I took the stairs up to the second floor where the coffee shop was, grabbed my apron from the back, put it on, and adjusted my name tag. “And good morning to you,” my coworker—and best friend—Florence greeted me. “I’ve already got the regular, the decaf, and the coffee of the day brewing. Do you want to take care of the bakery case? The delivery’s already come.”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll do that,” I said.

She blinked, frowned, and sniffed as I spoke. “You’ve got coffee breath!” she accused.

“Do I need a mint?”

“You had coffee on your way to work in a coffee shop? Again?”

I glanced around to make sure there weren’t any managers in earshot. “You know as well as I do that our coffee is nasty.”

“All coffee is nasty to me. I can’t judge degrees of nastiness.”

“Don’t tell anyone!” I begged as I opened a bakery box and started arranging pastries on the trays that fit in the display case. “But really, we resell second-rate pastries—at a huge markup—and we make terrible coffee, and people still buy it because it’s supposedly gourmet and because having coffee in a bookstore makes them feel smart.”

She filled an insulated carafe with the regular coffee. “And this store would’ve gone under ages ago without us. The coffee shop is our biggest profit center, believe it or not.”

I stopped working and glanced over at her. “Do you ever feel like working here is giving you bad karma? Shouldn’t we be doing something more worthwhile?”

“We’re keeping a bookstore financially viable. That makes us deserving of a Nobel prize. We’re practically heroes!”

“I guess that’s one way to look at it. We’re subsidizing literacy. But that doesn’t make the coffee any better.”

Then we had to stop criticizing our employer as the store opened for the day and patrons came pouring in for their morning caffeine fix. I wanted to stand on the counter and tell them where they could go for better coffee and pastries. If it got me fired, then maybe I’d be forced to find a better job. But I was too busy to give in to the temptation. Those lattes didn’t make themselves.

At last, the morning rush ended, and we had a chance to catch our breath before the lunch rush. Florence wiped down the counters while I cleared tables, stacking the abandoned books on a shelving cart. Florence glanced into one of the carafes and said, “There’s about a cup left. Do you want it, or should I just throw it out before I make a fresh pot?”

“Is it the regular or the coffee of the day?”

“It’s the regular.”

“I’ll take it.” My morning coffee had already worn off, and it was hard to get away for a coffee break when you worked in a coffee shop. I stood behind the counter, sipping the burnt-tasting coffee, while I perused the classified ads in a newspaper a patron had left behind.

“Still job-hunting, I see,” Florence remarked when I circled an ad. “Are you going to actually apply for any of these, or are you going to talk yourself out of it again?”

“The result will be the same,” I said, sighing.

She snapped me with a towel. “How do you expect good things to come to you when you have that attitude?”

“I don’t think my attitude has much to do with it. I’m not even getting interviews anymore. There just aren’t any advertising jobs. I’ve been trying for almost a year.”

“And it’s become easier for you to stay here. It’s a comfort zone.”

“Here? Comfortable? Are you insane? Of course I want to get out of here.”

She glanced around, as though making sure we weren’t being overheard, then bent toward me and whispered, “Well, you might want to start applying again or networking or putting up billboards, or whatever it takes to find something, because I heard we’re being sold.”

“Sold? To one of the chains?”

“I don’t know, but whatever it is, things are bound to change.”

“If it stays a bookstore, they’ll keep the coffee shop. As you said, we’re a profit center.”

“But bookselling isn’t exactly a growth industry these days. They may just want the real estate.”

I groaned and leaned down, resting my forehead on the newspaper. “Just what I needed. Maybe I should accept Josh’s proposal and become a housewife. It doesn’t look like I’m going to succeed at anything else.”

“My, that does sound romantic,” she said dryly. “You didn’t tell me Josh proposed.”

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