ArchivedLogs:Hardworking Ambitions

Hardworking Ambitions
Dramatis Personae Melinda, Shane
In Absentia	2013-01-30 '
Location <NYC> Montagues - SoHo
Montagues harkens back to the day when SoHo was filled to the brim with artists, with its mismatched furniture, all plush and decorated heavily with carved wood, but remains trendy enough to keep its newer patrons by making sure that furniture is clean, in good repair and inviting. The antique tables all have been reinforced to seem less creaky. The real draw of the cafe is the smell: fresh roasted coffee mingles with perfectly steeped teas. Spices from crisp pastries mingle with the tang of clotted cream but doesn't overwhelm too much the scent of chalk on the menu boards. It's break time at Montagues, at least for Melinda. She finishes her last drink before seamlessly switching with her replacement and deaproning herself. She grabs her lunch - something cool to drink and a sandwich from the premade fridge - and heads back to the back to take a load off her feet. She sticks the bottled beverage in the crook of her arm as she unwraps her food and heads back, actually looking for the store's dishwasher for once. "Shane? You back here?" The store's dishwasher is chugging along steadily, tucked up against a sink with three compartments. The two on the ends are filled, one on the left soapy and steaming, one on the right clean and clear and half-full of dishes. Shane is up to his elbows in hot water, scrubbing at a mug in the right compartment and humming quietly to himself (something lively-cheerful and classical-sounding) though the humming stops as soon as the door opens. The scrubbing does not. Shane turns his head, squinting at Melinda for a moment but then flashing teeth quickly when she speaks. "Oh, hey. No. I mean yeah. What time is it?" "It's seven." Melinda supplies, her sandwich hanging near her mouth as she steps up to the sink behind Shane and looks in on his work. The steam is starting to wilt the wisps of hair around her face down to her skin. She takes a bite and chews quietly before adding. "There was something I kind of needed to talk to you about." Her tone is very serious, but she has food in her mouth, so she doesn't continue. Shane works quick, with the scrubbing, piling scrubbed-clean soapy dishes in the empty middle sink before rinsing them off in batches to transfer them to the sanitizing soak. He stops this halfway through, though, turning off the water to leave a pile of soapy dishes in the empty middle sink; he leans a hip up against the compartment and frowns at Melinda, his smile fading. "Er. Have I been dishing wrong? Um and if it's about Jessica I /totally/ didn't say anything to her she just started whining about my /smile/ and I can't help that," he is preemptively protesting. Even if his smiles are kind of /deliberately/ grinsome to the few employees who have looked askance at the sharky new dishwasher. "Jessica? Really?" Melinda looks askance at this and shakes her head. "Well, if she starts to bother you - or if you hear her whispering about it to others, let me know." She takes another bite of her sandwich, not really alleviating the stress just yet. She takes a deep breath as she chews and considers. "Oh, and no, you're washing dishes very well. It's just that - well," She takes another moment clear her mouth and take a sip from the bottle to make sure everything is clear. She doesn't really make eye contact now. "Hive knows. He sort of - well, I guess 'gleaned it' would be the best way to explain it. I made him swear not to tell Jax, but I thought you should know anyway." "Oh I hear lots of whispering," Shane says, grinning /brighter/, "people forget my ears aren't like everyone else's -- nobody's been a dick to my /face/ though." He glances towards the door, then turns the sink back on, rinsing soap off his hands before shutting the faucet off again. He starts lifting dishes out of the sanitizer, letting them drip off before stacking them in a rack beside the sink. "Oh. Um. Hive." He snorts, quiet. "He /would/ know, wouldn't he? Uhh." His claws click lightly against a glass, and then he sets the glass upside-down on the rack, too. "He's old and all but he'll /probably/ be cool? I mean he's used to keeping secrets I guess." Though he frowns a little uncertainly. "Yeah. He would know." Melinda inhales deeply and leans against the wall nibbling quietly. "There's nothing to be done about it. He has promised. If your dad finds out, it's not like he's going to make you quit, right? He'll probably just make you save your money - then you can buy things for your siblings or something." She smiles and shrugs. "However, if this all falls apart, I'll give you the best after hours barista training you can get - and then maybe you can try for something at Evolve. I think you could rock a steaming machine, no problem. Hey, if you want the training, you can have it anyway." "I don't know," Shane admits uncertainly. "I don't think he'd make me quit. I mean it's better than just getting high, right? But he's kind of hung up about school and homework and shit." For /some reason/. "He definitely wouldn't take my money, though. Kinda worried he's gonna /grey/ himself. Can you do that? Like too much stress. What makes people turn grey, anyway?" He's still stacking dishes, carefully. More carefully now that there's more of them, like a slowly piling dishes jenga-tower. "Hey for real? Is it hard to learn?" "Stress can indeed take its toll on a person's hair color, also their ability to stay healthy and the strength of their heart, but I'm not sure -- Some of that type A personality stuff has been debunked." Melinda wets her lips and takes a sip. "It's just an expensive place to be. He kind of has to work that hard to keep things afloat, you know? It's not like he's going to land some sort of CEO job and start raking in the millions." She sighs and takes a nibbling bite she can easily talk around. "And no, not so hard to learn. It's really about paying attention to all of the aspects and being good at multitasking. It's really a numbers game of getting used to how long it takes to heat something to one hundred eighty degrees - or two hundred - and keeping your machine well tuned." She shrugs and nibbles more. "You could do it, no problem." "Hey maybe he could!" Shane's teeth flash in a bright smile. "If they rated CEOs on their oil painting skills, anyway. He'd have it made. New York's expensive, though, yeah." The smile fades as quick as it came, though Shane turns aside to continue dishing. A little harder. Little fiercer. SCRUB. "I guess a lot more expensive if you've got --" There's a hesitation, and though he finishes, "-- kids," after a pause, there's a strong sense that that wasn't the first word he was reaching for. "I can multitask like nobody's business. How long've you been baristaing for?" "Hey... what was that? Are you feeling guilty that your dad is taking care of you?" Melinda straightens and lets her sandwich hang out more around belt level than around her mouth. "If it is, maybe you should talk to him about it. But, you know, keep in mind that there's a kind of love in being able to take care of things for someone. Your dad's a very loving person." She hangs where she is and purses her lips a little. "You're a special kid. It's why I hired you." She takes a drink from her bottle to try and switch topics, but it's hard and she just keeps drinking until she runs out of liquid to imbibe. "I've been doing this for a little over 4 years, though I started where you are when I first got to New York for extra cash." "I just don't really think this was his /aspiration/ in life, you know? Broke as shit and feeding three freaks before he's even managed his degree." Shane's tone is casually flip, even if his shoulders are kind of tensed up as he works. "Oh, sure. He's loving." He says this like it's a /flaw/. "This what /you/ want to do in life?" "Want?" Melinda shrugs and finds something to half sit half lean against. "I don't know. I came here wanting to be in theater. Now I'm working on restaurant management. I'm content." She takes another bite of her food and stays where she is, quiet and thoughtful. "The volunteering makes me feel useful," She offers, kind of hopefully. "Is it so bad to not have ambition beyond the here and now? What are my options? Theater didn't pan out. I prefer being around people, satiating and quenching, so offices would kill me. Maybe I could organize events for rich people and get money for party planning, but meeting people's demands and whims is unappealing. I could settle down and have children of my own, but I can't really get past the thought of having sex in order to get pregnant to push the kid out. Adopting could work, but I couldn't do anything official. They'd never approve me." "I didn't say it was bad," Shane says with a shrug. "I don't have ambitions. I was just curious. Volunteering's good. Working with rich people would probably blow chunks, I bet they're real douchebags. Why wouldn't they approve you, they approved Jax. You look way more respectable." SCRUB. Scrubscrubscrub. "-- Is it the sex you're not into, or the part where you gotta push out like, a fucking /bowling ball/ cuz that seems painful." Melinda considers this for a while. "I don't know. I never got over that 'ew gross' feeling that kids have on the subject of sex. I guess it's not that bad. I just..." She shivers and shrugs. "Supposedly that changed when I meet the right person, but I haven't yet and I'm not getting any younger." She wets her lips. "I know, I'm some kind of freak, right? Pushing out a torpedo bowling ball doesn't seem like a great idea either." "/You're/ some kind of freak?" Shane echoes this with a decided note of amusement. "Pfff, nah, I mean whatever you're into, right? Or not into. Whatever. Sex /is/ kind of gross a lot of the time, I don't think everyone's gotta be into it. I think my brother might not be." Or he might be fifteen. "Probably better anyway, babies poop like. All the time." Melinda nods and stands, finishing off her sandwich in two bites and wipes the crumbs from her fingers on her trousers. "Well, my break is over. I have to get going back out front. If you've got time some night, I'll show you the espresso machine - tonight too, as I'm closing!" She turns to leave, but waits on his response. "I've got time." Shane flashes Melinda a grin, but this is all his response. He's turning the water back on, getting back to the long parade of dishes. He seems to relish the job, sinking his hands into the water. A return of his quiet humming accompanies Melinda out.