Excerpt: Coffee and Sugar

The mood in the café was electric. People were pushing over one another, waving crumpled notes patriotically and shouting short sharp commands to get the attention of Joao who; in the midst of frantic baristas taking money, scribbling notes and confusing orders, sat like a thinking monk, his hands entrenched in a jar of coffee, looking with his shut eyes into the life of an old man with missing teeth, scruffy hair, torn shorts, a rather large and oddly shaped middle toe, a nervous twitch on the muscle in the right side of his neck, an uneven beard that looked more like the burnt out scrub ion a desert dune, a runny nose, a virulent cough, a lazy left eye, a crazy right other and a hand full of one cent coins in his clenched fist; a week’s work that he held tighter in his left hand than a mother would, her child through a thunderstorm.

Extract: Coffee and Sugar ₢2013