Forty-eight

GATHERING my barely clothed dignity, I tightened the belt on Matt’s oversize London Fog and made my way over to the couple’s table. The sergeant gallantly rose.

“Good evening, Ms. Cosi.”

Though he was out of uniform, the man’s spine was still flagpole straight, his legs braced as if our floor’s wood planks were a boat deck. His shoulders were squared under his tweed jacket, and the black eye patch was still in place. But the hard-nosed cop face was gone, replaced by an easy grin.

“As I was telling your charming employer—after I stopped by the other day to try your delicious coffee, I realized I’d been here before. Many years ago—”

“Lee and I are practically old friends,” Madame said, her violet gaze glistening in the firelight.

As I sat down with the pair, Esther brought my Shot in the Dark, and Madame asked her to brew something exceptional for “Lee and our special reunion.” Esther quickly returned with her order—a French press primed with our most sought-after (and insanely expensive) coffee, one we kept in rare reserve.

While the coarsely ground Billionaire blend beans were steeping in filtered hot water, Madame urged Sergeant Jones to tell me and Esther the story of how they first met.

“I’m sure these young ladies don’t want to hear me reminisce—”

“Don’t be silly!” Madame jabbed him playfully with her elbow. “It’s historic. They’ll love it.”

“If you say so, darlin’,” Jones said with a wink of his good eye. “It was decades ago, a lifetime, really. I was no more than a punk-ass kid running wild in the Village with my friends. Suddenly, I see my idol, Jimi Hendrix, entering this very coffeehouse. I burst through the door, ready to charge right up to him.”

“But I stopped him,” Madame said. “Jimi dropped in every so often, and sometimes even played upstairs. Onstage he was riveting, a genius musician, but offstage he was fragile and shy. Encounters with his fans often ended badly, so I tried to be protective of his privacy.”

Madame patted Lee’s arm. “But I couldn’t bear to disappoint this handsome young man. So when I served Jimi’s coffee and pastry, I quietly introduced him to one of his youngest fans.”

“That is historic!” Esther cried as she pressed and served the Billionaire blend. “What did the greatest rock guitarist in history say?”

“You mean after I greeted him with something incredibly stupid?” Jones replied.

“It couldn’t have been that bad,” I said.

“I told Jimi that I wanted to play guitar just like him. Oh, man. He set me straight. ‘Kid,’ he told me. ‘I’ve been imitated so many times I’ve heard people copy my mistakes.’ Then Jimi told me I should live my own damn life and make my own damn mistakes. That’s the only way I would find my own song. I didn’t understand what he meant. I was too young to know how valuable those words would be.”

Jones paused. “Not long after that, Jimi died of an overdose. Jump ahead in time, and I’ve got no job, no future, taking every drug I can lay my hands on. One day I overdose. While I’m recovering in the hospital, I hear “All Along the Watchtower” on the radio. That’s when I understood what Jimi was trying to tell me, and I knew if I didn’t change my life, I’d end up imitating the worst mistake of his . . .”

The sergeant went on to tell us about his favorite uncle, an ex-navy man, who visited him during recovery and encouraged him to join the service.

“He warned me to get away from the music scene and all the drugs or I’d start using again. And if I died, he’d never forgive me, because it would kill my mother—his only sister. I knew my uncle was right. I was broke and broken. So I held my breath and jumped into a new world.”

“That’s a big change,” I said. “Didn’t you have trouble adapting?”

“Plenty, at first, but . . . I liked the camaraderie of the navy, the traveling, the ocean at night. I liked the structure of knowing what I had to do each day and what was expected of me. I kept playing music, too, formed a little band on the ship. I’ll tell you, no one was more surprised than I was, but I stayed clean on the water.”

“Only you’re not in the navy now,” Esther pointed out.

He laughed. “Blame it on Fleet Week. I fell for a wonderful woman here in New York, and we started a family. That’s when I left the service, to be closer to them. It was my late wife’s father who helped me get into the NYPD and then the Harbor Unit, and there you go—that’s my song. So far, anyway. I’ll be forced to retire soon, and I’m sad to say that part of my life will be over . . .”

While Lee Jones turned his attention back to Madame and sampling our Billionaire blend, I exchanged glances with Esther. I could tell she was still bubbling with excitement about the Hendrix connection to our coffeehouse.

Though I was never a big fan of his music, I knew Hendrix had a passionate following, which gave me an idea. I’d have to research it upstairs in the attic, where we kept the old photos and memorabilia that Madame had amassed over the decades. But if it worked out, the Village Blend might benefit.

There was another part of the sergeant’s story that impressed me even more than the Hendrix meeting. And that was the grit he showed in overcoming his addiction.

Now, as Sergeant Jones raved to us about our “Billionaire” beverage, I couldn’t help considering the coffee hunter who’d made the cup possible. Like Jones, my ex-husband had kicked his drug habit. Unlike the sergeant, however, he hadn’t changed much else in his life.

Matt was still hooked on the partying that led to his downfall in the first place. Despite all his assurances, I’d never stop worrying that in a weak moment, with the wrong crowd—or the wrong woman—my daughter’s father might end up making the worst mistake of his life, too.

My grim meditation was interrupted by a tiny royal fanfare, the signature alert for female users of the Cinder app, telling me that a pack of potential princes had been pumped into my Pumpkin Pot.

Sergeant Jones overheard it and laughed. “Is Queen Elizabeth on deck?”

I pulled the smartphone out of my pocket and did my best to explain why a grown woman, engaged to a loving man, had four dating apps on her mobile screen.