"Champagne, you drinking?"
"Are you making a joke?"
"No...?"
"Well, okay. Yes I am."
"Champagne? Or drinking?"
"Ha, ha, so what? So what?"
"OK, what'd you like?"
"Champagne."
"Ha, ha!"
"Yeah, ha. Please now?"
"OK. You're drunk."
"True, true. Come on, more?"
"Then go, home?"
"Ha, ha. OK."
"Champagne!"
"Oh what?"
"No I was ordering."
"Oh OK."

Champagne and Pieta nabbed a taxicab home.
"We are the light that travels into space," sang Champagne.
"Yes. Shh."
"It's a song."
"I know. You're being noisy."
"Sorry mister taxi driver," sang Champagne.
"Christ, I have to get up in five hours!"
"So do I, so do I!"
"Pipe down, nim nut!"
"Nim nut?!" Champagne laughed, fell out of the cab, and Pieta paid the man. She helped Champagne back to her feet, and they went to bed.
"Thanks for letting me stay at your place," said Pieta.
"Well your place stinks," said Champagne, drunk and almost asleep. "Ni. Ni ni ni. Ni."

Pieta, the sensible one, was out of bed, showered, dressed, breakfasted, trammed, and searching Starbucks for a hangover cure by 7:30. As she waited in line, she made a customary call to Champagne.
"You're already ten minutes late. You don't have time to shower. Go, go, go, little one!"
"Mrnff."
"Ten minutes late."
"Oh go blow a waddle."
"Do you ever make any sense?"
"Why did you leave two dollars on my bag?"
"It's all you're worth. I never get any! You're just a tease."
"Umm. Are you embarrassing yourself in the store again?"
"Worse. In Starbucks. You're late! Now go!"
"Jeez! OK!"

Half an hour late, as usual, the nice kitchen boys had opened up, as usual, and Angus was pretending to be mad.
"Hey, stupid. Mr Cox is waiting for his coffee."
"Learn how to make a good one, and then you can take over my job entirely!"
"Do you want to learn how to make eggs Florentine?"
"No."
"How about we stick to our own jobs, then."
"Sigh. OK."
"Thank god it's Friday!"
"I hear you, brother."
"So do I," called Mr Cox. "And I want my coffee."

Champagne obliged, then made four more coffees, for herself, the kitchen boys, and for Philip the accountant, who would stop by, any minute now. Meanwhile, the other kitchen boy, Chan, ducked up the road to gather the day's order of baguettes from the French bakery. Philip arrived and sipped his eye-opener while chain-smoking at one of the outside tables. The newspaper boy dropped off several copies of the main papers and a new selection of glamour magazines. Champagne trashed the old magazines and settled down with a copy of Frankie, her favourite glossy publication. Locals drifted in and out, for coffee and toast and quick chats. The "muffin couple" dropped by, as expected, halfway through their daily morning walk. Champagne greeted them as "the muffin couple" and they responded, in unison, "Good morning, Miss Barista," and she gave the woman her preferred; raspberry, and the man his preferred; apple.

Joan, the antiques dealer, turned up for her coffee at the same time as Marti, from the hair salon, who required four coffees for her colleagues and herself. Champagne and Marti discussed knickerbockers and shorts worn with winter tights while Joan flicked through the paper.
"Did you see this?" asked Joan, when the girls had a moment's lull in their chatter. She brought the paper over and showed them the front page.
"What's it say?" said Champagne, busy perfecting decorative love hearts in the froth of five beverages.
"Scientists have discovered letters in rats' DNA," paraphrased Joan. "They say... they say it means... Letters. Like they've been manufactured. From a cellular level. Like words, or something. Like notes. They're trying to use this new... something... analysis... technique on human DNA. See what they can see."
"Gosh," said Champagne. "Is it for real?"
"I don't know," said Joan. "They say it means they've been built. The animals. Somehow. I don't know. I don't understand the article. They say... history... has changed... overnight. Something."
"Gosh," said Champagne, as her wrists went weak, and the coffee cups she was trying to lift onto saucers went nowhere. "I feel strange."