“Customer,” Neil said, unnecessarily. That was the thing with Neil. Almost everything he did was unnecessary.
I put down the cloth and the streak-free cleaner.
“Don’t leave that there,” Neil said. “What would that look like to customers?”
I thought that it would look like I was washing the windows, but I kept that thought to myself. I just turned back, picked up the cloth and the liquid, and stashed them behind the counter. The man was waiting for me by the time I got around behind the register.
Looking back, I can’t find any sense of recognition in that moment. There was no funny feeling, no premonition that this small slice of time, this ordinary Monday afternoon, would change the course of my life. And this man’s life. And the lives of everyone who was close to me.
No, all I could remember was that I noticed the suit. It wasn’t his face or his eyes or his smile. It was the suit that struck me. Wearing a suit in town was not unheard of, but it was never a suit like this. The suits I saw around town were either black, for funerals, or mud brown, and usually paired with the unfortunate choice of a checked shirt and striped tie in even more unfortunate colors. But comparing the suits I usually saw with this one was like comparing a Volvo with a Lamborghini. The fabric of the suit was gray, with subtle lines that were actually tiny ridges in the cloth. And it had just the faintest sheen to it. He wore it with a pale blue shirt and a dark blue tie, also with the same little ridges in the fabric. It was very simple, but the kind of simple that cost more than a lot of people made in a month.
When I looked up from the suit to his face, I saw what I thought was the best-looking man I’d ever seen in person. He might almost have been too good-looking, with the plastic look of a magazine, but he was saved from that by the deep lines sloping across his forehead and bracketing his mouth.
I said, “Welcome to Starbox. What can I get you?”
The man squinted up at the board. At least he didn’t ask the same question everyone else did. Instead, he said, “Is this a Starbucks?”
“No, it’s Starbox,” I said.
“Ah, I understand,” he said. He paused. Then he shook his head and said, “Actually, I don’t understand at all. This has been a very strange day.”
“Maybe a coffee will help,” I suggested. Then I happened to look over his shoulder and catch sight of Neil mouthing something. Unfortunately, I knew exactly what he was trying to tell me.
I sighed and said, “Might I recommend our special drink of the month, pumpkin-spice latte?”
I hoped I put the right amount of lack of enthusiasm into my voice. The special drink was like drinking pureed pumpkin. Neil had gotten the name off the Starbucks Web site, but the recipe was his. And it was disgusting. But Neil thought it was a masterpiece, and he wanted me to recommend it to everyone that came into the store. So far, not one person had taken me up on it. Until now.
“If you think it’s good,” the man said, “I’ll try it.”
“Are you sure?” I said, trying to shake my head at him subtly so he would get the message, and Neil wouldn’t notice.
But it turned out that the man didn’t notice and Neil did. Neil was glaring at me as the man said, “Your recommendation is good enough for me.”
I turned around to make the pumpkin spice. I thought maybe if I added less of the pumpkin syrup, it might make it a little less disgusting, but when I tried to put just one pump in the cup, I turned to find Neil standing right behind me.
“Nora, it’s four squirts of the pumpkin syrup. How many times did I go over this?”
“I’m sorry, Neil,” I said, turning back and reluctantly putting three more pumps of the liquid in the cup.
“Do you want me to make the rest of it?” he said. “Or do you think you can get it right?”
“I can do it,” I assured him. “It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” Neil said. “One squirt is not fine.”
I ignored him and went on making the drink. Neil went back around the counter, but I could feel him watching me, ready to pounce if I made another mistake in his recipe.
I finished the drink, fit a travel lid on the cup, and gave a silent prayer that the man wouldn’t try it until he was out of the store. Then I brought it over to the register where he was waiting and rang it up.
“That will be $3.82,” I said.
The man reached inside the jacket of the beautiful suit and brought out his wallet. He handed me a twenty, then picked up the drink, peeled back the plastic flap of the lid, and raised the cup to me, smiling, and took a sip.
Then his smile disappeared.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
He bravely summoned the smile back up. “Wonderful,” he said, as he put the cup carefully back down on the counter—as if it might leap up and bite him. “But maybe I could get a regular latte as well? Double shot, Venti, with skim.”
“Of course,” I said.
I packed the coffee grounds into the double espresso filter-cup, fit it into the machine, and ran it. Then I foamed the milk and poured it into the cup, put on the lid, and brought it back over to the counter. I added that drink to the tab and gave him his change from the twenty.
“Thank you,” he said, picking up his two drinks and heading to the door.
As soon as he turned to leave, that’s when I knew. The feeling was so strong and so eerie, I wondered if it was what Tammy felt when she held my palm and told me the future. I knew he was going to turn around before he did it.
And I was right. In the very next second, he turned back. And it seemed clear to me that the feeling and his turning around went together, but which came first was a chicken-or-egg dilemma I had no way of solving. Did I have the feeling because he was going to turn around, or did the feeling cause him to turn? All I know is that he did turn around and come back to the counter. He put his drinks down and looked at me.
“I wanted to ask you a crazy question,” he said.
“Okay,” I agreed.
“I wanted to ask if you would come have a cup of coffee with me,” he said.
“I . . .” I started to answer and stalled there. I wanted to say yes, but all my brain came up with were the reasons I couldn’t. I was working, he was too good-looking, and he was obviously from out of town so what was the point? Those were just the top three. You wouldn’t believe how many went through my mind in the space of a split second.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No, it’s not that—”
And that was when Neil came up beside me.
“Is there a problem here?” Neil asked.
“No, no problem,” the man said. “I was just trying to be friendly.”
The other thing about Neil was that he might give his employees a hard time, but he was fiercely protective of us. He didn’t follow the policy that the customer is always right—he followed the policy that the person who worked for him, and who he knew and trusted, was to be defended at all costs, which was nice when there was a problem but could be embarrassing in a situation like this, where he got aggressive for no reason.
“I know you’re not going to try to tell me that my employee wasn’t friendly,” Neil said.
“No, of course not,” the man said.
Neil said sternly, “We serve coffee here. And lemon loaf. That’s it.”
“Yes, I know. I’m sorry.” The man looked at me and repeated it again. “I’m very sorry.” Then he turned around to leave for the second time.
“Your drinks,” Neil said.
“Right,” the man turned back, picked up his drinks, and walked back toward the door, but when he got to it, he couldn’t actually open it because he had a cup in both hands.
I did it without thinking. “Wait,” I said. “I’ll help you with that.” I hurried around the counter and crossed to the door to open it for him—and then I slipped out the door after the man and closed it behind me.
“I would love to have a cup of coffee
with you,” I said. “But could you wait for me for just a minute? I need to go tell my boss I’m leaving.”
The man gave me a strange look, but all he said was, “Sure. I’ll be right here.”
“Okay. Great. Thanks. I’ll be right back,” I said, and turned around and went back in the store.
“What was that about?” Neil demanded as I came back inside.
“Neil,” I said. “I want to ask you a favor.”
Neil looked at me. Then he looked past me through the plate-glass windows at the man, still standing there on the sidewalk with the two drinks, one in each hand. And then Neil surprised me.
“Go on,” he said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Just do me one favor, okay? Don’t go to Joe’s.”
“Okay, I won’t,” I said as I slipped back out the door.
The man was still standing on the sidewalk, waiting for me. “My car is just over here,” he said.
He led the way down the street to where a convertible BMW (with a rental license plate I noticed) was parked, with the top down. He clicked open the locks and turned around. “Will you hold this?” he asked. He handed me one of the drinks, then turned to open the car door for me.
I got in, and he went around the other side to the driver’s seat.
“Will you be cold with the top down?” he asked.
“No, it’s beautiful out,” I said. And it was, despite the clouds. It was one of those Indian summer days when the breeze off the plains still smelled like summer and cut grass and heat.
He put the cup he was holding in the cup holder between us, and I did the same.
He held out his hand.
“I’m Timothy,” he said.
“Nora,” I said, holding out mine.
He took my hand for a moment, then let go.
“So, Nora, tell me where should we go in this town of yours?” he asked.
“We’re just going a couple of blocks,” I said.
“All right.”
He started the car and pulled out slowly into the street. As we passed by the store I glanced over, and there was Neil at the plate-glass window, with his rag and his bottle of 100-percent-guaranteed no-streak glass cleaner. I saw him lift the bottle and spray, then lift his arm to wipe the special cloth across the glass. Suddenly the sun burst through the clouds, lighting up all the streaks and dust that clung to the glass. Then Neil swept the cloth across the glass, and he left behind a rainbow arc of pristine, transparent glass.
THE INVESTIGATION
CRIME SCENE
Forensic scientists, when talking about their jobs, often quote the renowned French criminologist Edmond Locard: “Every contact leaves a trace.”
When the crime scene crew came in to work the room at the bed-and-breakfast, they found hair from seven different people, dozens of fibers, and even more latent prints. So many people had passed through the room and left traces of themselves.
There is invisible but undeniable evidence of everyone’s passing. But, unless there is a tragedy, no one bothers to look.
Nora
Nora Walks Out on Timothy
I took him to Joe’s Diner. I had promised Neil I wouldn’t, but what was I going to do? There was no place else to take him, not at three o’clock in the afternoon anyway, unless we went to one of the fast-food places out near the highway.
Starbox was always empty, and Joe’s was always crowded. Maybe it was because Joe’s diner made sense. It belonged to Joe. It was a diner. There were no sizes for coffee in the diner, because they would refill your cup till you burst.
We slid into a booth at the back, and the busboy came over with menus and water.
We both opened our menus and looked, even though I knew exactly what was on it. Nothing had changed in all the years I had been coming to Joe’s. Not even the prices. Joe didn’t like changes. He was always complaining about how the prices everywhere went up so much. So he decided not to raise the prices in his diner—as if he thought that somehow other people would take a cue from him and do the same. As a result, for the last ten years the town had had to hold a raffle to raise money to save Joe’s from foreclosure. But every year the raffle managed to scrape together enough money, and Joe’s kept on serving a meat-loaf dinner for $2.50.
Timothy looked at the menu, and I looked at him.
“What’s good here?” he asked. Then he looked up and grinned. “Oh, wait. Forget I asked. I’ve discovered your recommendations aren’t exactly trustworthy.”
“I can’t be held responsible for the pumpkin disaster,” I said. “You can’t ask an employee their opinion on the things they’re selling. Half the time, if they told you the truth they’d lose their jobs.”
“So who’s responsible?” he asked me.
I raised my eyebrows at him. “Well, who’s left?”
Our waitress came over to our booth. It was Jeanette, who had been in my class in high school. She’d been working at Joe’s since she graduated, and she was a terrible waitress—well, whenever I came here with Tammy or my sister or my mother, she was a terrible waitress. She took the job description literally, at least the part that had the word “wait” in it; we always had to wait for at least fifteen or twenty minutes before she even came over to take our order.
It was different this time though. I knew immediately that something was up when she appeared within three minutes of our sitting down and said perkily, “Hey there, Nora. How are you?”
“I’m good, Jeanette. Thanks. How are you?”
“I’ll be better when you introduce me to your friend here,” she said. She sure didn’t waste any time, I thought.
“Jeanette, this is Timothy. Timothy, this is Jeanette.”
“Timothy, a pleasure. How did you all meet? Are you together?” she asked suggestively, looking from me to Timothy.
Jeanette was not a subtle person.
I opened my mouth to answer her, when Timothy beat me to it.
He looked up at her and smiled. “You want to know how Nora and I met? It was fate, Jeanette. That’s the only way I can explain it. Do you believe in fate?”
Jeanette seemed dazzled by him, standing there staring at him and clutching her pad to her chest. I didn’t blame her. He had turned the full force of his attention and charm on her, and she was like a deer in the headlights.
“Yes, I do,” she said.
“I thought you might,” he said, nodding approvingly.
I wondered what he would say to me if I told him that I thought fate was a bunch of baloney. It’s true, I did. Isn’t that funny? Even with Tammy’s predictions, I believed firmly and completely in the randomness of events. Now that I look back, it doesn’t make any sense at all. But at the time I thought it was just logical and practical—hardheaded of me.
Jeanette hesitated, then said to Timothy, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure thing. Shoot.”
“Do you ever worry that you might miss it? That you have to keep an eye out or fate might just keep right on going by?”
“Miss it? Not possible. If it’s supposed to happen, there’s nothing in the world you can do to stop it. Like what happened with me and Nora,” and he reached over and took my hand from where it had been lying on the table between us.
And then, oh, the look that Jeanette turned on me. As if she were starving and I had a feast in front of me and wouldn’t share. It was a relief when she looked back at Timothy and I was able to quietly pull away my hand. I didn’t like what he was doing; he seemed to be both mocking her and flirting with her at the same time.
“Do you have any friends who believe in fate?” Jeanette asked. “A twin brother maybe?”
“You don’t need to find someone who believes in it; you’re still ruled by it whether you believe in it or not. And you wouldn’t want either of my brothers. Trust me on that one.”
“I’m not so sure,” she said. “I’d like to check that out myself.”
&n
bsp; “They don’t live around here. But listen, I have a question for you.”
“Yes?”
The way she said it, she probably would have told him anything. Her darkest secret even. But all he said was, “Do you have any specials that you’d recommend?”
“We have specials,” Jeanette said, “but nothin’ I’d recommend. They’re always some mess Joe puts together with the ingredients that are about to go bad, or what’s worse, something he makes up when he’s feeling artistic. Stick to the menu, and you’ll be just fine.”
“Hamburgers?”
“Delicious,” Jeanette assured him. “Bloody?”
“Perfect.”
Jeanette turned to me. “Nora?”
At this point I was annoyed with both of them.
“Coffee and a piece of apple pie,” I said.
Jeanette didn’t write it down. Instead she said, “You sure about that pie? You know how much Crisco Joe puts in the crust?”
“I’m sure about the pie,” I told her.
I wasn’t so sure about anything else though. I was feeling more and more uncomfortable every moment the little show went on between Timothy and Jeanette. I felt like the intruder, as if I were sitting and watching someone else’s date.
“Okeydoke.” She pivoted, and the way she walked away was just an invitation to watch her backside.
I watched for a second, then turned back to Timothy, sure I would find him still watching her.
But he was watching me. And laughing.
“I didn’t take you for the jealous type,” he said.
“That’s not jealousy,” I told him. “That’s disgust.”
“Oh, bringing out the big guns.”
“Were you trying to prove something?”
“No, of course not.”
There was something in the way he said it. Dismissive. Condescending. Just shy of rude.
I slid out of the booth and stood up.
“I think I’d better go,” I said. “I thought you were . . . I don’t know. Anyway, I should probably get back to work.”
Through the Heart Page 6