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Bean There, Brewed That. It was a name so smart that Mary Eileen almost wished she had thought of it for her coffee shop. But that didn’t matter as much as getting off her feet. She must have walked a mile from the rats and other vermin, like her new boyfriend, who infested the mansion that Mary Eileen called home.
It was a combination of music and outright exhaustion that drove her down that street to the mansion with an orange electrical cord running into a window. She’d climbed on an old, rickety shed, using a couple of old tires to get close enough to the shed’s roof to hop up and grab the ledge with her fingertips.
With a strength she had forgotten she had, Mary Eileen pulled herself onto the top of the shed, found a window open and shimmied inside. She wandered through the rooms, using the last bit of battery strength in her smartphone to run the flashlight app and avoid the mice and whatever else was scurrying on the floor, and the piles of clothes, books, furniture, and pictures.
The woodwork that had survived Detroit’s Great Recession was spectacular; Mary Eileen had to admit. During her exploration of the house, she would find four bathrooms, none of which with a functioning toilet, the water must have been cut off long ago.
She also found one man inside, or rather, he found her.
Mary Eileen was wandering down a hall on the third floor when she thought she heard the sound of footsteps behind her. Oh, fuck, she thought. This is not going to end well. Not unless I can use all my powers, Mary Eileen laughed to herself. She wasn’t afraid of some bum in a shack. She’d dealt with worse, much worse, in New York.
The sound of a shell racked into a shotgun wrecked her confidence. This guy is more serious than most, Mary Eileen thought. Or maybe he is more afraid than I am Mary Eileen decided to use a weapon she had not unveiled in days, and perhaps one Mr. Shotgun Man hadn’t seen in an every long time. Mary Eileen turned and smiled. And they reached what could be called, an agreement.
Now Mary Eileen had a place to call home while she reinvented herself. True, she had to do more for this guy — she did almost feel sorry for him, living along for a year scared to death of whatever or whoever came down the street at night — than she had wanted to do. But this arrangement gave her the space she needed. And it’s not like Mary Eileen had never traded favors.
Jason — that was his name — had everything she needed. This guy was hunkered down for the duration of whatever warfare came to him in Detroit. Thanks to his power-stealing orange electrical cord that ran from the house to a power pole, they had a refrigerator, a TV, radio; and even a computer. Since Mary Eileen had Verizon data, she didn’t need a Wi-Fi connection for her smartphone. She was all set. Yeah, running water would have been nice. But Jason had a garden hose running through three backyards to a house where the water was on. At night, they’d turn on the tap and run back through the yards to collect as much water as possible in the three bathtubs in the house.
So Mary Eileen would live.
Making a living was next. There had to be coffee shops, right? It was a simple matter to find one that would pay her under the table. Once she plugged her phone into Jason’s computer to recharge it, Mary Eileen searched for small coffee shops, the independents, who must be struggling.
Mary Eileen knew first hand the trials, tribulations and financial margins of running a coffee shop. Everybody thought selling a four-dollar cup of coffee made with probably a nickel’s worth of beans should be like having a license to print money.
How little they knew about all of the other expenses that went into running any small business. Mary Eileen knew. And she also realized that anyone facing the challenges she had faced in the Coffee Shoppe might be willing to do just what she had done — hire someone ready to work without bennies, somebody, who wanted to stay under the radar and get paid under the table.
And, so she found herself at Bean There, Brewed That. Not a bad gig. She was making a few hundred dollars a week, all tax free, no questions asked.
Had Mary Eileen spent time thinking about Sean? Sure, she did. This guy she was with, this Jason, was such a nothing compared to Sean. Mary Eileen had to close her eyes and think about the one true love of her life every night that Jason took her to bed.
She had not resisted. She had even pretended. Mary Eileen needed this guy and this house. She didn’t have a master plan for the reinvention of herself yet. All Mary Eileen required was time, some money and if things kept going the way they were, a chainsaw and a bag of cement mix wouldn’t hurt either.
So far though, Jason was serving his purpose. So Jason was still alive. And he would breathe as long as he was a good boy and didn’t ask for too much. Still, he was on thin ice. Now that Mary Eileen had a good job or at least a way to bring in money without selling her body she really didn’t need Jason. She could buy her food. She could protect herself. His guns could quickly become her weapons. And Mary Eileen still had the Beretta that she’d used to free herself from David and Hans.
Jason could be next.
Later for that, Mary Eileen decided. She’d had enough drama in her life the past few weeks. If nothing else, Jason was a life support system for an adequate penis.
And as long as she dreamed of Sean, the pretending part wasn’t so bad.
“White mocha latte, two dark coffees, and three muffins,” Mary Eileen heard herself say to the Bean There bartender. As she waited for her order, her mind drifted, and she glanced out the front window watching the traffic and day dreaming.
Mary Eileen thought about Sean so hard at times like this; she could almost see him.
This morning, she was sure she had, at least twice. Mary Eileen had been thinking about Sean more than usual for the past couple of hours. Her last dream of the night, one that ended just before her smartphone’s alarm went off at 4 a.m., was a rough one. It had been about Sean. The two of them were together. Mary Eileen couldn’t remember all the particulars, but it had not ended well. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and laid in her sleeping bag for nearly ten minutes filled with a dread that comes when one realizes it could be a very, very rough day ahead.
Mary Eileen might have been able to rub the sleep out of her eyes, but she couldn’t cleanse her mind of that dream. So, it was no wonder that every other guy who walked into Bean There, Brewed That looked for a moment just like Sean. Mary Eileen could have even sworn she had seen him in an SUV that rolled slowly by the store as she was opening for the morning.
But of course, there was no chance of that. He had to be teaching his literature students in Ann Arbor.
“It’s a school day, right?” Mary Eileen whispered to herself.