything else is fixed—rent, coffee prices, management. I could enlist an accounting major at school to go over your spread sheets….”

“One step at a time,” said Frank, hesitant (paranoid?) to show her Quicken files and bank records to a stranger. She held up her Xerox. “Where do I begin?” she asked.

“Start with the menu,” Clarissa instructed. “We need daily specials, coffees of the day, cute names for the sizes. The names should make the customer feel like she’s getting a bargain, like the tall, grande, supreme sizes at Moonburst.”

“Something like big, bigger, biggest?” Frank suggested. Instantly self-doubting, she added, “Or not.”

“Love. Write it down,” Clarissa said. “Why don’t you work on that while I take care of Claude.”

Frank said, “Yes, I wanted to ask: Who is Claude and how much does he charge?”

“She.”

“Claude’s a woman?”

Clarissa said, “A friend from Stern. She’s in the M.F.A. program. Fine Arts.”

Frank knew what an MFA was. “Shall I assume, since she’s a student, that her rates are reasonable?”

“Claude also needs a project for her program in interior design. She’s working for free. We’ll pay for materials.”

Frank relaxed. “Is Mabel also working for free?”

“He is.”

“He.”

“Last name.”

Frank nodded. “Another student?”

“Claude’s boyfriend. A painter. He’ll do the walls. Especially that one.”

Clarissa pointed to the mural of a Brooklyn street scene that’d been on the exposed-brick east-facing wall of Barney Greenfield’s since before Frank and Amanda were born. It’d been lovingly created by the best friend of Frank’s grandfather, a blacklisted screenwriter who’d fled Hollywood in defeat. He returned to his native Brooklyn to start over. The mural looked like it’d been painted by a writer; the craftsmanship was poor, but the spirit of the work made up for it. Each detail—the orange cat in a boxed tree, the red flower on a woman’s hat, the slick white splotches on the shiny black street—felt like a recalled, sweet memory. The mural was a homecoming, a clumsy work of heart. Frank, not much of an art lover, adored it.

“You can’t paint over that wall,” she said.

Clarissa sighed. She said, “To save the store, we have to make some wholesale changes, Francesca. You know that.”

“Consider the mural retail.”

Another sigh. Clarissa put her long, ringed fingers on Frank’s shoulder. She said, “You really need that wall, don’t you? It’s holding you up in a way, isn’t it?”

Frank felt vulnerable suddenly. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“It’s a support for you. Load bearing.”

“Not really,” Frank said.

“That’s good to know,” said Clarissa. “Because if we don’t completely change the atmosphere, you’re sure to lose the store. That mural is too quaint. You know this. We have to get rid of it to breathe fresh air in here. Besides which, a new owner would paint it over anyway. Win or lose, the mural goes. So the question isn’t whether or not to paint. It’s what color.”

Frank’s resolve wilted. Clarissa was focused on the goal: solvency, ASAP. Frank admired Clarissa’s determination. She would have to let go of any sentimentality and keep her own eyes fixed on saving her store, her legacy, her future. Her self-respect. Otherwise, for Frank, there wasn’t much left to strive for. Finally, after a pause, she said, “Brown. Chocolate.”

“I was thinking mauve,” Clarissa said. “Lavender sconces.”

“How much does a sconce go for these days?” asked Frank. “If it’s more than thirty-nine cents, we can’t swing it.”

“I’ll pay for them,” said Clarissa. “I’ve got some money—dead aunt. You can pay me back when the shop is raking it in.”

“Let’s put a cap on my mounting debt,” said Frank. “A few hundred dollars?”

Clarissa said, “I’ll need at least three thousand for a respectable relaunch.”

She might as well have said fifty thousand dollars. “What if we don’t earn it back?” asked Frank.

“I will not fail.”

Frank had read about this level of confidence, perhaps in a book she’d reviewed on some or other pathology. But Clarissa’s faith was contagious. Everything about Clarissa made Frank believe. She said, “Mauve it is.”

Barney Greenfield’s was to close its doors during the renovations, scheduled to reopen as Romancing the Bean in three days’ time. Clarissa wanted to hold the contest on Friday. The launch party/contest would publicize the new place. Clarissa was dead set on doing it Friday night. Only a few days away. Frank couldn’t imagine doing so much in so little time, but if anyone could pull it off, Clarissa would. Frank dared to contemplate her future without wincing. Optimism was virgin ground for the older sister. Frank considered her positive outlook a major step toward her own reinvention; her fate, she knew, was linked inextricably to the café’s.

Tuesday

Claude and Mabel showed up. Frank and Amanda introduced themselves to the couple. Mabel was the dark, strong, silent type. He bowed slightly to the sisters and immediately began unloading his brushes and tools. Frank held out a hand to the pigtailed, pudgy, twenty-fivish woman. She was dressed head to toe in purple (Amanda intoned, “aubergine”).

“You must be Claudia,” said Frank. The woman gave Frank’s hand a crude pump.

“My name is Claude. Only my mother calls me Claudia. I hate my mother.”

“Okay,” said Frank. “I think I’ll go work on the menu now.”

Clarissa said, “Wait a second. Claude’s come up with a few logo ideas.”

The sisters perused the choices on Claude’s colored printout. They picked a simple font of clean black letters, slanted to the right.

“Oblique,” said Claude. “It’s not slanted. It’s oblique.”

“It certainly is,” said Clarissa, rubbing her M.F.A. friend on the back. Frank watched Clarissa’s arm make the small, comforting circles with envy. She tried to guess how long it’d been since someone had touched her like that. Amanda frequently tried, but Frank couldn’t accept affection from her sister. Amanda looked too much like Flo, their mother.

Amanda said, “Mom would like the logo. Don’t you think, Frank?”

Wednesday

Amanda’s fliers were everywhere: in storefront windows up and down Montague Street, in newspaper vending boxes, bulletin boards. Amanda crafted the text: “Who’s got the hottest mug in Brooklyn? Find out at Romancing the Bean’s first ever Mr. Coffee of the Week contest. We’ll award the most handsome man in the neighborhood all the fresh, steamy coffee he can drink for an entire week. Friday at eight
P.M
. Help pick a winner. Contestants apply at Romancing the Bean, formerly Barney Greenfield’s.” Their address and phone number were printed at the bottom.

“Pithy,” said Frank. “Does the job.”

“Love!” said Clarissa. “Did you get the
Brooklyn Courier
guy to run the ad for free?”

Amanda grinned conspiratorially and said, “Of course.”

“That’s my girl,” said Clarissa, giving the younger sister an impromptu hug. Frank watched the mushing of breast on breast and felt left out again. She’d been working, too.

“I placed the classified ad for a new hire,” said Frank. “And I ordered new paper supplies. Extra Half and Half.”

“That’s great, Frank,” said Clarissa. “It’s all coming together.”

The furniture arrived: bar stools and counters out; Formica tables and vinyl-covered chairs in.

“Vintage chic?” Frank asked Claude as she arranged the furniture. “Where’d you get this stuff?”

“It’s all recycled,” she said.

“You mean you pulled it off the street.”

“And at rummage sales and flea markets,” said Claude.

Frank picked at the torn vinyl on one mismatched chair. “Eclectic yet tattered?” she asked.

“Anything’s better than those hackneyed bar stools,” said Claude.

“Okay,” said Frank. “I think I’ll go work on those menus again.”

Amanda and Clarissa were across the street at The Gap, buying black turtlenecks and boot-leg stretch pants. Amanda already had five of each in her wardrobe. When they got back with bags of clothes for Frank and their as-yet-unhired assistant, the older sister said, “No guy is going to wear flared pants.”

“He’ll wear these,” said Amanda as she pulled out a new pair of straight-leg black jeans, thirty-two/thirty-six.

“What if that’s not his size?” asked Frank.

“This is the ideal male size,” said Amanda. “Any guy we hire has to fit the jeans.”

The mural disappeared. Amanda cried gem-size tears. Frank’s eyes, hands, and mouth were dry.

Thursday

Only one person responded to Frank’s classified ad for an assistant. Name: Matt Schemerhorn. No permanent address.

“He’s the one,” announced Amanda.

“He’s the only one,” said Frank.

“No, I mean, he’s come to us. It’s his destiny and ours to work together. I can feel it.”

“Convenience could be your middle name,” said Frank.

“Clarissa thinks Matt Schemerhorn is our destiny, too.”

“You and Clarissa are cozy,” said Frank, surprised by the jealous tinge to her voice.

“She’s pretty amazing, isn’t she?” asked Amanda. “Truly amazing. It’s like a fairy tale, her showing up. And we get to be Cinderellas, made over for the ball.”

Frank said, “Why do I always feel like Drizella?”

Amanda said, “And that, right there, is your biggest problem.”

Jingle.
A guy ducked under the hanging paint tarp by the door and shuffled toward the sisters. He was skinny and wore scruffy jeans with holes and a too-tight black T-shirt with Timberland boots. His crew cut was so short, Frank wondered if he was shorn for lice.

Amanda said, “Matt Schemerhorn?”

“I’m early,” he said.

“I have to ask why you have no permanent address.” That was Frank. She noticed his small backpack—hardly enough room to carry a full wardrobe. “Are you a homeless person?” she asked.

“I have a home address,” he said. “I just don’t think it’s important or necessary to share it with people I may or may not be working with. Do you give out your home address to strangers on the telephone? To, say, someone who takes your airplane reservation? I hope you don’t. A lot of airlines and catalog companies employ prisoners to answer their phones and take orders. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want a murderer or rapist knowing where I live.”

Frank blinked. “Do you have any references?”

“Aren’t references subjective to the point of uselessness? I could have worked as hard as anyone at my last job, but due to what’s euphemistically known as a ‘personality conflict’ with the complete fascist asshole who ran the place—forgive me, but there’s no other word for this man—my reference might be poor. You could call him and ask about me, ignorant of the depths of this man’s assholeyness, and get the mistaken idea that I wouldn’t do a good job for you. So no, I don’t have any references.”

Amanda tried, “Can you at least tell us what your last job was?”

“I was a barista at Moonburst. Midtown.”

Frank asked, “How did you find that?”

He seemed puzzled. “I looked at the street signs.”

“I meant, did you enjoy working there?”

Matt said, “I have complete contempt for the company and everything it stands for.”

“Really?” Frank encouraged him to go on.

“Yeah,” he said. “For one thing, they imported raw beans from all over the world, but they uniformly full-city roast, burning off the sugar and oil of each bean, killing its unique flavor. They turn everything from an Ethiopian Harrar to a Tanzanian peaberry into mud. Besides that, they pay shit.”

Frank asked, “What were they paying you at Moonburst?”

“Six bucks an hour.”

“Make it ten. And shower every morning before work.”

“Message received,” he said.

Frank added, “I don’t ever want to hear the phrases ‘grassy knoll’ or ‘book depository’ exit your lips.”

“Your loss,” he said.

“What’s your jean size?” That was Amanda.

“I have no idea.”

Amanda walked behind him and folded down the waistband of his pants. “Thirty-two by thirty-six,” she read off the label. “Congratulations, Matt Schemerhorn. You’ll fit in perfectly.”