Charly liked working at The Busy Bean a lot. Mostly she thought that had to do with the fact that she got to work with her best friend. It was also a lot nicer than anything other job she’d worked back in Germany. She didn’t have to work night shifts, her boss didn’t yell at her, and she got paid by the rules set out in the law. It was also nice to work pretty much next door to the apartment she shared with Jutta, it meant that if she was ever late, or left her apron on her bed, she could just run home and get it. That tended to happen often. Living in Wellington had made her lazy, she could tell. But she liked it too much to let it bother her just yet. She liked having a bed and a room all to herself, she liked being able to stay up late with Jutta, curled up on the sofa watching those American sitcoms she liked that played on an almost endless repeat on the TV in New Zealand. She also liked living near Bret and Rosy, and Jutta’s brother Wilhelm, about whom she hadn’t made her mind up yet, mostly because he didn’t talk to her all that much, but she thought he seemed like a good sort though. She liked the beach too, and the rolling green hills, and the white peaks of the mountains that were sometimes visible through the sea mist across the harbour. She liked a lot of things about Wellington, but mostly she liked how far away it was from Essen and everything she’d left there.
At the end of her shift, she headed into the break room so she could untie her apron and pick up the guitar. Her hands were stained by half ground coffee beans and syrup, and she tried her best to wipe them on the towel in the small bathroom, so they wouldn’t dirty Friedhelm’s guitar. Though she got most of the mess off, the smell lingered so every time she moved her hands to her face she was caught off guard by the pungent scent of hazelnut and vanilla. Ever since she’d started working there she’d never been able to get the smell of the coffee shop out of her hair, and sometimes it gave her a headache, like she was gaining a caffeine overdose from inhalation alone. The Busy Bean was still as crowded as its name would suggest, many people stopping off on their way home from work and school, but mostly they ignored Charly as she made her way to the small stool and microphone that her boss had set out some time earlier. Playing there wasn’t like performing, with everyone’s eyes fixed on her so she was some deer caught in a proverbial set of headlights, once she started playing, her voice and her strumming just became another part of the hubbub of the coffee shop. She preferred it like that, the idea of playing on her own made her feel uncomfortable just from the thought. She liked to be able to drift from one song to the next, her mind almost entirely empty, like she was trapped in a huge bubble where she couldn’t be disturbed by anything else. In that sense, it was a lot like meditation she supposed, only she didn’t feel nothing, sometimes she felt such a quiet joy she thought her heart might burst, and other times a melancholy settled in her bones that was so heavy it was hard to lift her finger to pick out even the simplest of melodies. The only other person she let into this bubble in her mind was Jutta, who watched her from the counter, smiling at her encouragingly, bobbing her head along if she liked a particular song, and sometimes sticking her tongue out at her best friend and pulling faces in an attempt to distract and make her laugh. Which always almost worked.
Usually she tended not to look at the customers when she played, but that particular evening, she couldn’t shake the sense that someone other than her best friend had entered her little bubble and was actually paying attention to what she was doing. Slowly, so she didn’t distract herself from the chords she was meant to be playing, she peered around the room, trying to find who was watching. Standing in the corner, by a stand which held coats and hats, was a boy, around the same age as her, possibly a little younger, watching her quite closely, his eyes flicking from the hand she had around the neck of the guitar, to the one that she was using to strum with. Shaking her head a little, she returned to her music, figuring he was just curious, and would leave once he’d finished his drink. At seven, when she usually finished up, she played one last song, a German folk song she’d been taught at school, about a solider separated from his love, only allowed to return to her when she fell gravely ill. The song perhaps wasn’t the right mood for a sunny Thursday evening, but it was unlikely that anyone but Jutta could understand what she was saying, and without the meaning of the words, the song sounded soothing and only a little mournful. It was only as the song was ending that she realised the boy was still there, still watching her play. Frowning lightly, she picked up the guitar, with every intention to sit in the backroom with it until Jutta was done and then they would walk home together. But halfway there she changed her mind, and a little like her feet were working of their own accord, she made a beeline for the boy still stood by the hatstand.
“Is there something you would like?” she asked him, balancing the guitar on the floor between them, and placing her hands on the head. He was not as tall as she had expected, which made her feel a little better, since she was vaguely worried he was looking for trouble. Trouble she thought she could handle, but only if she was able to hit trouble round the face with Friedhelm’s guitar.
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