Twelve maybe, thin, with the sides of her dark blonde hair tied back in neat braids. She’s wearing a flimsy white blouse edged in blue trim, and she’s tapping her fingers impatiently on the counter. Her jeans fit snugly beneath a hair’s width of exposed white belly. A shiny, delicate chain connects the light-faded denim to her plastic Kerropi wallet.

She orders before he speaks, then he nods and scurries to fill the order. While his back is turned she fingers the service bell with a cocked head, her index finger poised. Ready. She strokes a menu before inspecting the dish of chocolate-covered espresso beans; she selects a large one and tucks it into her mouth. A sign just at eye-level clearly labels the beans as ten cents each. She chews languidly. Spinning the tip jar she peeks inside, surveying it’s meager contents. She sways her hips to the music he’s picked out.

He arrives back with her white, frothy frozen drink and with a pout he’s gone again. He returns with a whipped cream-topped beverage and begins to bang at the register. She rolls out a ten from her front pants pocket to pay and from the change he hands her she places the few coins in the dish labelled “Take One, Leave One’. Her dollar-filled fist hovers over the tip jar momentarily, before she jams it, still full, into her jeans.

Unwrapping her straw at both ends, she places one end of the straw in her teeth and blows the paper wrapper like a feather into his face. He grins.

She looks at me directly when she turns around, beaming, and licking whipped cream from her upper lip.