A body appears in front of the True Grit window, blocking the light.
Linus elbows me out of the way, making the watch movement to a dirty-faced man on the sidewalk: tapping her wrist ten times, which must mean he needs to wait ten more minutes. He nods, the brim of his straw hat stiff over his eyes. He leans against the bike rack, tucking a newspaper under his arm. He begins to have an intricate conversation with himself.
Linus resumes grinding, shouting over the sound of beans being mashed. “It’s Fifteen-Minute-Shit Guy. He’s here every day at open. He brings in a newspaper and a bucket. He takes a fifteen-minute shit in the can and then we let him take the old coffee grounds in the bucket.” She points to an empty five-gallon pickle bucket.
I stare at her. I have to yell over the grinder. “For reals? Like, the shitting part? Fifteen minutes?”
She nods. “Reals. And it’s going to be your job, as the disher, to go in there after he’s done and check it. Make sure everything is clean.” She winks. “But you know, he uses the grounds for his garden down on Sixth and damned if that fucker isn’t goddamn beautiful. Sunflowers up to my fucking eyeballs and tomatoes the size of my tits.”
I laugh without thinking, a big fat guffaw, and quickly cover my mouth. Linus says, “It’s okay! You can laugh. I’m fucking funny, aren’t I?” She nudges me with her elbow. I let my hand drop away from my mouth.
I smile back at her.
“That’s more like it. I like that.” She fills up an urn with water and hands me the filter of Ethiopian beans, ducking her head so our eyes are level. There’s a slight mist of dark hair between her eyebrows.
“Julie’s gonna love you, don’t worry. She loves the damaged and you reek of it. No offense or anything. It’s a good thing, in a weird way, for this place. We are all fifty kinds of messed up here.”
She fills two mugs of coffee from the urn and hands me one.
“Now, go let Fifteen-Minute-Shit Guy in.”
—
By eight-thirty, Linus’s face has bloomed bright red and she’s swearing, running from the front of the coffeehouse to the grill station, slicing bagels and throwing them on the toaster shelf. The waitstaff is late; Riley is still not here. He was supposed to come in at six to get the breakfast items ready: the chili sauces in the pots, the home fries on the grill. She’s already asked me to man the potatoes and then sworn at me when I didn’t remember to flip them at regular intervals.
“You have to go get him,” she says finally, shoving a forkful of scrambled tofu into her mouth. My stomach growls as I watch her. I forgot to eat before I left the apartment this morning. “He doesn’t have a phone and I can’t leave or close the café. Julie would fucking kill me.”
She scribbles an address and directions on a piece of paper. She tells me to get one of the moon-faced Go players outside to wait tables while she cooks. “Tell him coffee’s free for the rest of the day.”
Outside I look at the directions she’s given me. It’s downtown, not far, through the underpass, I think. I unlock my bike and take off.
He lives around the corner from a plasma bank in a robin’s-egg-blue bungalow set back behind a few drooling cottonwoods, on a street of funkily colored houses and old cars with peeling band bumper stickers. On the front porch I walk by a full ashtray and a single, empty bottle of beer next to a green Adirondack chair stacked with dog-eared paperbacks.
No one answers my knock and I can see that the screen door isn’t latched. When I push the front door, just a little, it gives. I call out, softly, “Hey, anybody there? You’re late for work….”
No answer. I debate for a few seconds, peeking through the crack in the doorway. I don’t want to find him naked in a bed with some chick, but I don’t want to have to go back to Linus without even trying. And I’m kind of curious, too, about what Riley is doing, exactly. What his life is like, this person who was once in a band and now slings hash.
I push open the door the rest of the way and walk in, nudging aside a pair of faded black Converse. The front room is filled with books—piled on the floor and jammed into a glassed-in oak bookcase that rises from the floor to the ceiling. A sagging burgundy velvet couch is up against the far wall, beneath an open, curtainless window.
I pass into the kitchen and the calendar on the wall catches my eye. Curvy pinup girls from the forties with sun-soaked hair and long legs, breasts pulsating against the fabric of swim clothes. The page is on November.
Today is the last day of May. In the past forty-five days, I’ve tried to kill myself; been put in a psych ward; been shipped by bus across the country; got a job washing dishes in a dumpy coffeehouse; and now I’m lurking in the house of a weirdo with an apparent drinking problem. A cute weirdo, but still a weirdo.
Not even Ellis could make all that sound angelic.
I walk down a dark hallway and slowly push open a door. Tiny bathroom, painted white. Claw-foot tub with a shower. Dirty mirror on the medicine cabinet. Framed postcard photograph of Bob Dylan in front of a Studebaker. Woodstock, 1968, it says across the bottom. I inspect the postcard wistfully. My father loved to listen to Nashville Skyline. He told me Bob had a bad motorcycle accident and stopped drinking and smoking and that’s why his voice was pure and deep on the album. God was coming back to Dylan. That’s what my father told me.
The other door is cracked open just a little. I hesitate before knocking. My heart pounding, I tap softly on the door and then push it carefully, my eyes just barely open, just in case.
He is lying on his back on the bed, still in yesterday’s clothes: the food-stained white T-shirt, the loose brown pants. His arms are behind his head and his eyes are closed. He’s using a folded quilt for a pillow. Clothes are tossed on a puffy leather chair. On the floor next to the bed there’s a loaded ashtray and two crumpled packs of cigarettes. The room smells of old smoke and sweat.
Heart racing, I take a breath, say his name.
No answer.
Is he dead? I walk closer, staring at his chest, trying to see if it’s rising and falling, however slightly. “Riley.” A curious odor lingers about his body. It isn’t the same as alcohol, the same as sweat or smoke. It’s something else. I bend down and sniff.
Suddenly, his eyes snap open and he sits up.
Before I can jump back, he grabs my wrist, pulling me between his legs and locking me in the grip of his knees. It knocks the breath out of me. Adrenaline shoots through my body.
My brain fuzzes in and out with images of Fucking Frank’s terrible face. Riley’s breath is hot against my ear. I’m struggling, but he’s holding me too tight, even as I cry, “Let go! Let go!”
His voice is low and slightly hoarse. “Who are you, Strange Girl? Sneaking into my house. You gonna rob me?”
“Fuck off.” I work hard not to panic, to stay in the moment, not float. I can’t understand why he’s doing this. He seemed so nice before. I position my elbow and try to jab him in the gut, but his fingers are so tight on my wrists, my skin is starting to burn and I can’t move.
“Fucking let go.” Gasping.
His breath swarms against my cheek and neck and now Fucking Frank is gone and it’s the man in the underpass who zooms back to me, a dark memory of fear that triggers my street feeling again, something I thought I’d left behind. No! I yell it.
I use all my strength to twist my hips, gaining some leverage, and then I stomp on his fucking foot as hard as I can. He cries out, his arms springing open, releasing me. I scramble to the open door, a safe enough distance away. He holds his naked foot, his face scrunched in pain. I rub my stinging wrists, glaring at him.
“Jesus, I was just playing around.” He scowls at me. “You think I was gonna do something, or something?”
“Asshole.” I’m gulping breath, trying to force the air down hard enough to put out the tornado starting in my body. “You’re so horrible. That’s not funny. Why would you think that’s funny? Get your own fucking ass to work.”
I keep gulping air, only n
ow I’m hiccupping, too, and tears are pouring down my face, which is the last thing I want.
“Jesus, honey,” Riley says, suddenly serious. “I’m sorry.”
I swipe at my face angrily. Fucking hell. Fucking people. Crying in front of him.
Riley stares at me, the circles under his eyes like black half-moons. Whatever caused those dark stains, it wasn’t just alcohol, I’m sure of it.
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I’m an asshole, I am. Don’t cry. I didn’t mean for you to cry.” His voice is different now, softer.
We look at each other and I see something pass across his face, very gently, a sadness, some realization of me that makes me want to cry even harder, because he knows, he knows it now, that something happened to me, and grabbing me like that wasn’t okay.
He looks ashamed.
“Linus…Linus says get your ass to work.” I turn and run out of his room. I’m out of the house, slamming the door behind me, and then peeling away on my bicycle as fast as I can.
On my way back to the coffeehouse, as I pass through the Fourth Avenue Underpass, somewhere in that sudden flash of darkness that replaces the impossibly white sunshine of this city, it occurs to me that he knew Linus wouldn’t be able to come herself. He knew I was going to be working at the coffeehouse, that I would have to come instead.
He wasn’t sleeping at all. He was waiting for me. I thought he was a nice person and now I remind myself: People aren’t nice, people aren’t nice, you should know that by now.
I stop my bike. I could just turn back, go back to Mikey’s, shut the door, push the trunk in front of it, rescue my kit. Not go back to Grit. Not have to see him. Not have to deal.
But then I will lose what little I’ve gained. I take deep breaths, close my eyes. Blue comes back to me. Was what happened cereal?
A car honks at me, jolting me out of myself. Before I can even process what to think, I’m pedaling to the coffeehouse again.
Outside True Grit, the sidewalk tables are already full, Go players scowling at empty cups of coffee, people fanning themselves with menus. The high drone of customers erupts as I rocket through the employee screen door and rush to get into my apron.
Linus throws down the spatula and swears when she sees me by myself. “Shit. I knew it. Usually, he’s just drunk, but if he’s late like this, like this late? It means he’s been using. I knew it.”
Before I can ask her about using, a guy with neck tattoos bursts through the double doors and calls out “Order!”, slamming the green sheet on the counter in front of Linus. He runs to the front to ring people up as Linus hustles around the grill, sliding eggs onto plates and toasting bagels. I turn back to the dishwasher, steam coating my face. What Linus said about Riley using echoes in my head.
Before he face-planted in the craggy stream in Mears Park and almost drowned, DannyBoy had started trolling Rice Street, looking for a lean-faced man in a black vinyl jacket with purple piping. Whatever DannyBoy took, it first made his face gray, his stomach clench; after that, he was like a baby.
But Riley’s weird smell, the forceful way he grabbed me. Whatever he was on wasn’t what DannyBoy was on. DannyBoy became all heat and sighs. Whatever Riley did last night turned him mean.
The rush of breakfast has died down and I’m up to my elbows in dishes and coffee mugs when the screen door swings open. I look over to see Riley slouching in just ahead of a wide woman dressed like a kind of female tepee in long, loose brown fabric. She looks around, shaking her head at Linus behind the grill, who promptly finds an apron to cover her dirty shirt. Riley has showered: his hair is less matted, and his clothes, though again a white T-shirt and brown pants, appear to be a cleaner white T-shirt and brown pants.
He looks at me, amused, with a glint in his eye. “Well,” he says cheerfully. “Looks like you’re going to have that job interview now.”
He says it like nothing happened at all. There are still faint red marks around my wrists from where he pinned me so tightly.
The woman nods toward the long hallway, and I follow, not taking off my damp apron. Halfway down the hall, I turn around to face Riley, who is loping after me. I hiss, “You suck.”
“Not the first time I’ve heard that, sweetheart.”
The woman collapses in a swivel chair behind a desk mountained with papers, receipts, folders, cups full of pens and pencils, and a bowl of luminous blue stones. She puts her forehead down on the desk. “I’m so tired.”
On the grayish wall behind her, there is a framed portrait of a girls’ softball team, sunburned faces, sun-bleached hair bunched under green caps. I look at the dark road map of freckles on the woman’s face. She’s easy to locate in the photograph, far on the right-hand side, bat against her shoulder, thighs straining the hems of her shorts.
Her hand feels around the desk for something, pat-pat-patting. She seems confused, but in a kind of funny, nice way.
Riley has stretched out on the couch and closed his eyes. I don’t know what to do, so I stand by the door, pressing my back against the wall.
“You didn’t bring in any coffee,” she tells Riley.
“You didn’t tell me to bring in coffee.”
“Well, go get me some.”
She lifts her head in my direction. “Julie. Julie Baxter. And you are?” She lays her head back on the desk and whimpers.
I wonder why she and Riley don’t have the same last name. Maybe she’s married?
“Riley? Why are you not getting my coffee?” Julie’s voice is muffled on the desktop.
Riley shuffles up from the couch. He pauses next to me. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”
I shake my head. I’m still angry, and weirded out, by what he did. His face seems tired, yet he’s kind of jittery, walking out the door in a funny way. I wait until he’s through the door before I turn back to Julie.
Softly, I say, “My name is Charlie.”
Julie is sitting up now. She seems to not hear me. “Huh,” she says mildly. “That’s curious.”
She gazes at the ceiling, her mouth slightly ajar. Then she says, looking directly at me, “You see, a normal Riley never would have asked if you wanted coffee. A normal Riley would have just brought back coffee for you, probably something extravagant, like a mochaccino with extra whipped cream and strawberry sprinkles. Because normal Riley must flirt with every female person. Young, old, in between, fat, thin, middling. Doesn’t matter. He would have brought back his pretty gift for you and you would have fluttered and giggled and he would have assured himself of another ally. Though, to be fair, you don’t seem the fluttery type.”
She pauses and folds her hands. “Not a conquest, necessarily, but certainly an ally. He thrives on mass affection, even as he appears to want to push it away. So this is interesting. Very interesting.
“Something has passed between you two.” She rolls a pencil between her hands. “I can tell. I have real intuition.”
Her hazel eyes dart across my face, but I keep it blank. I’m not going to tell her what happened. She might not keep me around. I’ll just try to steer clear of him.
She opens her mouth to say something else but Riley has come back with two cups of coffee. She gives him the same searching, intent look she gave me.
“What?” he says crossly. “What are you looking at me like that for?”
“Intuition. I’ll have to develop my thesis further.” She twines her hands greedily around the coffee. “Anyway! So. Charlie! See? I was listening. I bet you thought I wasn’t. You have an awfully painful-looking scar on your forehead and you’re wearing overalls in the desert, two things that strike me as both interesting and sad.” She takes a long sip of her coffee. “Why are you here?”
I look at Riley without thinking, but he only shrugs, settling back down on the couch, resting his coffee mug on his chest.
I flex my fingers behind my back. “Money?”
“No, why are you here?” Julie closes her eyes briefly, as though very annoyed.
&nbs
p; “Like, on the planet type of thing?”
“Just in Arizona. We’ll talk about the planet at some later date. That’s a much more complex conversation.” She crinkles her eyes at me as she sips her coffee.
“I moved here? From Minnesota?” What more am I supposed to say?
“For a boy, probably,” Riley laughs.
“Shut up,” I snap. “Why are you so stuck on that? It isn’t even true.”
Julie says, “Then what is true?”
And before I can stop myself, because this whole morning has been a clusterfuck that now includes this weird job interview, I blurt out, “I tried to kill myself, okay? I messed up, and here I am. And I’m fucking hungry, and I need money. I need a stupid job.” As soon as I say them, I desperately want to gather the words up and shove them back inside my mouth. Freak, she’s probably thinking. Instinctively, I feel for my shirtsleeves, making sure they’re pulled down far enough.
I can feel Riley staring at me, hard. It’s all I can do not to look over at him.
Abruptly, he gets up from the couch and leaves the office.
Julie squints a few times, like she’s trying to evacuate unexpected dust from her eyes. My stomach flip-flops. She’s going to tell me to get out. There’s no way she’s keeping me now. I start to untie my apron.
Instead, she cocks her head at me. Her eyes are kind and sad. “There’s a lot of stuff in here, isn’t there?” Like a bird, her hand flutters before her chest, near her heart.
She nods to herself, touching the bowl of blue stones on her desk. “Yes, this is what I do. I like to talk to people. It gives me a much better sense of them than wanting to know if they’ve ever washed dishes or brought out a plate of food or handled a mop or what they studied in school.” She looks right at me, her freckled face open, her eyes clear. “Come here,” she says.
I step forward and she takes my hands in her own. Her eyes are little ponds of warmth. Julie’s hands are sure and smooth, motherly. Pat, pat, pat. The scent of lavender oil drifts off her skin.
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