by Laura Legend
I have read your dissertation. We need to talk.
Chapter Two
“What. The hell. Is this?” Cass wondered aloud.
The wind was blowing harder now and loose garbage fluttered around the alley. An obnoxious fluorescent light above the service door hummed and buzzed.
There couldn’t be more than a handful of people in the world that even knew she’d written a dissertation. The work was unfinished and unpublished. That little hitch in her path to academic stardom was why she was working as a barista in the first place. Her cheeks burned red just thinking about it. If this coffeeshop alleyway wasn’t a million miles from where she’d hoped to be, it was close.
Who is this? she texted back. How did you get this number?
She stared at the screen, willing a response. She paced the alley and kicked at some of the garbage on the ground, warming her free hand under her opposite arm, her eyes still glued to the phone.
The appearance of a speech bubble with three dots indicated that they mystery person was typing a response. She waited, impatient.
A second message appeared: Who I am is immaterial. Your work is all that matters.
Was this Zach pulling a prank on her? Was this her Dad trying to make her feel better about bombing out of her doctoral program? In her mind, she spooled through the faces of friends and acquaintances, looking for a possible match. Nobody fit the bill.
Who on earth could this be?
She almost dropped her phone when it buzzed again and a third message appeared: We MUST locate all of the pieces of the One True Cross. Your work on this topic is the key. It is too important to sit in a drawer. It could open doors that have been locked for thousands of years. And time is growing short. Please meet with me.
Cass felt her weak eye twitch and almost swim into focus in response, registering the truth of this statement like a lie detector. But she didn’t like the feel of this conversation. Just because this was the truth didn’t mean it was something good.
Her free hand felt for the pendant she always wore around her neck. It used to be her mother’s. She rubbed it absently between her thumb and index finger.
Her work on how to locate the missing pieces of the One True Cross was original and groundbreaking. She didn’t disagree about that. And she wasn’t just being vain. Her committee didn’t reject her research because the work was shoddy. They rejected it because they were afraid of what it would mean if she was right.
But, still, that didn’t mean she was going to start spending her free time texting with anonymous wackos about her scholarship. That was a shortcut to crazy town, and she didn’t live that far away as it was.
She made a firm decision.
You’ve got the wrong number, she texted back. Get lost.
She slipped her phone into her back pocket and leaned against the wall. She looked up into the sky.
Just as she started to relax again, Zach banged through the coffeehouse service door, backing into the alley, hauling a bunch of trash bags.
Cass jumped.
“Jesus, Zach!” Cass said.
Zach tossed the garbage bags into the dumpster, then stretched his arms high above his head, flexing his triceps. He held the pose for a long, comic moment before dropping his arms to his sides and brushing his hands together to signal a job well done. He turned to face her and caught her admiring him.
“Take a good look,” he said, teasing her. “Looks are free. But more than that is going to cost you. And I’m not sure you can afford it.”
He finished with a wink and a crooked smile.
Cass laughed him off, grateful for a bright note in a hard day. She owed Zach this job in the first place. They had originally met at an underground MMA tournament. She was fighting. He was working the room with drinks as a waiter.
Zachary Riviera wasn’t really her type—she tended toward the serious and brooding—but he was about her age, pleasantly fit, his dark mop of hair and Latin complexion were cute, and he loved history. This last part, above all, had sold her. He was a voracious reader, but self-taught. He was full of questions once he found out about her work and they became fast friends. He didn’t mind her lazy eye. He found it endearing, a chink in her otherwise perfect armor.
When he learned that she was trapped in career limbo, he offered to help her find some work while she decided what to do with her life. And now here they were, alone in a dark alley behind a coffeeshop.
Success?
“Kill me now,” she responded, leaning back against the alley wall again, back of her hand to her forehead, pretending to feint.
“I don’t think I’ll have to. It looks like either the customers or the manager are going to get there first.”
She stuck out her tongue at him and then frowned at the conversation’s serious turn.
“Listen, Cass.” Zach said, a dark note creeping into his voice. “If you get fired, how are you going to make your rent? And who’s going to keep me company here? Who’s going to fill me in about the location of the holy grail? And, most importantly, who’s going to clean those disgusting bathrooms every hour, on the hour, if you’re not here? Not me. If you get fired, I’ll have to quit too. We’ll both get thrown out on the street, you’ll have to sell all those way-too-realistic swords you own just to have money for food, and eventually we’ll both end up living under benches in the park, stealing bread crumbs from local pigeons.”
He paused for dramatic effect.
“It just seems like a slippery slope, you know? Totally not worth it.”
He almost made it to the end of his monologue without cracking a smile, but his eyes were shining the whole way through and his final words trailed into a laugh.
“You moron,” Cass answered. “Grow up.”
She gave him a friendly shove and he pretended to stumble back against the alley wall. She pounded one fist into her other open hand, like she was coming for him.
“I see how it is,” Zach said. “I knew this moment was coming any day now. You think that because you know jujitsu and shit that you can just have your way with me. Well, it doesn’t work like that. Even if I let you have my body, I’ll never give up my soul.” He pressed his back flat against the brick wall, cringing, closed his eyes with his head turned to the side, and then puckered up like he was in a kid’s cartoon.
She almost laughed but stopped herself. She was half-tempted to call his bluff and kiss him just to teach him a lesson. That would shut him up.
She stepped in close and let him feel her breath on his neck. He squirmed and then peeked out through a half-open eye to see what she was doing.
She grabbed him by his stubbly chin and turned his face toward her.
“You’re going to get it now—” she started.
But then the alley door banged open and the manager yelled for them.
They were out of time.
Was she relieved or disappointed?
“Zach, back to the front,” the manager barked.
“And Jones, we need to talk. In my office. Now.”
Chapter Three
Cass knew she was in trouble when the manager asked her to “please, take a seat” in her office.
The office was cramped and overflowing with old sales reports and used order forms. Boxes of leftover holiday coffee cups lined one wall.
Is it possible to be crushed to death under an avalanche of unused holiday cups decorated with non-denominational snowflakes and bells? Cass wondered. And if so, would that really be so sad?
If this meeting dragged on too long, maybe death-by-styrofoam-cup was the kind of noble death she’d be willing to settle for.
Cass tried to manufacture some humility. She kept her eyes down and worked to look penitent. Plus, maybe this way she could keep her lazy eye out of the conversation.
Her manager settled into her chair with a groan. She had positioned herself strategically behind her desk, like its laminated wood was her first line of defense against bad employees.
“Y
ou know you can’t treat customers like that,” her manager began.
“But …” Cass began.
“No buts. You know the corporate spiel. The customer is always right. We’re here to serve, blah, blah, blah. It may be a load of crap, but it’s the load of crap we live by.”
I deserve this, Cass told herself. I messed up. I just need to take my medicine here and move on. It is my own stupid fault that this crazy, bedazzled, high-heeled, yoga-pants-wearing trophy wife …
Spying the look of frustration creeping into Cass’s face, the manager sighed and leaned forward in her chair.
Whoops, Cass thought, lost my own thread there. Try again. Right. I deserve this. Keep my head down. Move on. Look contrite.
“Look. We don’t all have fancy graduate degrees or parents that run big university libraries. Some of us are just simple, working class folk and we have to squeeze a living out of whatever kind of work we can find.”
Cass bobbed her head, nodding agreement, but didn’t look up.
The manager paused and tried a different tack.
“Knowing so much about history like you do, think about it like this.”
She grabbed two used styrofoam cups, an unopened box, and couple of twisty-tied sleeves of cups from the shelf and set them on her desk.
“Java’s Palace is your feudal lord,” she continued. “And you are its loyal indentured servant. You are a serf working for the glory of your lord.”
She slid the box to the center of her desk and stacked sleeves of cups at the box’s four corners like towers for a castle.
She held up one stained cup and put it on top of the box. “This is your feudal lord, Java Palace.”
She held up the other used cup, crumpled it a little, and then set it next to the box, somewhere near Thanksgiving on her out-of-date desk calendar. “This is you, loyal serf, muddy and covered in filth, down in the field, slaving away for coffee beans.”
She gestured broadly, pleased with her tableau.
“Maybe, once upon a time, you used to live in the castle with the other fancy cups—I mean, fancy people—but now you’re down in the mud with the rest of us. And, being down in the mud with the rest of us, this means that when any nipped-and-tucked trophy wife pops in for her $15 latte and asks you to jump, the only response you ever give is to ask how high.”
She crossed her arms and leaned back in her squeaky chair.
Cass nodded her head again, hoping that her sorry face was convincing, but worried about the objection bubbling up inside of her.
“And under no circumstances—no, be quiet, I’m talking now—and under no circumstance are you to ever give any of these paying, respectable, hard-working customers the evil eye. Do you understand me?”
Cass swallowed hard and tried to nod.
“No. Evil. Eye.”
That last bit seemed unnecessary.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said.
Cass could feel a flicker of frustration starting to grow. She rubbed her mother’s pendant between her fingers. It felt hot in her hand.
“Also,” the manager continued, “there is a strict company policy against using your phone while working the counter. If I see you pulling that stunt again, you’ll be done here. I won’t tolerate it.”
That, Cass could tell, was true. Her manager was serious. If she got caught, she’d be done. She didn’t know if she could take being fired again.
“I don’t need the trouble,” the manager said. “And don’t think Zach can save you. The dimples in his cheeks are cute but they aren’t magic. I’ll fire both your asses. I’ve got a whole stack of applications from unemployed grad students like you and every one of them would be grateful to have your job. I could fire you now and have your position filled by someone with graduate training in Renaissance poetry before we closed tonight.”
This last bit made Cass’s eye twitch. It was true that the manager wouldn’t hesitate to fire Cass but she was lying about how easy it would be to replace her. She didn’t want the trouble of finding and training somebody new. And, despite her poor people skills, Cass was dependable.
It’s okay, she thought. You can do this. She needs you. Just try to see things from her perspective.
Still trying to keep her head down, Cass glanced up at her boss, trying to take her in.
What was her perspective? Who was this lady? What was she really like? What did she want? Who did she love? What did she think about when she didn’t have to think about anything else?
Cass had no idea. This woman, like most everyone, was a puzzle box, locked up tight. It was like Cass’s power to see the truth and look right through people made it harder for her to actually look at them and understand them.
All of this was rooted, for Cass, in the fact that her own emotions felt distant and foreign. Her own emotions always seemed one step removed, as if she were watching herself in a movie, as if they didn’t quite belong to her. She could sense her emotions banging around inside of her, locked up behind a heavy door, but she couldn’t quite feel the emotions themselves, first hand. And, unable to grasp her own emotions and motivations in the first person, she often found herself at a loss to understand anyone else’s feelings either.
As she remembered it, this problem had gotten much worse after her mother’s death, but there had always been signs that something wasn’t right with her emotions. In elementary school, her teachers had picked up on this right away. They’d sent Cass to be poked and tested. And then the doctors had started throwing around words like “antisocial personality disorder” and recommended that they start experimenting with different kinds of medication for Cass.
But Cass’s mom wouldn’t hear any of it. She was ferocious. “She’s a kid, not a problem,” she’d spit back at them.
So what if Cass was different? This didn’t mean that the school or the doctors needed to medicate that difference right of her. Cass didn’t need to be to squeezed into a more normal shape just so she would be easier for other people to handle.
“Different doesn’t mean broken,” her mom would say again and again like a mantra.
One day, after the last of these appointments, her mom had taken her to the park. It was a warm day, early in the fall. The trees were just starting to change and the afternoon sun was high and bright. They bought some ice cream from a cart and sat on a low, wooden bench. Cass loved ice cream and she worked hard to keep it from dripping down the side of her cone.
When she was done with her cone, her mother turned serious. She took Cass’s hand in hers and looked her in both eyes.
“Don’t worry, Cass,” she said. “We’ll work it out ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with you. We don’t need these doctors or their theories or their medications. You and me, we have each other.”
Cass could remember this moment with perfect clarity. This memory never aged. She could see the sunlight. She could hear the timbre of her mom’s voice. She could feel the strength in her mom’s hands.
And what her mother said was true. They did have each other. Her mom protected her and stood up for her. Her mom was the only one who seemed to understand her.
But then, when she was eleven, her mom died. And her dad did what he could, but her dad was not her mom. And now here she was, twenty-six-years-old, and her mom was long gone and there was no one to help her and she still didn’t understand other people.
“Jones?” her manager interrupted. “Are you hearing me, Jones?”
Cass squeezed her pendant and came back to the present.
“Yes, ma’am,” Cass said.
Her manager flattened the stained cup that had been the feudal serf and tossed it into the garbage can.
“One more time and you’re done here.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Clock out and go home. You’re done for the day.”
Chapter Four
The thin man was in a hotel in Paris. Though the sun had barely set in Salem, Oregon for Cassandra Jones, it was closer to sunrise here.
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br /> From a penthouse on the top floor, he looked out over the city. Two of the outer walls of his penthouse were made entirely of glass and they offered a breathtaking panorama of the city of lights. Though he had tired of many things over the course of his very long life, he had never tired of this view. He came back to this hotel—and to this room in particular—again and again, whenever his work permitted.
Except for a single desk lamp, the room’s lights were off. The room’s temperature was set low. He liked it cold. And, too, he liked how the single light from his desk caused part of his room to be reflected in the enormous window, superimposing a partial image of the room onto the glowing Parisian skyline. The desk, the lamp, his open laptop—everything that fell within the arc of the lamp’s light was reflected in the glass.
Everything, that is, but him. His own pale, thin frame was invisible in the glass.
This made him feel both powerful and alone.
He reached out and tapped the glass—one, two, three—softly, the beats evenly spaced. He always felt restless at this time of night.
He held up his gloved right hand, catching the light from his desk. He flexed the hand and then winced. He flexed it again and again until he had mastered the pain and his hand was steady. He considered removing his black glove but decided against it.
What would be the difference between looking at this lifeless black glove and his dying black hand? he wondered.
The thin man turned his attention back to the window, his reflection still absent. He hadn’t seen his own likeness in what seemed like forever. He had forgotten, really, what his own face looked like.
Though it was four in the morning, he was still fully and impeccably dressed. He brushed some imaginary lint from the shoulder of his tailored jacket and straightened his already straight tie clip. In the modern age of mirrors, his concern for his appearance had grown increasingly neurotic. He was always checking with his hands to make sure everything was in place. This kind of obsessive compulsion was, perhaps, an inevitable side-effect of not having a reflection. He couldn’t stop checking for what he could no longer see.