Saturday, October 17
Morrissey bleats about horrible loneliness as I drag myself through the back entrance of the Rose. The Rose features music primarily from Manchester (UK) bands. A typical lineup playing over the sound system includes the Smiths, James, Oasis, Joy Division, and of course the shop’s namesake: the Stone Roses. Once in a while, you might even hear the Bee Gees in my coffeehouse. Yes, even the Bee Gees hailed from Manchester.
I remove my coat, which is freckled with the corpses of a thousand melted snowflakes. An early snow, the first of the year, and it’s just beginning. At least four inches have already fallen, and there’s plenty more to come. The chill stays with me.
I pass my office and glance at the desk, relieved no new envelopes are waiting for me. Behind the bar, Brenda writes the daily specials in different shades of chalk on a blackboard canvas. Next to the words, she’s rendered a simple but beautiful image of a cappuccino: strong, bold strokes shaping the porcelain cup, a topping of creamy froth, wisps of steam. Brenda even designed the logo for my place, which depicts a red rose growing from within a coffee mug. She should be in art school, not working in a coffee shop.
She doesn’t look up. “It happened again.”
“Simon?”
“Yup.”
“What was it this time?” I ask.
“Knocking on the ceiling.”
“He likes you.”
Simon is the ghost that supposedly haunts our building on Elm Street. I’ve never heard anything, but then again I’m rarely the one opening the shop at five thirty in the morning. That’s left to Brenda, and she swears she hears footsteps, dragging sounds, knocking, and occasional indecipherable whispers. On one hand, I think, Hell, the building is over a hundred years old. What do you expect? On the other hand, Brenda is the only employee who’s ever heard anything, and everything she describes is out of a clichéd ghost handbook, so maybe she’s just a little bored. Looking for attention.
“There are four other references online to this building number and paranormal activity,” she says, her gaze still glued to the phone screen.
“I know,” I say, because she tells me this every time.
“You should add hazardous duty pay to my check,” she says.
“Well, if Simon ever actually does something to you, I’ll consider it.”
“Someday you’ll hear him.”
“I hope so,” I say, meaning it. I’m intrigued by the idea of ghosts. It’s the living I do my best to avoid.
I notice the Band-Aid on her forearm.
“What happened?” I ask.
She shrugs. “Nail sticking out of the wall in my place. Little gash, not too bad.”
Little gash, not too bad. I can’t imagine.
The front door opens and two cats walk in. Teenage girls with heavy gray makeup, whiskers, cat ears and tails, and matching yellow cat backpacks. It’s eight on a Saturday morning, and I’m guessing these two are just winding down from a Friday night costume party. Halloween is still nearly two weeks away, but I suppose some like to celebrate all month long. Cat One orders a latte, Cat Two a large coffee, no room for cream. They brush heavy, wet snowflakes from their leotard-clad arms.
Brenda sets about making their drinks as Dan walks in. Dan has worked here less than three months, and I’m doubting he’ll make it to his fourth. He’s only ten minutes late today, and he whisks past me, grabs his apron off the hook, and hurriedly ties it on as he steps behind the counter.
“Sorry,” he says. “My phone died, so the alarm didn’t go off.”
“That’s why you plug it in,” I say.
“And the snow made things more difficult.”
“Don’t you walk here?”
He smiles and shrugs, and I decide at that moment he will have to go. I’m maybe five years older than him, and his sense of entitlement grates on me. He starts oh my god the night I had-ing to Brenda as I walk into the sitting area and wipe down the tabletops with a damp terry cloth. The two cats wait by the bar for their drinks, each still looking a bit drunk.
The door opens again, as it will many more times before the morning rush is over. Frigid air sweeps in and ices briefly around my neck. I turn my head and see him, the man from the gym, walking inside the coffee shop. My coffee shop. He ignores my gaze and heads directly to the counter. Brenda looks up at him as she does everyone—with complete focus, attention, and interest—and it angers me, because this asshole doesn’t deserve any of it.
He looks different, but perhaps it’s because he’s not in gym clothes. He looks bigger, fuller, more sure of himself. A leather jacket wraps snugly around his sturdy frame, and his hands are adorned with large gold rings, each of which gleams with shiny little stones. He looks taller than I remembered, over six feet for certain, but moreover he seems more of a threat. Maybe it’s because he’s so relaxed, so certain that walking in here is his right, that he can just saunter in and I’ll say nothing.
He’s wrong.
I approach him from behind, and he turns just as I near, sensing me. His sudden smile suggests he didn’t know I would be here, that this chance meeting is a pleasant surprise. I don’t buy it.
“Well, look who it is,” he says. “Little Miss Kick-Ass.” He holds up his hands in mock surrender. “No need to attack, darling. Just getting my morning caffeine.”
“You need to leave.”
He tilts his head just a fraction toward mine. “That so?”
“This is my place, and I don’t want you here.”
“Take it easy, pretty thing. I already paid for my drink. Should be up in just a moment.”
Brenda looks at me, her wide eyes full not of fear, but of excitement. I’ve never kicked anyone out before.
“Give him his drink, and then he’s leaving,” I say.
Dan, pulled toward drama like a pig to truffles, walks over to the front of the counter. He says nothing but wants to watch everything.
“Sure thing,” Brenda says, then tells Dan to fill a large decaf coffee.
“Thought you needed caffeine,” I say.
“Well, now, maybe you caught me in a little lie,” he says. He folds his arms across his chest, and his rings point at me. It’s not hard to imagine them as little brass knuckles. “I actually lie all the time. I find it helps in life. Don’t you find it’s easier to get what you want when you lie, cheat, and steal, Alice?”
I backpedal a few paces, and he follows me, bringing the conversation away from my staff, who watch me with curious expressions. “You can tell Jimmy I don’t want anything to do with him,” I say.
He smiles. “You think Jimmy sent me?” he asks. “No, darling. No one sends me anywhere. I sent myself.”
“What do you want?”
“You have no idea who I am, do you?”
“I don’t care who you are.”
For a moment, I picture his fists coming toward me, his golden knuckles smashing my jaw, splitting my head open. I take a step back, and he takes a step forward, but nothing in his stance suggests violence. Yet.
“I’m the guy you stole from,” he says. “Three years ago. You remember that, don’t you, sweetheart?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.
But it’s not true. I know exactly what he’s talking about.
In early 2012, Jimmy taught me how heroin can transform pain to beauty, can create a new world of the mind, a place of infinite escape. All it took was that first bump, and I knew I’d never be at peace again unless I was high—and I’d do anything to keep it going. That included stealing from people who didn’t care to be stolen from.
I hit bottom the night we stole nearly eight thousand dollars from Nick, our regular dealer. It was Jimmy’s idea, and he’d been tipped by a mutual friend that Nick was carrying “excess funds” with him that night. I accompanied Jimmy to the deal, and any judgment I had was clouded by my overwhelming need to stick a needle in my arm as soon as possible. In the motel parking lot, Jimmy pulled a gun and held it to Nick’s head, demanding the cash. Nick insisted he only had the drugs, nothing more. Then Jimmy lowered the gun and shot him in the stomach. I’m not even sure he meant to do it. But that’s what happened.
It was the moment I woke up. That window was probably only going to be open for a few seconds, but for those seconds, I had a clarity birthed by fear, a fierce vision of my short and dismal future: if I stayed with Jimmy, I was headed for a certain, bleak death, if not at that moment, then soon. So I ran that night, fast and hard, away from Jimmy, away from the heroin. I sprinted out of that motel parking lot and never turned back, never saw Jimmy again, and never touched anything harder than alcohol since. I went to my mother’s house in Arlington, back into her caring, suffocating arms. After three days of withdrawals, I knew rehab was the answer, despite my mother’s insistence that only she could make me better. I checked myself into Column Health in Arlington and did my twenty-eight day tour, after which I refused my mother’s offer to move back in with her and Thomas and opted for Manchester, a comfortable distance away from Arlington and that much farther from Boston.
“Alice, if you’re going to lie, you need to do it a lot better than that. Otherwise, what’s the point?”
I wonder if there’s a gun beneath his jacket. Probably.
“I left that night. I didn’t take anything. I don’t know anything about what Jimmy may or may not have taken from you. I haven’t seen him in three years. You need to talk to him, not me.”
Right then, Brenda calls out his drink.
Freddy, large decaf.
He turns, walks a few steps back to the counter, and picks up his coffee. In that moment, both Brenda and Dan look over to me. I think, What if this guy decides to pull a gun from his waist and start shooting everyone?
Do I attack, call the police, or continue the conversation?
He turns and walks back to me, drink in hand. Unnervingly casual.
“So that’s the thing,” he says as he reaches me. “I have talked to Jimmy, and that conversation didn’t go so well. My fault, really. It took me three years to find out who stole eight g’s from me and shot my boy, so I was unrealistic to think there would be any of the cash left. And of course there wasn’t, but that’s not really the point.” He air pokes me. “The point is I can’t let people steal from me. Hurts business. So even if it takes me three years to track the thieves down, it behooves me to do it. Do you know that word? Behoove?” He takes a sip of his coffee, squinting against the heat of it. “Great fucking word.”
“Yeah, I know that word.”
He nods. “So I had this chat with Jimmy, and he didn’t have anything left. But you both owe me. With interest, I’ve rounded the figure off to ten thousand. Now, Jimmy, being the strung-out, wormy piece of shit he is, can’t afford a used condom in a whorehouse. But he tells me you were with him that night, so using my master investigative powers, I tracked you down. Here you are, owner of this fancy coffee shop, with a nice little house in the better part of this shithole city, and it’s got me figuring you could come up with the ten thousand. Oh, and I’m adding in five thousand for the loss of my dealer. You know he’s dead, right?”
He says it so casually, but the news punches me in the stomach. Oh God. I always wondered what happened to Nick, and now I know. Oh God, oh shit.
“Jimmy killed him, and you were there, so that makes you what they call an accessory to murder. Now, I know who killed Nick, but the police still don’t. They didn’t investigate real hard, Nick being a dealer and all. But a murder is a murder, Alice. It doesn’t ever go away. The police will arrest someone if they think he—or she—is a suspect. So if you have it in your mind you want to go to the police now, you do what you gotta do. But I’ll make sure they know all about what you and Jimmy did that night. So the way I figure it, fifteen thousand dollars is an awful cheap price to pay to avoid either prison or whatever I decide to do with you. A bargain, really.”
“The police will never believe you,” I say.
“As far as you should be concerned, honey, I am the police. And judge. And jury. Now it’s up to you to determine if I’m also your executioner. And I don’t even give a shit about Nick—I’ve got a dozen guys like him—but he was my property, and you destroyed something that belonged to me. I’m going to get my fifteen grand from you.”
“I don’t have that kind of money.”
He smiles, and I wish he hadn’t.
“Well, now, that’s exactly what Jimmy said. Things didn’t end up well for him. Do you want to see a photo?”
He pulls his phone from his jacket pocket and starts swiping along its screen.
“No, no, I don’t,” I say.
“You sure? It’s amazing how a lack of teeth changes the way a person looks. You really gotta see this.”
“No, please.”
“You sure?” He lowers the phone, and his smile disappears. “Look, Alice, I’m a busy man, and fifteen thousand is a small amount of money for me to be spending my time on. But the thing is, I like retribution. I would be doing this even if you only stole a dime bag from me. So I’m not going anywhere. It would behoove you to put together that money. You’ve got two days, and I’ll be close by during that time.”
Close by. Like watching me through my bedroom window. Sketching me.
The question just comes out.
“Are you Mister Tender?”
“What?”
I repeat my question, though I can already see from his face he has no idea what I’m talking about.
He spins his cup around so I see Brenda’s handwriting.
Freddy.
“You should already know my name.”
He walks around me toward the entrance. I turn my head as he opens the door, but before he walks out, he turns and says one more thing. This time it’s loud.
“And your coffee? It’s a little bitter, Alice.” He holds up his hand and pinches his thumb and index finger together. “Little bitter.”