Josephine works at a chain store. There are worse jobs to have and it's not like she's planning on doing it for the rest of her life. The place is one that’s meant to adhere to the adage 'the customer is always right'; fortunately, the store's boss is lenient and knows how often the customer is wrong. Weekend shifts aren't too bad. The worst time to work is the morning rush, when people on their way to work want a venti soya latté frappuccino right now. Saturday mornings, on the other hand, are mostly people meeting friends. The only downside to this is that the slower pace gives certain young men more time to try and chat to her. Josephine's thinking of getting a badge that declares her age. It could have a little button to make it flash. Nana Bo has threatened several times to make her disapproval of the young men known and a flashing badge would look positively decorous next to one of Nana's tirades.

Josephine's boss is lenient but he might have something to say about servers getting possessed at work.

There aren't many customers in at the moment, making it a good time to have a break. Joey attacks the knot at the front of her green apron. If she wears the strings at the back, they come down to her knees. Her foster mother keeps promising she’s going to blossom any day now. It still hasn't happened and she still has to wrap the apron strings a few times around her skinny waist. When she eventually gets it undone, she throws the apron under the counter and retrieves the pink bubble gum from her jeans pocket to pop in her mouth. They're not allowed to chew gum during work hours. It’s a rule Joey has difficulty sticking to.

She makes for one of the overstuffed sofas and throws herself into it. Candice, the littlest member of her current brood, has been teething. Work is good for getting away from that lot. Her current family has four girls with Josephine as the oldest and the apartment is a neat freak's nightmare. Joey spent a couple of months trying to tidy up after everyone before eventually giving up. She should have learnt by now not to go on hoping that the next home will be the one she feels comfortable in. Unfortunately nobody's let her in on the secret: teenagers never feel comfortable, no matter where they are.

If the teenager's unusual that feeling is only going to be amplified. Josephine's half Haitian immigrant and half something else entirely. Her dandelion hair is proof of the something else. (She pulls it free of the bun it’s been in for work and lets it explode into tight curls.)

With one cheek to the sofa, her hand trails down onto the floor. Surely nobody would notice if she took a nap.

Coffee. It's cold, and bleck, so a nice hot cup of coffee sounds like just the thing to Charlie. He's been delivering furniture all morning. In and out of the heated van and into the chill to move the articles about, has made him want to take a breather someplace heated and cozy.

He steps in and makes his way to the counter to order, fussing with the buttons on his old navy surplus peacoat. It bothers him when the anchors turn upside down. He hums 'Scarborough Fair' as he waits in line.

It's not much of a line. If there was more than one person waiting, Joey would be up there at the counter. Like I said: Saturday mornings are slow. It's common for people to come in, order and spend the rest of the day hooked up to the shop's free wifi connection, most of them on sleek little mac laptops. This is a good part of town. It's ritzy enough that about once a fortnight somebody will pretend not to recognise Josephine's accent.

She turns over, hands behind her head, to watch the man who seems quite happy humming away to himself. Paul would go nuts if her saw her boots on the arm of the sofa. They're not muddy, they just add an air of sprawl to the place.

The humming is because Charlie is coming out, or rather George is fading for the moment, losing control over the body. The clash of wills between the two men sharing the body isn't so huge as it once was, so for the moment George is willing to let his host take over. It's not as if Charlie is wearing a bathrobe and a purple fedora today, nor are there any telephone poles to argue with.

It's a coffee shop, how much trouble can Charlie possibly get into right?

Charlie settling comfortably back into his own being keeps humming. There are lots of tasty things here besides just coffee, like scones, and brownies, and lemon squares. Charlie is thinking get hopped up on sugar and coffee is a grand idea.

"Yo," Josephine calls out lazily to the geeky looking customer who's next in line, "S'yo' turn." He looked like he was daydreaming, but it's just as likely he was deliberating which was better, bran muffins and lemon squares. Josephine's 'move it or lose it' attitude makes her well suited to the morning rush and near-constantly irritated by the Saturday morning crowd.

She shifts, putting two hands beneath her head and lazing on her back to better watch the till. The coffee drone who's stuck behind it glares at her so she shifts out of view a little - not enough that they'll think she's completely gone, just enough so that nobody will notice she's chewing gum.

Unable to decide he orders one of everything but the bran muffins. Then a coffee with raspberry syrup, or perhaps it would be safer to say he got a raspberry syrup with a little coffee for flavor.

He went and sat near where she was lazing. "Nice boots." he comments.

Joey swings around, plants her feet on the ground and pops back into full view. (That's not a conscious effort. She's just surprised at being addressed and in her surprise she stops fading into the background.) She leans over, hands on the edge of the sofa, and eyes Charlie suspiciously up and down.

"Thanks," she replies. "Hey, what you got there?" What haven't you got there more like.

"Munchies, lots of munchies. I should spend more time baking, but I can never pick just one thing to bake." He says in reference to his armload of wax paper wrapped delights. "I'll eat till I feel ill, and bring the rest to my boss." he confesses.

"Oh yeah?" asks Joey, tilting her head to one side. Her hair goes sproing. "You work round here, then?"

She has recently learnt of the existence of expense accounts. A job that lets her take time out in the middle of the day to buy lemon squares is something she'll note down for a future career path.

"Move furniture for the old antique place just on the edge of old downtown. The owner's pretty lax with me." Charlie explains. Jenkins actually tends to almost dote on Charlie in a grandfatherly fashion.

Very nice job perks he gets to drive the company vehicle on all sorts of personal errands as long as he doesn't get behind on deliveries.

"Must be nice," Joey comments. (Certainly nicer than spending all day behind the till or in front of a coffee machine.)

He's not a big shot, so she's bored now. She blows a bubble and lets it pop before pulling the gum back into her mouth and chewing it frantically again.

Charlie is anything but a big shot. He has absolutely no aspirations either. Bubble gum, he can't make up his mind where to file that in his universe.

" S'nice enough. I'm comfortable. I'm okay with that." He says thoughtfully.