Six

“PLEASE, ANSWER ME. I AM SO SCARED!”

For an awful moment, Matt, Dante, Esther, and I looked like newly chipped ice sculptures. Then we ran to the windows facing the street to find Nancy Kelly, our youngest barista, peering up at us, a ribbon of streetlight illuminating her wheat-colored braids and fear-filled eyes.

“ARE YOU ALL OKAY?” she shouted.

“ARE WE OKAY?” Esther boomed back. “OF COURSE WE’RE OKAY! ARE YOU OKAY?”

“YES!” Nancy assured us.

“THEN WHY ARE YOU ACTING CRAZY?”

“I’M NOT CRAZY. I’M WORRIED!”

“ABOUT WHAT?” Esther yelled. “ARE YOU DRUNK?”

“NO, I AM NOT DRUNK!”

“BOTH OF YOU, STOP!” I ordered, but (of course) they didn’t. The pair kept arguing—which, in itself, was far from novel.

To the rest of the world, Nancy was a perky, positive transplanted farm girl. To Esther, she was naïve to a fault, the polar opposite of her own acerbic, forever-urban persona.

Smaller than Esther but with a country-girl fullness to her face and form, Nancy had a Judy Garland “Dorothy” kind of innocence with perpetually astonished eyes and crushes on nearly every “Mr. McDreamy” who ordered a macchiato.

Esther, by contrast, was engaged to a streetwise Russian émigré who baked bread in Brooklyn by day and rapped poetry at night while she worked on a second master’s degree.

Given their many differences, everyone was surprised (okay, shocked) when the two girls announced they were going to share an apartment in Alphabet City. Then again, the economic realities of New York real estate often made strange bedfellows.

Truth be told, my ex-husband and I had endured sharing the duplex apartment above our coffeehouse for a short (exasperating) window of time, long after our divorce—but that was another story.

Suffice it to say, these sisters from different misters had long ago dispensed with “polite” conversation, although tonight’s bi-level shouting match was a first.

“Excuse me, ladies . . .” Matt interjected, attempting to take control of the situation with his Mr. Smooth approach. “How about we take this inside?”

“DID YOU HEAR MR. BOSS?!” Esther scolded. “HE’S PISSED THAT YOU’RE DISTURBING THE PEACE!”

“ME?!” Nancy’s hands went to her hips. “YOU’RE DISTURBING THE PEACE AS MUCH AS I AM!”

Right about then two things happened: Dante began to laugh uncontrollably and our residential neighbors decided to join the conversation—with typical New York sensitivity.

“KNOCK IT OFF, MORONS!”

“PUT A SOCK IN IT!”

“I’M CALLING 311!”

Instead of taking the hint, Esther and Matt began yelling back at the neighbors—and with less than civil replies.

That’s it, I decided. Enough!

With a two-handed tug I yanked both of them away from the windows, stuck my head out, and ordered Nancy to—

“GET IN HERE. NOW!”