AEAJ - Chapter 3

Chapter 3 - In Which Coffee Is Had

Au Lait had an outside area with about ten tables. Seated at one of the tables was a young man matching, to the smallest detail, Justin's mental image of Chadwick. Justin simply stood there, for a moment, staring at him. He was ordering something from a waitress who seemed completely enthralled in his choice of drink, that took almost a minute and a half for him to articulate properly. The young brunette did not mind this, and if anything felt lucky to have been the one with the honor of serving him. He turned, and saw Justin, whose gaze was still fixed on him, and widened his smile.
"Hullo, Justin."
English accent. Justin hadn't thought of that.

He sat across from Chadwick for a while, neither speaking. Chadwick was looking directly into Justin's eyes, which was making him wildly uncomfortable. After a while, he leaned back in his chair.
"Well, are you going to have a drink then? Contrary to the name, or perhaps because of it, the cafe au lait here is not fantastic. However, I think it can be universally agreed that a name like Au Lait has the precise amount of foreign appeal while maintaining a sort of warm, homey feeling. Of course, what I ordered is, under normal circumstances, much too complex for the average barrista to make. It may come off as slightly gaudy, but I am willing to pay as much as they ask and once you have sampled it, I very seriously doubt you will be able to enjoy any other drink here or anywhere else."

Justin wasn't sure what to say. He asked for a regular cup of coffee, and shifted nervously in his chair. Chadwick stretched out, and shot their waitress an intoxicating grin as she gave him a cup of something with an unclear color, brown yet orange, like a tree basking in the light of a brilliant sunset. It smelled wonderful, like the air in an autumnal forest at the height of its beauty.
"You notice it, right?" Chadwick said taking in the fragrance. "This cup of coffee is exactly like a forest at sunset, in the fall. Took me years to get the thing just right. You have no idea just how bad coffee can actually taste."
Justin cocked his head slightly, and spoke his first words, besides ordering his beverage, since he'd sat down.
"Why don't you just make it yourself?"
Chadwick took a sip, eyes closed, so absorbed in his actions Justin began to repeat himself. However, Chadwick spoke first.
"I like to see how others will make it. No two sunsets are ever the same, nor should a recipe be set in stone. I order it based on my feelings, the sunset I want, the kind of forest I feel like standing in. The young lass serving us has made it exquisitely."
Once again, Justin was at a loss.

He felt awkward now, sipping coffee, cream, and sugar. His clothes, his drink, his demeanor, all seemed so plain in comparison to the brash yet stylish way in which Chadwick dressed, drank, and lived. He had said volumes, Justin barely a sentence. And none of it coming close to addressing why he was there. Breaking his unintentional vow of silence, he popped the question.
"So...what do you want me to do?"
Chadwick opened his eyes, his cup poised at his lips, the coffee millimeters away from his mouth. He gazed at Justin through the steam, and at length put the cup down.
"I perform a service. I don't know if you could really find a concrete name for it. I am a go-between. When two parties find it unfavorable or inconvenient to communicate directly with each other, I perform whatever action aids the process. You, Justin, would be doing deliveries."
"Deliveries?" was all Justin said, but Chadwick understood that he was actually asking how a delivery boy position could warrant five hundred dollars of encouragement.
"Of course, the things you'll be delivering will be very important. The parties I work with are willing to pay very well for my services, and I in return can pay you very well. I trust you are satisfied with what I included in the letter?"
"Are you kidding?" Justin said. "That was five hundred dollars. I don't think anyone's ever been paid five hundred dollars to read a letter."
Chadwick sipped his coffee, and smiled, bowing his head slightly. "I suppose not. I'm sure it seems over-the-top, but as I said""
"You're the only one who can do what I need," Justin interrupted, completing Chadwick's sentence. At this, Chadwick's smile widened. His smile was a living being, writhing and moving, completely independent from Chadwick's will. It had its own presence, its own personality.

"Justin, let me ask you a question. I'd like you to answer quickly and honestly. Don't think about it, just say what you feel. Ready? Let us say, hypothetically, that I were to tell you that the table closest to the window is occupied not by people, but by two hippopotami. What is your response?"
Chadwick could see Justin was inspecting the question for hidden meaning, so he wagged his finger.
"No no, no thinking. Just answer."
"Alright," Justin said, derailing his train of thought. "I suppose I'd look and see if there were really Hippotami there."
"You would actually look?"
"Well, assuming I don't have the time to think about whether there's some sort of metaphor or hidden meaning at work, I might as well just find out if they're actually sitting there."
Chadwick interlocked his fingers, and put his elbows on the table, hiding his mouth. He looked at Justin for a while once more, eventually lowering his hands onto the table.
"Justin, there are, if we're going to be simple about it, three types of people in the world. The first type has no convictions. They take the world in idealism, believing whatever comes there way because they don't see any reason why not to. The second type has incredibly strong convictions, judging the world and everything in it by a set of mostly unwavering standards."

"If I were to pose the question to someone in the first group, they would either believe me outright, or try immediately to think of the circumstances in which I could be right. Someone in the second group would point out everything that would make such a claim impossible based on their standards of logic and reason, or at the very least do everything in their power to disprove it. You, however, did neither. You are the type of person who simply investigates, neither completely trusting nor mistrusting my claims. This is essential for your job."
Justin listened intently. The logic, he thought, was somewhat flawed, and the use of such an extreme example seemed the sort of thing that would skew the results of the experiment, but he seemed to have answered the way Chadwick had wanted him to.
"That's enough for me. You are, most definitely, the one. If you'd like to take the job, we'll begin right away. I should mention, we will be moving quite a bit; my clients are rather spread out, and it does no good having to complicate things as far as traveling goes. In other words, you'd be abdicating your home and going on the road, after a fashion."

Now wait a second, Justin thought, I am just beginning to accept the fact that this man has a legitimate job he has selected me for, but he's only just met me and he's telling me to move? His face did not betray this, however. When he needed it, Justin had a fantastic poker face. Chadwick, likewise, had made it almost impossible to see that he was scanning Justin's face for an insight into his thoughts. The two studied each other, not moving, not blinking, eyes locked on each other. Justin trusted Chadwick less now than ever, and yet things were still too strange to outright ignore. Before he could come to a decision though, Chadwick broke their locked stares and the silence.
"Oh, come now. Like you have anywhere to go back to, anyway? Is your electricity even still working?"
That was it. Justin couldn't take any more of Chadwick and his living smile and auburn coffee and indelible charm.
|I'm sorry, but I don't think I'll be taking you up on your offer. Will you be wanting that money back?"
"To even think such a thing," Chadwick said, unphased, "is an insult to my character. The money is yours. I'll even buy the coffee. I rather wish you'd reconsider, though."
Justin thanked him again, still refusing, and left.

At the table by the window, the male hippopotamus ordered a second iced latte, his wife a cappuccino, light on the sugar (she was, the undertone suggested, watching her figure).