Double Shots, Donuts, and Dead Dudes

by Harper Lin

  I picked up my phone, ready to call 911 again and ask Margaret when on earth help would arrive since it had surely been almost thirty minutes. But just before I did, I realized it hadn’t been anywhere near thirty minutes, or even fifteen. It had been three.

  I wanted to cry, but instead, I put my phone down and focused on counting to thirty, over and over again.

  Finally, the door opened, and the knights in shining armor arrived, riding on white horses. Okay, so maybe they were actually fire fighters in blue jumpsuits, riding in a big red truck, but that technicality aside, I still felt like the heroes had arrived to save the day.

  We cleared out from around Pablo as the fire department moved in. They seemed much more confident and self-assured than we had been, and they even had equipment to monitor Pablo’s pulse and handle his breathing. I was particularly relieved when they pulled out a defibrillator and hooked it up to his chest.

  The ambulance team arrived a minute or so later, carrying a backboard and stretcher. The fire fighter who had taken charge of the situation said some things to one of the paramedics, then they loaded him up and rolled him out the door as quickly as they’d arrived.

  Chapter Five

  I leaned hard into Matt. Normally, I probably would have said that I collapsed into him, but I had a new appreciation for that word now.

  Matt put his arm around me and held me tight against him. Then he pulled me closer to his chest and wrapped both his arms around me, burying his face in my hair.

  I rested my forehead against Matt’s chest and inhaled the warm, spicy scent of his cologne. After the chaos of the last several minutes, it felt good to spend a moment just breathing him in.

  It didn’t last long though. Now that Pablo was no longer sprawled in the middle of the floor, the quiet that had reigned over the restaurant broke as everyone began talking simultaneously about what had happened.

  “So, what happened?” Ryan asked, walking up to me and Matt.

  I tried to answer him, but I felt like I was choking. Matt had mercy on me as I fought to maintain my composure.

  “He just collapsed.”

  “Anything happen before that?” Ryan asked.

  Matt gave him a rundown of what we’d seen since we’d arrived, particularly the dramatic change in Pablo’s mood and how he’d seemed confused before clutching his head in pain. Ryan whipped out his little cop notebook and made notes of it all, whether for an official report or just to be thorough, I didn’t know.

  “Why don’t you sit down, Franny?” Matt suggested after a minute. I nodded and sat myself down in my chair. I reached for my margarita glass, thinking I could use a good stiff drink at that moment. A couple of shots of straight tequila might have been better, but the margarita would do. As I picked it up, the light weight of it reminded me that I’d emptied the glass earlier and that I’d been hounding Pablo about a refill when he collapsed. A sob forced its way out of my throat, and I put my head down on the table to cry.

  “She okay?” I heard Ryan ask.

  “She just needs a minute,” Matt replied. He ruffled my hair—again, good thing I didn’t manage anything fancy with it—and then I heard their footsteps recede as they presumably retreated to give me some space. I was glad. I needed it. I didn’t want Ryan hovering nearby as I bawled my eyes out in the middle of a public place just because someone had a medical emergency. It probably wasn’t even serious. Probably just another day on the job for Ryan. After all, the paramedics had continued to do chest compressions and pump air into Pablo’s body with that little mask and bag. They wouldn’t have done that if he weren’t going to be okay.

  As I tried to calm myself down, the restaurant began to clear out. Business was done for the day. People tried to pay, but the waiters just shooed them out the door. A few people dropped money on the tables anyway. I heard someone ask Bill to let them know if there was anything they could do to help the family or defray what were sure to be exorbitant medical costs, no matter what Pablo’s outcome. I was proud of my fellow restaurant-goers. We Cape Bayers weren’t ones to just walk away when one of our own needed help. Our New England sense of propriety wouldn’t let us.

  Matt and I were two of the few customers who stayed at the restaurant with the staff, waiting to hear how Pablo was doing. Bill had called Pablo’s family as soon as the paramedics whisked him away so that they could hurry to the hospital to be with him. It had been almost an hour, and I was starting to get antsy.

  “What’s taking so long?” I asked no one in particular, though I kept my voice down so only Matt and Ryan could hear me.

  “They may still be trying to stabilize him,” Ryan said.

  “After all this time?”

  “The paramedics said it looked like a stroke. Depending on what kind it was and how bad, it could take a while to get him taken care of. Since his heart stopped, it was definitely too bad to be treated with drugs, so he probably needed surgery. And the surgery’s very different if it’s from a brain bleed or a clot. It could be a while.”

  I stared at Ryan. “How do you know all that?”

  He shrugged. “My sister’s kind of a know-it-all.”

  “Does she quiz you or something?” Matt asked.

  “No, I used to quiz her,” Ryan replied. He looked between the two of us as we stared back at him blankly. “To help her study.” He looked at us again, then realization dawned across his face. “Oh! My sister’s a brain surgeon. I used to help her study when she was in med school. Sorry, it didn’t even cross my mind that you guys probably didn’t know that.”

  We both shook our heads. Obviously, we hadn’t. And why would we? We didn’t exactly have reason to discuss brain surgery on a regular basis.

  We sat quietly for a few minutes. Everyone did. We were all too tense and anxious about Pablo to do much chitchatting. Then, Ryan, who had a habit of not properly reading the room, started up again. “Of course, the type of stroke also really affects the prognosis and survival rate—”

  “Ryan!” I said sharply, cutting him off. I gave a quick shake of my head when he looked at me.

  He looked confused for a second before realizing that it wasn’t the time or the place. Or if he didn’t realize why, at least he grasped that I was telling him to shut up.

  We fell back into silence. Ryan had just taken a breath like he was going to find something else awkward or inappropriate to say when the phone behind the bar rang. Everyone’s heads instantly turned toward it, but no one moved. Bill was the one to get up just as the second ring ended. We all watched him cross the room and pick up the phone.

  “Hello?… Sí… Hola… Sí… Sí… Dios mío.” He crossed himself, and my heart sank. I grabbed Matt’s hand. “Sí… Sí… Sí… Adios.” He put the phone back on the receiver and stood there for a minute with his hand resting on it, his head down and his eyes closed. Then he crossed himself, raised his head, and turned to face us.

  He gave the tiniest shake of his head.

  We all knew what it meant. Pablo was gone.

  I put my head down on Matt’s shoulder and closed my eyes. My tears still leaked out from under my eyelashes.

  “I was afraid of that,” Ryan said. “He was probably dead before he hit the floor.”

  “Come on, man!” Matt stopped short of smacking Ryan on the back of the head, but I could tell he wanted to.

  “Sorry,” Ryan muttered.

  “Just don’t talk for a while, okay?”

  Ryan opened his mouth but then shut it and just nodded. At this point, taking Matt too literally was probably a better choice than going with his own instincts.

  Except for one particularly anguished-looking man who had practically run from the restaurant as soon as Bill hung up the phone, we all sat around for a few more minutes before people began to stir. The staff stood in a clump and talked quietly among themselves. A few customers began to leave, giving hugs to all the staff and most of the other customers in the room.

  “I better get back to work,” Ryan sa
id, breaking his vow of silence but at least not saying anything stupid.

  “Thanks for coming out, man,” Matt said, shaking Ryan’s hand in the way men do when they’re avoiding giving each other hugs.

  He did give me a hug. “Sorry about, you know, talking too much,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” I replied.

  He looked a little embarrassed as he made his way out of the restaurant, saying goodbye to people as he went.

  “You ready?” Matt asked me.

  I hesitated. It somehow felt wrong to go. But at the same time, I knew there was no reason for us to stay. Pablo was dead. There was nothing else we could do. I nodded, and Matt put his arm around my shoulders as we made our way out of the restaurant, stopping to say goodbye to everyone as we went.

  We paused near the door where Bill was talking to another customer so we could say goodbye. “I don’t know if that’s what it was, but something was going on,” I heard him say. “Pablo would not tell me. But I tell you, he looked scared.” Bill noticed us and stopped talking suddenly. He came over to us. “My friends, you are leaving now?”

  “Yeah, we thought we should get out of here so you guys can close up and go home when you’re ready,” Matt said.

  “You will come to the funeral, yes?”

  Matt hesitated, but I agreed readily. “Yes, of course! You’ll let us know when it is?”

  “Sí, señorita Francesca. We will let everybody know.”

  “Thank you. And I’m so sorry about Pablo.” I gave him a hug before I headed out the door with Matt.

  We made the short drive back across town to my house. As soon as I walked in the door, Latte greeted me with excited bouncing and tail wagging. I felt bad that I didn’t have it in me to act more excited to see him. “You want to go outside? Outside?”

  He bounced in the direction of the back door, and I followed him. I stopped as I reached to unlock the back door. “Matt!”

  “What?” he called from the living room.

  “I thought you said you locked the back door.”

  He poked his head around the corner. “Oops.”

  “Oops? Matty!”

  “Sorry!” He grinned and ducked back into the living room.

  I rolled my eyes and went outside with Latte. When I stood still, the air seemed colder than it had on my short walks to and from the car. The wind had kicked up and was stinging my cheeks. I stayed out there anyway and thought about Pablo.

  I couldn’t believe he was gone. He was always so happy and joyful, and his section at the restaurant was always full. I had a feeling that half the people who came into Fiesta Mexicana asked for him to be their waiter. And the other half just hoped they’d get him. It didn’t seem right that of all the people in the world to suddenly have a stroke and die, it would be him. Why him? Why?

  I didn’t know how long I was out there, but it must have been a while because Matt came looking for me. “You all right out here?”

  “Yeah, just thinking.”

  “What about?” He slipped his arm around my waist and pulled me close to him. That was when I started to realize how cold I was—when I felt how warm Matt was.

  “Pablo?”

  I nodded.

  “You’ve been crying.”

  I shook my head, thinking he was asking me a question.

  “You have tears on your face, Franny.”

  “What? I do?” I wiped at my face and was surprised to see my fingers come away wet. I was more surprised to realize that I hadn’t felt my fingers touch my face at all. I poked my cheeks again, just to confirm that they were, in fact, completely numb. I really had been out there a long time.

  “Ready to go in? I started a fire in the fireplace.”

  I nodded and let him lead me inside.

  He hadn’t just started a fire. He’d also dimmed the lights and poured us a couple glasses of wine.

  “I figured you probably wanted to sit up and talk for a while,” he said. He parked me on the couch and handed me one of the glasses of wine.

  “Thank you.” I snuggled in next to him when he sat down beside me. We talked until the fire died down, then Matt put it out for the night, and we went upstairs. It was definitely not a night that I wanted to be alone.

  Two hours later, I was still awake, staring at the ceiling while Latte and Matt snored beside me. I finally gave up on sleep and made my way downstairs. Coffee probably wasn’t the absolute best choice when I couldn’t sleep, but it comforted me, so I made myself a cup of coffee anyway. A latte, heavy on the milk. At least maybe the milk would help me sleep. Or I told myself that anyway.

  I sipped my coffee and thought through the events of the night. I couldn’t have stopped myself if I wanted to. It was why I couldn’t sleep—I just kept seeing them in my head like a movie reel. Pablo so friendly and happy, then his sudden mood change and his collapse. Matt doing CPR. The eternity it took for the paramedics to arrive. Even looking back on it, it felt like it had to have been much, much longer than five minutes. And then Pablo being wheeled away. The call from the hospital. All of it was just too much. It was even painful to think about the other customers and the staff, how everyone was gathered in little groups, pained looks on their faces as they carried on murmured conversations.

  And I kept thinking of how Bill had said that Pablo looked scared. It broke my heart to think of him being afraid in his last moments on earth. And afraid of what? The pain? It seemed severe, but it had come on so suddenly. Did he have time to be afraid? I’d been there, and I wouldn’t have called the look on his face fear. I would have called it confusion. So, what was Bill talking about? Had Pablo had the pain before and been afraid of it coming back? Or was it something else?

  And then a horrible thought crept into my head. What if he wasn’t afraid of something else, but someone else? A cold chill went down my spine. What if Pablo had been murdered?

  Chapter Six

  That morning, I told Matt my theory—that Pablo had been murdered.

  He was still sitting at the kitchen table, still bleary-eyed from sleep. I, on the other hand, had probably had more caffeine than was actually healthy and was feeling as wide awake and alert as I ever had. My realization had left me alert until the sun was peeking over the horizon. I managed a short nap on the couch but otherwise had made it through the night on adrenaline and caffeine.

  “Wait, so you think Pablo was murdered?” Matt rubbed his forehead. I set a cup of coffee in front of him—an americano, like he liked. It was probably the most boring of the espresso drinks, but it was also the most similar to plain black drip coffee, which I was ashamed to admit, was my boyfriend’s preferred coffee drink. Not that there was anything wrong with it—I happily served plenty of black coffee to my customers every day—but when he had a coffee shop owner who had been making espresso drinks since she was ten years old as a girlfriend, I would have hoped that his tastes would have been a little more adventurous.

  “It’s just a theory,” I said.

  “A theory that someone murdered a man in a public place by inducing a stroke.”

  “Or something that looked like a stroke.”

  “Or something that looked like a stroke,” Matt repeated disbelievingly.

  “Yes.”

  He squinted at me. “How many cups of coffee have you had so far today?”

  “That’s irrelevant.”

  “How many?”

  I started counting on my fingers but stopped when I realized the number was embarrassingly high. Especially for ten o’clock in the morning. “It’s irrelevant.”

  He shook his head. “And how much sleep did you get?”

  “Oh, it was about an hour,” I said, rounding up while trying to sound like that was a healthy, normal amount of sleep for an adult to get on a weekend.

  “Okay, so half an hour,” he said, seeing right through me. “And was that before or after your six cups of coffee?”

  I looked at the ceiling. “Somewhere in the middle.”

 
“Do you really think you’re in the best state of mind to be deciding that people have been murdered?”

  “Not people. Pablo.”

  “Right. Pablo.” He rubbed his eyes. “Franny, you know I love you, but that’s nuts.”

  “It’s not nuts, I—”

  “Plenty of people who die aren’t murdered, Franny. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s most of them.”

  “Or so you think!” I said, trying to make a joke.

  Matt didn’t laugh. “People die. Sometimes it’s unexpected. They drop dead in public places from strokes and heart attacks and—” He stopped and looked at my face. “I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have said that.”

  I bit my lip and closed my eyes, trying to hold back tears.

  “I wasn’t thinking—” He stopped and came around the table, kneeling down beside me and taking my hands in his. “Is that what this is about? Your mom?”

  It had been almost nine months since my mother had a massive heart attack and died, walking down the street in Cape Bay. Other people on the street gave her CPR and tried to save her, but it was too late. Her death was the reason I finally came back to town. Almost every day, I kicked myself for not coming back sooner, when she’d suggested it weeks before, after my then-fiancé left me. I could have spent those final weeks with her, talking to her, laughing with her, listening to her stories, memorizing her face and her voice and her smile. All of those were fading from my mind faster than I could handle. At least I remembered her smell. She smelled like coffee and Acqua di Parma.

  “It’s not fair,” I whispered. “I didn’t get to say goodbye.”

  “I know. Neither did I.” Matt’s dad had died a few months earlier too. But he’d been murdered.

  “But at least you have someone to blame. Who can I blame? My mother? Genetics? I want someone to be mad at. It should be someone’s fault so I can hate them for taking her away from me.”

  Matt graciously didn’t say anything to argue with me. He knew I was just heartbroken, that I didn’t really think his dad’s death was somehow “better” than my mother’s because his dad was murdered. I knew his dad’s death was just as bad in some ways and worse in others. Sure, maybe it was “better” sometimes that he had someone to blame, but all deaths were painful, no matter what the circumstances.