He walked up to the counter, trying to find a grace in his wobbly pace. Nothing was wrong with his legs, but he had raced out the door so quick, no time had been allowed for the blood to return to his legs. He was pins and needles all through.

The counter functioned as a log adrift in a sea, he slammed his two hands on it, almost desperately, and the man behind the counter jumped in fright because he had been busy wondering at his shoes. That day, he had worn – or sworn he had worn – his favourite canvas trainers. Instead, he could not quite make sense of it, there were to pairs of fine suede leather slippers down there. But he did not ponder this for more than a tick of his watch, for a great bash on the counter suddenly came about.

They looked at each other, one wordless from their journey, the other wordless from fright.

“You dropped something,” said the man behind the counter, pointing at the floor.

“Eh?” said the man, his words coming in slightly breathless.

“Looks like a wallet.”

It was a wallet, that was true. But it was a wallet owned by neither of the two men, even though the one that came in had dropped it. The license on this wallet was of a woman, in her thirties, with blonde hair gelled up in spikes so tall, they were cropped form the picture. She wore a shirt that said: Not Me, Not Mondays. And her eyes were entirely black because she had a daily routines of putting on coloured contacts before she went out anywhere. She did not smile.

The man at the counter leant down to the wallet. It was precisely at this moment that various mechanical functions inside him went awry. The blood flow from his foot to his heart, for example, had only recently refreshed itself, and the muscles were not warm. When muscles are not warm, their response times are delayed, they sometimes might even not engage when asked to. The man, by bending over, asked for certain muscles in his upper leg and around his knees – quite a few muscles to ask for – he asked these all to engage. But a blood rebellion was ongoing and the muscles did not listen, failed to fire, and the bending motion of the man was not supported.

He fell onto the floor.

It was not far to fall, so nothing dramatic came of it. From the man at the counter’s point of view, he just sort of dipped below the horizon soundlessly. The man at the counter scowled, or, he would have, if he was not distracted by his shoes again.

“Eh. I’m okay,” said the man on the floor. He considered this position quite convenient to inspect the contents of the wallet. From under him, he pulled it out. It was clearly fake leather, it peeled like glue and flaked away. The outside of it was black, but the inside was made from the skin of an animal that did not exist: a pink leopard. The wallet offered twelve pockets and holes in total, and the man played with all of these, looking for something that might justify its existence.

He found a piece of twine, looped like a spring, two quarters, and the license of the woman. To compare the man to the woman on the license is simple: they looked identical in every way, except the man was fifteen years older. The man, of course, did not consider their similarity, but was just struck by the height of the woman’s hair.

“Can I get you anything?” said the man behind the bar. He had found his customer on the floor, but, seeing that he was busy rummaging through his wallet, thought the man was looking to order.

The man’s voice came in slightly muffled because he was speaking to the floor, “Eh?”

“A coffee?” said the man behind the counter.

“Oooh,” said the man on the floor. He ‘Oooh’d for two reasons. The first was that he had just found a ten dollar note in the wallet. The second was that a spike of caffeine sounded wonderful right now.

“Yes, please,” yelled the man on the floor back to the man behind the counter. The man behind the counter had clean hands, but he ran them along his apron out of habit. It was the pre-barista ritual he had been taught.

The man on the floor pulled double checked all the pockets in the wallet again, but found nothing. He returned to the license of the woman in his hand, studied every line on her face, the twist of her lips, how the brow came slightly off the face near the edges. “Who are you?” he wondered.

“Jack,” said Jack as he started the steamer.

“Pardon?” said the man on the floor.

“You asked who I am. Jack.” And Jack chose this moment to start the steamer, which blended a steely his with his words and so all the man on the floor heard was this: “Tsssssssssssssss.”

Why the man on the floor did not know the owner of this wallet, why he had dropped it from his pocket, and why the person on the license looked so familiar, were among the many questions turning and fighting for attention in the head of the man on the floor. They were not alone, there were other questions such as: What will I have for breakfast? Perhaps it should be a half-shot? Should I pretend I am sick this Sunday? I only hear, but never see my neighbour, are they an abarition?

“Anything for breakfast?” yelled Jack. He was justified to yell because the hot steam was still hissing from his machine, but it stopped hissing when he got to the word “for.” Jack yelled “breakfast” to the entire cafe.

The cafe was of two parts: the front and the back, separated by a doorway which had been knocked down to make it twice as wide. It had been two separate but identical barbers at one point , but the bank loaners were making little return on two barbers, and so they eagerly accepted the installation of a tenth cafe on that street.

The front barber was owned by a lady named Tally, and she had no arms. She was incredible at cutting hair though, and from a young age had learned with her feet. She did not see her disability as misfortune, but rather, pitied the barbers with two too many hands. Her arms, and lack of them, she considered a gift from God. She also was a follower of the Church of Congestion. The Church of Congestion believed that everyone was born with a base amount of God energy, or ‘congestion.’ This amount never went up, or down, and as you grew, it just spread thinner. As children grew to adulthood, congestion could explain it all, for adults had far more volume – ten-times, in fact – and therefore a lower density of ‘congestion’. This explains why adults are unholy, and babies are cherubs.

The head priest of the Church of Congestion was a shrivelled man, his hair clung like wet jelly tentacles down to his ears, and completely bald on top. He spoke like his insides were lined with aluminium foil. One day, this priest told Tally, “You, my dear, are so lucky. Even I, dry to the bone as a prune, have far more volume than you. You are so full of congestion you practically glow!”

And Tally believed this, and this belief is what – where other might have fallen into misery and self-pity – allowed her to be the incredible barber she is. Now, though, where the seats used to be, which Tally so adeptly spun with a foot, where the marble counter top had been for her tools of the trade, there was instead a variety of succulents on the wall, some tables and chairs that caught the light beautifully in photos, but could not be sat on for longer than twenty minutes. The ceiling was addressed too, and they hung little LED lights that – oh my! – perhaps could have been mistaken for bulbs from the 1880s, but in fact were not.

Tally never once visited the cafe. She would admit even to herself that there was spite, but that was not her entire reason. The cafe assumed that one only one type of person would ever enter there. This was a person who could walk on two feet and, at the same time, snatch at things with upper appendages. The cafe was incredibly ableist.

The back of the cafe has a concrete floor and a steel wall. Before it was a cafe, and before it was a barber, it was a saw mill. The purpose of the saw mill was to take in wood and return the wood in a different, smaller, shape. By this process, the wood that was removed – small chips of it – would end up all over the floor and on the walls. To clean, a giant vacuum was used, and the thing about little chips of wood is that they have a determined spirit to hide in any wedges or cracks your floor or wall might offer. Concrete and steel offer no cracks.

The owner of the cafe was a man with a belly that could eclipse the moon if it were low on the horizon. He did not laugh – he could not laugh – because he had spent so long frowning and scowling that the memory of his muscles knew nothing else. His reason for scowling and frowning was that it made him look incredibly studious and important, like he was really really really considering deeply what was being proposed to him. Usually in these moments, his mind was asking him questions like: What will I have for breakfast? Or, perhaps it should be a half-shot?

When asked whether he would like to keep the concrete walls, the steel walls, the owner scowled deep. The next day, the builders went to a hardware store, selected the cheapest wallpaper they could, and used it to hide the floor and ceiling. The front of the cafe is where the coffee bar is, the back of the cafe is just chairs and tables. The customers who sit there call it ‘the flower garden’ because the wallpaper is green with a continuous pattern of pink roses. It is a peeling flower garden too, because all the steam from the coffee making licks at the tips of the wallpaper and peels away the roses. The steel has started show.

Another column of steam is fired from the machine as it squeezes out a “Tsssss.” Jack’s entire job revolves around managing five levers and buttons. The reason why Jack does this and not the machine, is that the customers that enter the cafe are all humans, with two legs and two arms, and a curious thing about humans is that they prefer other humans to do the tasks they request. Clean the windows, wash the car, pour my coffee, walk my dog, checkout my groceries. It is imperative to the human conscious that a human do these, but not the human themselves, because another interesting fact about humans is that they despise menial, manual labour unless it is at the gym and will make them perhaps look good. No human makes coffee for other humans in the hope that it will make them look good.