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looking through the window, but doesn’t speak, just widens his dirty-green eyes into an intense stare. His lips are apart, revealing the slight overlap of his two front teeth.
    I look down in the mixer bowl at the pasty white blob being pummelled by the dough hook.
    He dings the bell again.
    ‘What?’
    Without blinking, he runs his tongue over his lips. Marty is one of those guys who likes to leer. It gets to me, makes my skin prickle. There’s something both exciting and horrible about it.
    As usual, he’s not wearing his Café Parisienne cap. Emilio’s at him all the time about that. He keeps it tucked in the back pocket of his black pants. He’s got light brown curly hair that would look stupid if he brushed it.
    Emilio’s voice floats in from out the front somewhere. ‘Marty? How about you use the downtime to stack those beans?’
    Marty ignores him and keeps staring at me. I shake my head and hope my face isn’t turning red. I feel acutely stupid.
    Emilio’s voice again. ‘Marty? Marty . Come on, mate.’
    Emilio has zero control over Marty. When they’re on a shift together Marty drives the coffee machine, which is usually Emilio’s territory. Emilio retreats to the register and does his worried-brown-eyes act with the customers. Marty talks dirty to the regulars while he’s pulling shots. You want me to put sugar in it for you? Stir it up? You like sugar? Everybody needs a bit of sugar sometimes . I think Emilio’s a little jealous of him. Poor Emilio takes it all day long: from Michael, the owner, from customers, from uncontrollable staff like Marty.
    All of a sudden Marty drops the leer. ‘Nah,’ he says. ‘I made you a latte, eh.’
    He places a tall glass with a serviette sleeve wrapped around it on the windowsill and disappears. It’s dumb but I’m flattered. I haven’t asked him for a latte. He probably just got an order wrong. I take a sip. It’s heavily sugared.
    I drink way too much coffee on Marty’s shifts.
    Roger walks in and dumps a tray full of dirty crockery on the bench beside the sink.
    ‘They got you bussing tonight, Roger?’
    ‘No,’ he says, without turning around. ‘Dish pigging. Kylie’s bussing but she’s on a break.’
    ‘Kylie?’ I stare at Roger’s broad back. The elastic waist on his black pants is stretched and they sag down, showing his bum crack crisscrossed by his apron strings. I’ve seen this so many times I don’t even feel embarrassed looking at it any more. Kylie is my equivalent during the daytime. She does the kitchen stuff. She’s twenty-two and from Wagga or Dubbo or somewhere – a small town girl. She followed her boyfriend to Manly and it’s not working out for them and she misses home, and all of these things are affecting her physically. She’s starving herself.
    Kylie shouldn’t be doing a double shift. Her body doesn’t have the energy to spend.
    ‘Do you know when she gets off break?’ I ask Roger.
    He ignores my question, slamming the lid of the dishwasher up and sliding the steaming tray of plates inside across to the cooling bench. Roger’s an alcoholic, although you wouldn’t necessarily know that from looking at him, and he’s not a big communicator. He works hard as a dish pig. I think Emilio pays him cash in hand. Tonight he’s sporting a three-day growth and it suits him. You notice his eyes too much when he’s clean shaven – they’re a bloodshot pale blue and seem riveted by things in his head, not the things they see.
    ‘Hi sweetie,’ Kylie says, coming through from the front, handbag on her shoulder and her cap and apron in one hand.
    ‘You’re working a double shift?’
    She stops at the end of the pass and I can see the angles of her. When I first started I thought she was just really slim, but after a while even baggy black pants can’t hide the sharp edges of bones.
    ‘Yeah.’ She tilts her head to the side and blinks her toffee-coloured eyes. She’s got freckles the same colour. But her face gets