HIE04
[BRANCH] THE LAST CAFE
[SERVER] I
[DATE] 9/30/22
[INDEX ID] HIE04
[SECURITY] DINER
I fear we are teetering on the edge of our potential demise. Not quite our darkest hour yet, but damn if it isn’t getting close. However... once we commit to an ending, there’s nowhere else to go, is there? Well, I suppose there’s up. Or down. Or maybe all around. But an end is an end, and I’d prefer we’d be the ones deciding if and when that happens.
Sounds a bit sinister, doesn’t it? But the Cafe and Diner is no arbiter of endings. No. Quite the opposite, really. The Cafe and Diner stays open late—well past closing time. We run on coffee—though, to be fair, that expression has already been somewhat claimed.
Enough rambling... September came and went in a blur, and now I’m grasping for the words to make sense of it all. The secret sentences that will sum up our efforts to turn the tide against Willow DeWeaver, pay off our ever-growing debts, and hint at what’s yet to come—and how we might just overcome it.
It was easier in the past, when I had some sense (however small) of what actually did come next. Now... I’m just as lost as the rest of you. And when one is lost, it never hurts to look to the past. Which is exactly what we’ve done. But will it be enough?
As for a more... “mechanical” recap: The Long Island Branch, with the help of Mrs. Boney, finally managed to serve the influx of Daiquiri drinkers, opening up a new region of Canada for us to explore. We also made a valiant attempt at paying off Miss. Fitch, Janos, and Cece’s tabs—though we only had half success. Or maybe it was a double success, since we gained two new members in the process? Still, that’s all I can say we’ve truly accomplished... and yet, the debts keep growing. And growing.
To be honest—as honest as I can be—it’s possible the debts of the Cafe and Diner have become so unfathomable that bankruptcy is inevitable. We’ve over-borrowed on bad interest, never paid much attention to the associated taxes, and now we’re in a hole so deep it might as well go through the center of the Earth and spit us out into Canada. Or beyond even that.
On the other hand, a small debt is a personal problem—but a large, unwieldy, massive, universe-spanning debt? That’s the bank’s problem. All we can do now is try our best. If it were easy, I have to assume it wouldn’t be worth doing.
Yours in arrears,
J.C.