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The Latte Rebellion Page 3
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To:
From: Latte Rebellion
Re: A Call to Arms, or All Hands on Mugs
Dear Friends,
Please read this missive carefully. We need your help. If you got this message, you may already be playing a key role in the Latte Rebellion. You may be a relative, a friend, a Sympathizer, or even an Organizer.
What we need from you is simple. In order for the Latte Rebellion to achieve its goal of spreading the word around the English-speaking world, consuming coffee at every turn, we must raise the necessary funds. Towards this end we ask you to (A) buy our T-shirt, and (B) forward this information to everyone you know and ask them to buy a T-shirt.
Not sure you want to be a part of the Latte Rebellion? Visit our website for more information:
www.latte-rebellion.com
Incidentally, this is also where you can purchase the T-shirt. The Movement Thanks You!
Yours in latte-ness,
Agent Alpha and Captain Charlie
P.S. This is not a joke. We really are selling shirts.
2
Publicizing the Rebellion should have been easy. If you looked at our written plans, it was easy.
But thanks to my parents—and my Hindi-speaking, sari-wearing Indian grandmother, who lived several hours south of us in Bakersfield—our plans suffered a slight delay.
“I hope you finished vacuuming your room,” my mother said on Monday night, rubbing a hand tiredly through her short-cropped dark hair. We were in the living room watching one of my father’s favorite movies, a documentary called Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Dad was absorbed, as usual, in the sordid white-collar drama of a huge corporation imploding; meanwhile, I was taking mental notes on what not to do if I was ever on the board of a multi-million-dollar company, and lamenting the fact that other people’s fathers (normal ones) made their kids watch Star Wars or James Bond movies, a fate I would happily endure given the choice. Not that anybody gave me one.
“I need you to work on the guest room before Nani comes tomorrow,” my mom continued doggedly. “I’m giving parent-teacher conferences and won’t be able to leave until four.”
“Nani’s coming tomorrow?” I stared unseeingly at the TV, frustrated. “But it’s the middle of the week.” My parents were very into “quality family time,” so it wouldn’t be easy to extricate myself in order to hang out with Carey and start our publicity blitz.
Crap, crap, crap.
“Your Nani misses you,” my mother said, trying a different strategy—one involving guilt and wheedling. “She said she’s looking forward to spending some time with you, helping you practice your Hindi. And she wants to teach you how to cook your favorite chicken biryani.”
I groaned. My dad looked up briefly from the TV. “She really wants to teach you about your culture, Asha. I wish I’d had that at your age. Your Grandma Bee didn’t even try to teach me Spanish.” He gave an ironic laugh. “If only she’d known how useful it would be in the business world.”
Useful. Har. My knowledge of Hindi would get me about as far as a five-year-old looking for a bathroom. And my parents had clearly forgotten Nani’s disastrous attempt to teach me traditional dances when I was in junior high, which ended abruptly when I was trying the dandia raas for the umpteenth time and one of my sticks went flying and broke a vase.
Still, Nani insisted that it was in my blood. “Arré, it is your culture,” she’d say mournfully, at least once a visit. But it wasn’t that simple. Indian culture—well, it didn’t feel like it was my culture, not any more or less than my dad’s Irish and Mexican heritage. I was just me. Whatever that was.
Incidentally, “whatever that was” turned out to be a more-than-apt way of describing the results of my sad attempt at chicken biryani, despite Nani hovering and issuing imperious instructions at every turn.
“Nahi, nahi—not like that! Let the onions get brown but don’t burn them,” she exclaimed, as I rushed to turn off the screeching smoke detector before we all went deaf. Meanwhile, Nani tucked the billowing, bright-magenta folds of her sari safely out of the way and rescued my slightly scorched onions, still sizzling in our biggest pot. I heaved a sigh and opened the kitchen windows to let out the smoky onion smell.
“Okay, Asha beti, not to worry,” Nani said, rummaging in the back of the cupboard and pulling out an array of spices only my mother ever used. “It won’t matter. Next step: we finish the gravy, all right?” She turned to me, an expression of concern on her plump brown face.
“Fine,” I said, swallowing my pride in the face of her obvious—and understandable—fear that I’d never be able to fend for myself in the kitchen. I picked up an unlabeled jar of brown spice powder. “So, a teaspoon of cinnamon, right?”
Nani tsked. “An inch of cinnamon stick.” She pointed at the jar I was holding. “That’s the garam masala. Three-quarters of a teaspoon. Remember?”
I set the jar down with a thunk. This was hopeless. It didn’t matter if it was my culture, it didn’t matter if Nani measured everything out for me and wrote it all down in neat cursive on a sheet of scrap paper from the printer. I was not innately able to channel my Indian heritage at will, any more than I could become an Iron Chef after a handful of cooking lessons.
Yet here I was, stuck in the kitchen with a half-burnt pot of onions, an assortment of indistinguishable spices in varying shades of brown, and a grandmother attempting to hide her despair at my clear lack of culinary talent.
I really needed to get out of here.
“Mom,” I said over dinner a few evenings later, making sure I’d finished every last grain of rice and mopped up all of my lamb korma with a piece of naan, even though I was full to bursting and did not need the extra carbs. “I have to ask you something.”
She eyed my clean plate suspiciously.
“Can I go out with Carey tonight? We’re supposed to go to a workshop at school on college application essays.” I crossed my fingers under the kitchen table. Carey, of course, was already done with her essay. As for the workshop, I’d been planning to go, but our current project took precedence.
“College essays?” Mom glanced at Dad, who gave a quick nod. “I suppose it’s fine, if you’re back by nine thirty.”
I let out a silent, relieved breath.
“Such a good, studious girl,” Nani said, patting me on the arm and beaming.
Her familiar scent of curry powder, sandalwood soap, and mothballs wafted over me as she hugged me goodbye half an hour later. I tried not to flinch guiltily.
When I got to Carey’s house, she was in the middle of cleaning jam off her brother Davey’s head with a damp dishtowel.
“I’m sorry, Ash,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I just need a second. My dad’s in the shower and of course this happened. Could you just go make sure Roddy’s still watching cartoons in the living room?”
“Poor you,” I said, peering around the corner to where Roddy was sitting raptly in front of some anime show, watching ginormous robots bent on annihilating each other. “He’s fine. He’s just enjoying some wanton cartoon violence.”
“Great. Now I know why he was trying to build a giant homicidal robot out of Legos.” Carey sounded exhausted. With three boys under the age of twelve, the Wong household was always a few incidents short of complete chaos.
“You really do need to move away for college, don’t you?” I leaned against the counter next to the sink, where Carey was washing her hands. Davey was now jam-free, sitting in his high chair and happily shoving crackers into his mouth.
“No freaking kidding. Mom is still on my case about going to U-NorCal so I can live at home. Can you believe it?” She shook her head. The University of Northern California was conveniently located here in town, but it wasn’t an option for me, either. I had my eye on bigger prizes—namely Stanford, Harvard, UC Berkeley, and the über-selective Robbins College, also in Berkeley.
I hadn’t mentioned it to Carey yet, but
it was a recurring daydream of mine that she and I would both get into schools in Berkeley and move into an apartment together. A sibling-free, parent-free, grandmother-free, Roger-Yee-free apartment. With an ample supply of frozen enchiladas—something I actually could cook.
Over the burble of the dishwasher, Carey’s mom shouted something about being home on time so she could finish her homework. Carey sighed.
“So,” I said, “your car or mine?”
“My imaginary Lamborghini’s in the shop,” she said. Not for the first time, I felt relieved to be an only child—because I had my own car. It was ancient, it was slow, and it was surely not pretty—hence its nickname, the Geezer—but it was all mine. We piled in and immediately cranked open the windows to let in the cool evening air.
“What’s first on our list?” I asked Carey, Keeper of the Master Plan. She shuffled a few papers.
“Um … Mocha Loco. Tenth Street and Oak.”
We drove in silence for a few minutes. The sun was almost completely down, and the streetlights were already on. As we got close to the university campus, the sidewalks grew more clogged with students. I could smell garlic from the Italian deli wafting on the breeze, and the faint aroma of eucalyptus leaves.
“Are you nervous, Asha? You’re unusually quiet,” Carey said.
“Nope, not even a little. This is going to be amazing.” I turned onto Oak and started looking for a parking spot. “I can’t stop thinking about how it’s going to feel to be somewhere else next summer … I mean, think about it. No parents, no school … just relaxing … shopping …”
“… ogling tasty guys,” Carey put in.
I grinned. “And getting them to take us out for coffee.”
Yeah, we were a little obsessed.
At the last minute, a car pulled out right in front of Mocha Loco, and I swerved into the space. Here we go, I thought to myself as we got out of the car, making sure we had our flyers as well as pushpins and scotch tape for any contingency.
The green plastic patio tables were full of people studying. None of them paid any attention to us as we wound our way through and into the café. Inside, the tables were packed with more college students and professor types, buried in fat textbooks or having deep philosophical discussions. I felt … out of place. My excitement dimmed a little as we squeezed past tables and chairs, and I was convinced that I was going to bump into somebody or knock someone’s coffee over with my butt. My round butt.
There was a two-piece band in one corner playing folk guitar ballads, and everyone was conversing at an even louder volume as a result. The hubbub of voices was giving me a headache, and I could feel nervous sweat prickling at the back of my neck.
“Now what do we do?” I stared at the throng of people and finally located a bulletin board—already crammed with flyers—on a stand next to the cash register.
“No problem; we can handle this,” Carey said, grabbing one of the flyers out of my hand and marching up to the cash register. I trailed behind, not wanting to get trampled by caffeine-crazed college students.
“Here’s the plan,” Carey said in a stage whisper. She pulled on my wrist and I leaned toward her. “You buy a coffee from that guy. Just act normal. I’ll ask him about the flyer.” This was the upside of Carey’s control-freakishness: she always had a Plan B. I’d seen it in action on the soccer field, as she shouted strategic maneuvers out to her teammates, but it never ceased to amaze me. I was more of an idea person, a motivator. I was no strategist.
I went up to the counter, trying to project more confidence than I was feeling. The guy behind the register was kind of cute, with dyed-black hair, dark eyes, a nice tan, and an eyebrow ring.
Make that very cute.
I could see a tattoo of some kind of Chinese character on his upper arm, disappearing under his T-shirt sleeve. Definitely a potential Rebellion Sympathizer. I gave Carey’s arm a little squeeze and took a deep breath.
“Can I get a large iced latte, please?” It came out a lot quieter than I’d planned, more like a whispery squeak than a confident request for coffee.
“What was that?”
Carey elbowed me. I tried again.
“Um, an iced latte?” I smiled and tried to make eye contact.
“Whipped cream?” the guy asked in a bored voice. Leonard, his name tag read.
“No thanks, Leonard.” I elbowed Carey.
“Excuse me.” Carey looked up at him—he was pretty tall—and put on her cutest smile, blinking at him a little. “We were wondering if we could put a flyer for our …
um … organization on your bulletin board?”
Carey has really striking hazel eyes, which was why Jonathan Burmeister wouldn’t leave her alone. And before that, Kendall DeSoto, Eddie Green, and about twenty zillion others. I could see what was coming. I wasn’t blind.
“Sure, go ahead,” Leonard said. “It’s a student organization, right? Not a corporate thing?”
“Uh—”
I nudged Carey again.
“Yes,” she said stiffly.
It wasn’t a lie. We were students. We were organized. Kind of.
“I’ll have to have the manager take a look at it, but go ahead and put it up for now.” He smiled at Carey, and handed me my latte without even looking at me. Of course. Like I even had a chance. Let’s just say that, standing next to Carey, I was not the one you’d notice first.
Carey pinned up the flyer with a stray thumbtack and then turned back toward the counter, flipping back her short hair coyly. “So what’s the tattoo of?” she asked with a sly smile. “I don’t read any Chinese.” And it drives her dad crazy, I considered adding, but I refrained from doing so.
“It’s the symbol for luck, combined with a horse, for year of the horse. My birth year.” He leaned on the counter with one elbow, the better to show off his ink.
“Sounds pretty lucky,” Carey said. “I heard horses are supposed to be intelligent and sensitive.” She looked up at Leonard through slightly lowered eyelashes. “So what’s your major?”
“It’s my first semester, but I’m thinking about philosophy. I’m reading Kierkegaard’s journals for a class, and they’re really thought-provoking.” Absent-mindedly, he took our two coffees from the barista and set them on the counter.
“Wow, Kierkegaard,” she said, nodding. “Have you ever read—”
Ugh.
“So, this was fun. Thanks, Leonard.” I grabbed my coffee and pulled on Carey’s arm before I became the first person in recorded history ever to die of nausea. She simpered at him as we pushed our way out of the crowded café.
“What’d you do that for?” Carey glared at me as she yanked open the passenger-side door. “He was nice.”
“We have nine more cafés to visit. We can’t afford to chit-chat at every single one of them.” It was sort of sickening watching her in action sometimes. Especially when you were the one who faded into the background as a result. I started the car and pulled back into traffic, narrowly missing a girl with a humongous backpack riding a bike.
“Chit-chat? Please. You sound like a schoolmarm,” Carey said.
“The word ‘schoolmarm’ makes you sound like a schoolmarm.”
“I seriously think you’re just jealous of me. Me and Leonard.”
“Now you’re goading me.” I sighed.
“It’s my job. Some of us take our work seriously.”
“That better not be a veiled reference to Calculus,” I said. But I relented and smiled over at her. She laughed and poked me in the arm. We were both starting to spaz out on coffee already, with nine stops to go.
The rest of the evening went pretty much the same way; sometimes we didn’t need to approach the cashier to hang our flyer and sometimes we did, but at each stop we ordered a latte. Counterproductive, maybe, since we wanted to make money, not spend it, but it seemed fitting. After we’d each had two coffees, we dumped the rest we bought, but it had become like a superstition to buy one so we had to do it. We kept
the cups as souvenirs.
“Too bad we don’t have, like, a club hideout. A secret meeting place,” I said. We were getting silly by now. “We could decorate it with garlands of empty coffee cups.”
“You mean like my brothers’ tree house? Adorned with empty candy wrappers?”
We both laughed. “Yeah, I guess it’s dumb,” I said. “We don’t need a hideout. After all, we’re a secret Rebellion. We’re already hiding in plain sight.”
“We’re all around you and you don’t even know it,” Carey intoned in a Twilight Zone voice.
“Exactly! Hey, maybe we should be dressing up like our alter egos.”
“No offense,” she said, still laughing, “but I don’t want to look like the female Clark Kent.”
“Not like Clark Kent. We’re more like … the Masked Mavens of Mayhem,” I said in a spooky whisper.
“Out to subvert the dominant paradigm?”
I bounced a little in my seat. “You know, that would make a great propaganda poster. We should totally make some like that.” I was inspired, envisioning our logo causing havoc (or, more likely, mild puzzlement) at places like bus shelters and U-NorCal lecture halls.
“Or at least we could make some web graphics that people could put on their own sites,” Carey said, ever practical. “I’ll ask Miranda about it.”
“And speaking of the website, we should put up a guest book so people can tell us what they think of the shirts.”
“Now you’re talking,” Carey said. “Hang on, let me write this down.”
That’s right—the tactician had had her moment of brilliance, but this was the idea-girl’s turn to shine.
I grinned into the darkness of the car, the streetlights blurring past on either side as I accelerated down Bracken Street. Energy crackled through me like a live wire. By all rights I should have been exhausted, but for the first time, I had complete confidence we were going to pull this off after all.