Killer Content

by Olivia Blacke

  One of the things I loved about Williamsburg was that I got to try new things all the time. Tasting novel twists on dishes from all around the world was my new favorite thing. As I chewed, Parker stared at me with intense puppy-dog eyes that were just begging for approval. “It’s great.”

  “Yeah?” he asked.

  “Not quite as delicious as your raspberry Nutella crepes, but I love it,” I assured him.

  Parker glanced over at the pile of tickets I’d clipped to the counter before grabbing the waiting dishes and shook his head. “Hot plate’s on the fritz. Again. No avocado toast today. Push the sweet pepper sandwich instead. Tell ’em it comes with a side of my special roasted garlic white bean hummus.”

  “Will do.”

  I dropped off the plates before returning to the table to tell them we were out of avocado toast. Before coming to Williamsburg to cat- and apartment-sit for my favorite aunt while she explored Europe for three months, I thought that all New Yorkers were as rude as the food truck driver I’d run into—no pun intended—on my way to work. I soon learned that wasn’t the case. First and foremost, there was no such thing as a “typical” New Yorker, any more than there was any typical person. But with a few notable exceptions, like my boss Todd, the people I’d met so far were nice. Friendly. Helpful.

  Take Parker for example. If I had shown up even five minutes late to my shift at the Crawdad Shack back home, the cook would have threatened to boil me alive in his enormous crawdad pot. If I’d told a customer that their order wasn’t available that day, they would have given me a steely-eyed glare and said something particularly Southern that sounded pleasant but was secretly nasty, like “Bless your little heart.” Here, all I got was a shrug and two orders for the sweet pepper sandwich that Parker had suggested.

  Then again, up until a few weeks ago, I hadn’t even heard of avocado toast. I hadn’t known that avocado was good for anything other than mashing into guacamole, but to my surprise, avocado toast was not only delicious, it was also more complex than the name suggested. There were dozens of ways to prepare it, but here at Untapped, it was two slices of locally produced multigrain bread, lightly toasted, topped with creamy avocado chunks, a slice of heirloom tomato, a squirt of lime, a sprig of cilantro grown in the next-door rooftop garden, and feta cheese crumbles, with a perfectly poached egg on the side. It took me several minutes to work up the nerve to try it the first time, but it’s quite tasty.

  “Hey, Bethany.” I caught the other server’s attention. She was several inches taller than me, with blonde hair tied back in a green ribbon that matched our polo shirts. She wore heavy makeup and despite washing her hands dozens of times a day, her nails were always perfect. Bethany had a turquoise owl tattoo on her wrist and wore a fake medical bracelet big enough to set off a metal detector. “Parker says no avocado toast today.”

  “Again?” she asked.

  “Hot plate’s on the fritz,” I explained.

  “Sounds familiar. Sometimes I think the only thing that ever works around here is us. Speaking of which, you mind covering me for a few minutes? Half an hour at most.”

  2

  Bethany Makes Soap @Soapy_Bethany_K2 ∙ June 24

  Guacamole > Avocado. Don’t @ me #unpopularopinion

  I GLANCED UP AT the clock on the wall. It was a little past ten thirty. “What do you mean cover for you?” I asked Bethany. “You can’t just leave me here alone.”

  “I know, and I feel absolutely horrible, but it’s an emergency. Life or death. If Todd asks, tell him I’m in the bathroom or something. Don’t worry, I’ll be back before the lunch rush.”

  I frowned at her. I wasn’t terribly keen on having to handle the café all by myself, and I didn’t like lying. “Why can’t you wait until after your shift?”

  “Because reasons.” I gave her an exasperated look, so she elaborated. “I have some business to take care of at Domino. I’ll be back in a flash.” She took off her apron and draped it over my shoulder. “Thanks. I’ll make it up to you. Promise.” Without giving me another chance to object, she slipped through the Employees Only entrance that led to the back door.

  “Hey, miss?” a voice called out over the low-level hum of conversations and nineties grunge rock piped in over crackly speakers. I plastered my best customer-service smile on my face and approached the table where the customer was waving at me. Behind me, I heard Parker ring the old-fashioned call bell on the pick-up window. One of our orders was up.

  I grinned at him and asked, “Mike, right?” I made a point of trying to learn the names of all of our regulars. He nodded, looking pleased that I remembered. “What can I get for you?”

  “Got any of that Hopping Rad?”

  “Not cold,” I told him, fighting the urge to ask if ten thirty a.m. on a Monday was the best time to order a beer, but my job was to serve the patrons, not judge them.

  I’d made a point of memorizing everything I could about our ever-revolving selection of craft beer, but few of our patrons ever asked for details. Either they were certified brew-philes already or they couldn’t tell the difference between Pabst Blue Ribbon—aka PBR—and lemonade. “But I think I saw a few bottles of Many Hippy Hoppy Returns in the back of the case. They’re not brewing any more of that until next spring, so get it while it lasts.”

  “Is it made from local hops?”

  “Grown in a co-op upstate,” I assured him. For being one of the most densely populated places in the United States, New Yorkers were obsessed with eating locally grown produce, whether that was a rooftop garden in the Bronx or one of the big factory farms up near the Canadian border.

  He nodded. “That’ll do.”

  I detoured into the kitchen to stuff Bethany’s apron into the cabinet the employees used to store bags and purses before taking care of his order. I waited on both my and Bethany’s tables as the café continued to fill with the usual noisy lunch crowd. At night, when we’re swamped, there’s usually someone dedicated to pouring brews and beans, with two servers inside and one outside in the courtyard. But since I was alone, everything fell to me.

  Despite what some people might think, waitressing is taxing work. I had to be friendly, but not too friendly. I kept the tables turning over without rushing anyone. I was on my feet all day, shuffling food and plates back and forth between the kitchen and tables. I was always covered in mysterious bruises, cuts, or burns. And at the end of the day, I made just a fraction of minimum wage, plus tips. If I was lucky.

  Days like this, when we’re shorthanded, I worked twice as hard to keep up, but most of the customers got frustrated by the mediocre service and left little to no tips.

  My aunt, Melanie, covered the rent and utilities, paid automatically out of her account. She’d all but begged me to take a few hundred a month to thank me for babysitting her longhaired cat named Rufus and taking care of her apartment—a cavernous space in a converted warehouse that hosted both her living space and her art studio. But being a well-mannered Southern woman and dutiful niece, I’d refused to take any money. I’d saved up a few dollars working at the Crawdad Shack back home, so I had a little run-around money. How expensive could New York be?

  Turned out the answer was very.

  Very, very expensive. Twenty-five-dollar-sandwiches expensive.

  It didn’t take long for my meager savings to run out, and as much as I would have liked to spend every day exploring Williamsburg or listening to true crime podcasts in Domino Park, I needed a job. Untapped Books & Café was hiring. I had experience waiting tables. Now, here I was, the new girl in an ill-fitting men’s neon green polo working all of the café tables by myself until Bethany returned.

  “Odessa!” Todd barked my name, and I swear I shriveled a little inside. When I’d been hired, my job title was waitress. My job description was a little more varied than that. And by a little, I mean a lot.

  So far, I’d covered t
he cash register several times, taken Huckleberry on more walks than I could count, and helped unload the delivery trucks almost every day. “Let me drop off these drinks and I’ll be right with you,” I told him, in case he didn’t notice the heavy tray I was expertly balancing on one hand. Drinks delivered, I re-joined him at the double-wide doorway that separated the bookstore from the café.

  Todd stood at the top of the three steps leading down into the café area. I was an incredibly average and extremely respectable five-foot-five, and on level ground, I would have been nose to nose with the manager. I couldn’t be certain that Todd was self-conscious of his height, but I did notice he took every chance he could to pass down his orders from the highest position he could manage to find.

  “Where’s Bethany gone off to?” he asked.

  “Ladies’ room, I think.” That wasn’t the truth, but it wasn’t exactly a lie, either.

  “Well, somebody needs to update the Twitter.”

  I resisted the urge to correct him. I get it. I’d grown up in the “digital generation” and could type before I could write in cursive, which I’d never fully mastered if truth be told. Todd wasn’t that much older than me, but he grew up in an age of dot matrix printers and rotary phones mounted to the kitchen wall. It could have been worse. My parents still looked at computers with suspicion and since I’d come to Brooklyn, they’d called me twice asking how to open “the Google.” True story.

  Bethany was in charge of Untapped Books & Café’s social media accounts. Being from a small town, my daily interactions had been limited to customers at the Crawdad Shack, my parents, and anyone I bumped into at the grocery store. Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook were my only connection to the outside world. I didn’t post every single day, and I don’t think I’d ever gotten more than a dozen or so likes on a post before (and when I did, I felt like a superstar!). But still, social media was in my generation’s DNA.

  Bethany, however, was a YouTube guru.

  Bethany was a bona fide influencer, with scores of loyal fans. Last I checked, her YouTube channel had almost a hundred thousand subscribers who tuned in every week to watch her make naturally scented soaps and lotions. She had six-figure followers on all of her social media pages, and made almost as much selling her soaps on Etsy as she pulled in with tips. It made perfect sense that she also put her talents to use promoting Untapped Books & Café by posting a few updates a week. Highlight a new book release here. Feature one of Parker’s culinary creations there. Advertise upcoming events, like Poetry in the Park, or when we landed an author for a signing. Pose Huckleberry the shop dog strategically around the store for cute pictures.

  “I’ll post something real quick. Can I see your phone?”

  He handed me his phone and I opened the Twitter app. After verifying that he was logged in as the store and not a personal account, I posted a quick update advertising Parker’s new hummus. As soon as I hit submit, the screen refreshed and a tweet with an embedded video titled “Flash Mob Proposal Gone Horribly Wrong!” caught my eye. It had only been uploaded a few minutes ago, and it already had tens of thousands of views.

  I didn’t know why I enjoyed surprise proposal videos as much as I did. It’s not like I was itching to get married. I’ve never even had a serious boyfriend. Sure, I dated, but back home the single men had dwindled down to a nineteen-year-old with a third-hand Camaro; a few thirty- or fortysomething recent divorcés; and eighty-five-year-old Walter, who had buried four wives already and came into the Crawdad Shack at least once a week asking when I was gonna break down and agree to become wife number five.

  There were plenty of single men my age in Williamsburg, but I didn’t plan on being here long enough to start anything. I’d met several guys that might be fun to hang out with, but none I’d consider dating, much less marrying. I guess maybe that was part of the appeal of proposal videos. I could fantasize about getting engaged without any of the messy relationship drama that went along with it.

  “Have you seen this yet?” Todd asked when he noticed my gaze lingering on the video. “You should totally watch it. It’s insane.”

  “You really shouldn’t throw words like ‘insane’ around,” I told him, but I doubted he would take it to heart. Todd didn’t seem to notice—or care—when he used offensive language.

  I clicked the full-screen button. The video opened, and after the obligatory YouTube advertisement played, I recognized the familiar backdrop of Domino Park. The remains of the old Domino Sugar Refinery and four of its thirty-six-foot-tall syrup-collection tanks were some of the few remnants of Williamsburg-that-was, back when it was the center of industry instead of the vibrant residential neighborhood it is today. Now, the factory’s skeleton served as the backdrop of the lovely six-acre Domino Park, filled with lush lawns and multiple activities. A fifteen-foot-tall elevated metal walkway ran five blocks along the length of the park, providing spectacular views of Manhattan and the Williamsburg Bridge. I loved to lean against that rail and watch the sun set over the New York skyscrapers.

  The video playing on Todd’s screen was perfectly framed. The park had been designed to reduce hiding spots for would-be muggers and other creeps, which left stealth cameramen with nowhere to conceal themselves. From the low angle and the steadiness of the camera, despite being zoomed to its limits, I assumed that the camera was propped up on a tiny tripod, probably concealed in the bushes that separated the sidewalk running along the river from the manicured lawns.

  A blanket was spread out on the grass. A couple in their twenties sat on the blanket sharing brunch. He was cross-legged, and despite the rising temperature, wore a knit hat. She had her legs stretched out in front of her, crossed demurely at the ankles. She wore a crop top with high-waisted shorts—the official Williamsburg summer uniform. Her sandals rested on the blanket beside her and the wind whipped her hair into a frenzy around her head until she gave up and twisted it up in a knot at the back of her neck.

  The picture-perfect couple sipped their coffee and chatted. The camera was too far away to pick up their conversation over the sound of the river slapping against its rocky banks, but then the first strains of Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” started. A woman jogging by in the background stopped abruptly and began to dance. She was joined by two more people, and then four more, all dancing in sync.

  The couple, now surrounded by elaborate choreography, abandoned their coffee to watch the spectacle as more dancers appeared. “I thought flash mobs were dead?” I asked.

  “Shush. Just keep watching,” Todd told me. “It’s about to get good.”

  At the crescendo of the performance, the boyfriend reached into his pocket and withdrew a small ring box. The woman stared at the box, glanced back at the dancers, at her boyfriend, and back to the box. Her mouth moved but whatever she said was drowned out by the music. He shifted so he was down on one knee and held out the box. She made a high-pitched sound that cut through the rest of the noise. As she reached for the ring box, something fell from the sky behind her.

  One of the dancers screamed, the choreography abandoned and the proposal forgotten. There was another terrified scream, joined by shouts for someone to call 9-1-1 and more voices raised in alarm over the last notes of the song. A shadow fell over the camera as someone leapt over the bushes onto the lawn, toppling the camera to one side. I could hear his voice loudly. “Is she okay?” I had to strain to hear as other voices answered, “I don’t think she’s breathing!”

  I had to tilt the phone to keep watching, now that the camera listed hard to the right. A crowd, originally drawn in by the flash mob, gathered in a huddle. From the camera’s point of view, I could only see their backs. Then someone moved and I caught a glimpse of green surrounded by onlookers.

  Neon green.

  Bright neon green, the exact same shade of bright neon green as the Untapped Books & Café uniform shirts.

  It was just a split second. If I’
d blinked, I would have missed it. But that was plenty long enough for me.

  I was a seamstress. I loved making unique creations with a variety of fabrics and patterns. I loved experimenting with colors, textures, and lines. I noticed cloth, and clothes. And I recognized that shirt as sure as I was breathing. I glanced down at my own neon green polo shirt and a chill ran down my spine.

  What was it that Bethany said right before she left? She was gonna meet someone at Domino. Unless she’d gotten a sudden hankering for pizza, she had to have meant Domino Park, which was only a few blocks away.

  It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence that Bethany ran off to Domino Park, and then a few minutes later, someone uploaded a video featuring a person wearing an Untapped Books & Café shirt falling off the park’s elevated walkway. I untied my apron and handed it, along with his phone, to Todd.

  “What’s all this?”

  “I need to check on Bethany. I’ll be right back.”

  “Wait a sec, you can’t up and leave. Who’ll take care of the tables?”

  I didn’t have time to argue. “I’m sure you can handle it,” I told him. Then, as an afterthought, added, “Table Three is ready for their check, Table Six needs refills, and we’re almost out of ice.”

  “Which one’s Table Three?” Todd yelled after me.

  Ignoring him, I hurried toward the back exit. It was early, but the dumpsters in the alley were full of trash bags and beer bottles—even the recycle bin was overflowing—and the sun was high. The smell hit me like an almost physical force, but I pinched my nose and ignored it as I jogged toward Kent Avenue and Domino Park.

  Perched on the banks of the East River, Domino Park was a lush, landscaped getaway from the bustle of New York City. Featuring interactive fountains, a fenced-in dog run, a kids’ playground built out of some of the remnants of the old refinery, and a sand volleyball court, it was one of my favorite places to spend a quiet afternoon with a riveting podcast.