WORKING AT GUDONYA was definitely different to working at Swifty’s. For a start, it smelled different: of coffee (natch), but also of incense and cool.

Yes, cool.

Betcha didn’t know that cool even had a smell, did you? Well, ace reporter Rafe Khatchadorian is here to tell you that cool does indeed have a smell and it smells exactly like a hipster cafe. Not that I had much to compare it to. Swifty’s just smelled of grease and disappointment.

There were some other pretty neat things about working at Gudonya. There was the music, for a start. Sid always had a record spinning on the turntable; usually some totally obscure band I’d never heard of but knew was cool.

When the place was quiet, Sid didn’t get on my case about doing stuff. At Swifty’s, there was always some lousy job or other to be getting on with even if it was completely pointless. Swifty didn’t believe in paying someone to sit around doing nothing, but Sid didn’t seem to mind me flicking through the albums, or sketching when it was quiet. One of the best things about Gudonya—maybe even the best—was that Sid not only tolerated me drawing, he encouraged it. I know I don’t make a big deal about drawing and art, but when someone likes your stuff, it really helps, y’know? Without getting all fancy about it, Sid liking my drawings made me feel like a thirsty plant getting a cool drink of water. Okay, maybe I got too fancy, but that’s what it felt like.

And Sid didn’t stop there. When he saw me drawing pictures of some of the customers, he pinned a few of them up on a wall. I wasn’t sure at first—especially as the drawings weren’t all that flattering—but people seemed to like it if they made it onto the wall. It became a thing. Before too long customers were asking me to draw them, and the crazier I made them look, the better and the more they’d pay me (yep, actual money). Plus—and this is a majorly major plus—they impressed Jeanne Galletta.

“You should totally fill that wall, Rafe,” she said one day, when she’d come in to see what the fuss was about. “It would be cool.”

It. Would. Be. Cool.

With those four simple words, Jeanne Galletta had changed my noodly-doodles into A MISSION. I was going to fill that entire wall and then she’d fall madly in love with me. Sid’s encouragement was one thing, but for Jeanne Galletta, I’d have doodled enough to cover the Great Wall of China. I’d have doodled until my fingers bled, until the world ran out of trees, until … you get the picture. Basically, I would do A LOT of drawing.

This was my big chance.