“Listen bitch,” Tom Cruise growled, upsetting shakers of cardamom and some brown stuff that was probably sugar with his purple fuzzy hippo fists. “Xenu is a bad dude! Do you accept scientology?”
“SQUEEEEEEEEE!” Bob squealed, rolling into a fetal ball.
Tom Cruise vaulted over the counter and grabbed Bob by his lily white collar. “I’m a hippo!” He bellowed, his sunglass-shaded eyes zipping down to the barista's nametag. “I’m a hippo, Bob!! How does that make you feel?? What's your motivation right now??"
“Please!” Bob cried. “Please don’t sue me, Tom Cruise! I have children!”
"So I should sue them?"
"No!"
Tom Cruise’s breathing slowed. He threw Bob to the floor with every ounce of strength his 5'4 frame could muster, and walked towards the production counter, fluffing his hippo ears with barely concealed titillation. “Do you like that espresso machine, Bob?” He asked.
“That’s Chuckie!” Bob whimpered. “Oh, he's my favorite! Please oh please don’t touch him!”
“You don’t want me to touch him,” Tom Cruise said, running his hippo mitts over all the buttons.
“No!” Bob screamed, “don’t touch him like that!”
“So you really don’t want me to touch him like this!” Tom growled, ramming his purple hippo groin into the steam nozzle.
“NO!” Bob squealed. “You’ll jam the nozzle and it will come out of my paycheck!”
“Yeah, she never had hippo before, Bob!”
“It’s a he!”
“Maybe I’ll do her proud and fill her up with my own special foam!”
“His name is Chuckie! He's a male appliance!"
“What?” Tom Cruise cried, releasing his death grip on Chuckie and zipping up his hippo furry suit pants. His cheeks scrunched up like an angry chipmunk that was simultaneously a hippo. “That's slander,” Tom Cruised seethed. "That is slander, Bob. I'll sue!"
“No! Don’t!”
“Well,” Tom Cruise said, exploring the production area, “what about this fine coffee grinder here?”
“His name is Billy!”
Tom Cruise’s eyes narrowed. “You ever heard of muck spreading, Bob?”
“No,” Bob whimpered.
Bob heard a clang as Tom Cruise slammed Billy down and the floppy flap slap of his heavy hippo slippers against the linoleum. “Muck spreading is when a hippo presses his tail to his anus as he empties his bowel, Bob.” Tom Cruise explained, standing directly over the cowering barista. “As the poop jettisons he shakes his tail. Have you ever put your thumb over a garden hose, Bob?” Bob's jowels jiggled like man boobs as he nodded. “It’s just like that, Bob. Only with hippo poop.”
“You wouldn’t,” Bob said. “This is a sanitary area, Tom Cruise! People sometimes drink our coffee! They pay for it too! With money!”
“And so they will,” Tom Cruise said, taking Bob by the collar and heaving him up until the barrista’s glasses were level with his marshmallow hippo teeth. “The public will drink my poop, Bob. They’ll like it and they’ll pay for it, just like they did with Mission Impossible and War of the Worlds and Jack Fucking Reacher, you daft cunt.”
Tom pulled Bob's collar even tighter as the barista began to sob, his voice escaping with the ferocity of a steamer’s hiss. “I’m a hungry, hungry hippo, Bob. Do you know what I’m hungry for?”
“No,” Bob whimpered.
“Fame.” With that burning epiphany free of his lips, Tom Cruise exploded with mad, raucous laughter. He laughed like he was jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch. He laughed like he was in some batshit scientology ad. He laughed and the light reflected off his sunglasses and his hippo tail and ears bobbed maniacally. Suddenly he snapped back to cold, merciless sanity. "I’ll give you one chance, caffeine jockey. One chance to save this franchise and the people who consume its sticky, overprices goods. If you win, I go away forever. If you fail, I will sue you, and your barista progeny will end up mixing my frothy fecal concoctions forever.”
Bob shut his eyes, summoning up all the good times he’d had at the store; mixing coffee drinks, refilling coffee machines, listening to Micheal Buble music. He thought of all the customers with their iPads and little scarves. Men who had tattoos of Chinese symbols they couldn't read. Women with vintage shirts that went down to their cut-off tights and bow ties that made them look like Oscar Wilde if he were color blind and also blind-blind.
He’d made his choice.
“This job sucks,” Bob said, standing up. “It is a terrible job full of self-absorbed yuppie hipster pricks, and you can go sue someone else. I quit.”
“Wait,” Tom Cruise said, dodging Bob's balled-up apron. “Maybe I will not sue you.”
“Go to hell, Tom Cruise,” Bob spat, flipping the Top Gun star off. “You’ve sucked since Rain Man.”
“Maybe you can sue me, huh, pal? I’ll loan you a lawyer!” Tom leaned over the counter as Bob walked out the door. “Can you at least show me how this thing with all the dials works?”
But the door shut, and Tom Cruise was alone.
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