Jonah liked this girl.
* * *
At the Christmas market, Jonah and his cousins found a suitable holiday gift for Naomi’s parents, then wandered around the stalls for the afternoon. Later, they went out for a steak dinner and talked. Their conversation covered the usual ground—women and sports. But eventually Allen asked about Jonah’s aerospace engineering job. “Your employer is still cool with you helping out at the Star?” He sounded a bit incredulous, as if it was beyond the realm of reason that an employer would give an employee a few months off to deal with a family problem.
The family problem was the coffee shop on the corner of Mary Street and South Congress Avenue that had been there since what felt like the beginning of time. They all knew the story—their grandparents, Juanita and Howell, had opened the coffee shop in the mid-fifties and had named it the Lucky Star Coffee Shop after an episode of the old weekly Roy Rogers television series. They’d obviously been huge fans.
The Star, as they called it, was a squat and plain red brick building, and through the years, as buildings had been torn down and new ones put up all along the avenue, the coffee shop had remained exactly the same. In the late seventies, Juanita and Howell sold the Star to their sons, Roy and Marty. Marty and Belinda (Allen and Andy’s parents), and Roy and Darlene (Jonah’s parents) added more baked goods to the menu. Jonah’s mother had become a self-proclaimed master pie baker, but most of Austin had agreed with her—the Star became the place known for homemade cakes and pies and a cup of joe.
Over the years, a hodgepodge of items had been added to the menu. Big salads. Burgers and sandwiches. Chicken potpies. Basic comfort food that any cook with a spatula could make. But the pies were the draw, and the Star developed a loyal following from the surrounding neighborhoods, including the book club, Vietnam War veterans Robert and Lloyd, a Bible study class from Mt. Zion Baptist Church on the east side, a Mother’s Day Out group, and more.
Like their fathers before them, Jonah, Allen, and Andy had been raised in the coffee shop. During summer breaks and holidays, they all had jobs as busboys. Jonah experienced his first kiss there. And his first breakup—in the back booth with the cracked vinyl seating, Crystal Mendoza told him she didn’t want to date him anymore a week before their high school graduation. Allen broke his arm there, jumping off a ladder. Uncle Marty confessed to Aunt Belinda that he’d kissed Mrs. Sanderson beneath some mistletoe there. And when Jonah’s older sister, Jolie, died of leukemia, his parents had retreated with their grief into work there.
Jolie had died when Jonah was a preschooler. He really didn’t remember much about her—she was a ghost of a memory, a sickly-looking girl with dark circles under her eyes. A few of the regulars remembered her. Lloyd had once told him she’d sit quietly in the back booth with coloring books, never wanting to eat or drink much.
When Jonah was older, and the bus dropped him off from school at the Star, he and his mother would paint the store windows with sketches he’d made. There was no rhyme or reason to them—he just thought of pictures that were cool to his thirteen-year-old self, and his mother helped him paint them on the windows. His parents had never cared if dinosaurs walked across the front windows, or spaceships crashed into the brick. All they ever cared about was that Jonah was close by and safe. He’d always intuitively sensed that they were afraid of losing him, too. And he’d always felt compelled to assure them that he was there for them.
The Lucky Star was one of those places that old-timers pointed to with great fondness, but in the last decade, old Austin was slowly consumed by new Austin, with designer coffeehouses and trendy shops and people flocking in from California to live in high-rises. Property values in what was once a fading section south of downtown had skyrocketed with the ongoing gentrification. The Rogers family struggled to pay the property taxes on the coffee shop. The only reason they’d survived as long as they had, outlasting other mom-and-pop shops, was because Juanita and Howell had bought the building. Otherwise, astronomical rents would have forced them out long ago.
Two Christmases ago, the Rogers family held a meeting. The profit margins had shrunk, and they’d had to let some longtime staff go. But still, they’d all imagined that the Lucky Star would find a way to carry on as it always had.
Seven months ago, there had been another family meeting. Jonah’s father, who was the business end of the Star, announced he had cancer of the bladder. The treatment was brutal, and Jonah had helped as much as he could, dropping by after work, filling in for his dad, taking him to doctors’ appointments.
Three months ago, Jonah realized that he couldn’t help as much as they needed him and do his day job at the same time. So he’d taken a sabbatical from his aerospace engineering job at Neptune Industries to help. It was the only thing that made sense to him. His mother was the baker. Uncle Marty did all the maintenance. And Aunt Belinda helped Amy run the storefront. None of them were suited or wanted to take on the business aspects.
Jonah’s boss, Edgar, was supportive of his request, given the circumstances. He called to check in with Jonah every couple of weeks.
Last week, he’d called with news.
NASA had contracted with Neptune Industries to develop a long-range, deep space satellite. The project would include six months of training at NASA’s deep space communications facility in Madrid, Spain. And a substantial raise. They needed someone to lead the project, and Edgar said the partners wanted Jonah. He’d earned it. He was their best guy. What was not to love? A cool job and more money. Was it possible he could cut short his sabbatical?
Jonah desperately wanted to jump at the opportunity. This was the sort of project that people like him spent an entire career working toward. Why hadn’t he just jumped? No one would blame him. And yet, he’d told Edgar he needed to think about it.
Edgar said he could take a little time, that he’d check in with him after the New Year, but they’d need an answer then.
Jonah’s hesitation was complicated and began with his parents. By Christmas, his dad had completed his treatments, but he’d not yet returned to full-time work. He didn’t look so great, to be honest. But it was more than that. When Jonah had taken over, he’d discovered that the Star was lagging in more ways than one behind the latest coffeehouse trends. He’d tried to explain it to his parents and aunt and uncle, but they didn’t seem to get that for some coffee aficionados, there was a distinct difference between a coffee shop and a coffeehouse.
“That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard!” Jonah’s mother had scoffed, and the two sets of parents had laughed.
“Well, Mom, some people think a coffeehouse or a coffee bar is where you get artisan coffees, and a coffee shop is where you get drip coffee and a piece of pie.”
“So? What’s wrong with that?”
“That’s my point. There is nothing wrong with it, but some people would rather get their joe in a coffeehouse.”