by Kevin Egan
Then, during the third week of Joe's vacation, a judge sitting in the nearby federal courthouse announced that a long-awaited terror trial would begin in September.
Joe returned to find his business in a shambles. At first he blamed his cousin, he of the sour humor and forbidding face.
"Nobody came," his cousin protested. "Who was I to sell to? The pigeons?"
Joe believed that in a few days all would be well again. He was back. Word would get around. People would return to him in long, profitable lines. He smiled. He waved. He hung a banner printed on a computer that read, "Joe's Back!!!" But the lines never re-formed. People came directly out of the subway, hit the wide courthouse steps, and climbed quickly to the colonnade. Others passed at a distance, pressing paper bags to their hips.
"I don't believe this," said Joe. It was Wednesday morning, his third day back in the cart. He had a line, but only in the geometric sense of two points: Russ and Foxx. Joe drew coffee, splashed in milk, wrapped a sesame bagel in wax paper, all without asking. Russ laid two dollars on the counter, and Joe threw the quarter change into his tip cup, again without asking.
"I go away for three weeks and the world changes. What is up with that?"
Russ looked at Foxx. Foxx arched an eyebrow as if to say, if you don't tell him I will.
"Well," Russ drawled. "It has something to do with where you went."
"Where I went?" said Joe.
"People started asking why you would go to Afghanistan."
"Because it is my home."
Russ stuttered. Foxx kicked him in the heel.
"Then they started calling your coffee 'terrorist coffee,'" said Russ.
"Terrorist coffee?" Joe filled a cup halfway with coffee and tilted it out the window for Foxx and Russ to see. "Does this look like terrorist coffee? Whatever terrorist coffee looks like."
Russ and Foxx looked into the cup and then looked at each other.
"This is the same coffee every other cart sells," said Joe. "My coffee supplier is Greek. I buy my bagels and bialys from a Jew."
"Hey, Joe," said Foxx. "You're preaching to the converted. Russ and I bought from your cousin."
"Sorry." Joe closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead.
"Why did you go to Afghanistan?" said Russ.
"To find a wife," said Joe.
"And?" said Foxx.
"No luck," said Joe. "Maybe that was for the better. Who would want a failed businessman for a husband?"
Another week passed, and Joe's business did not improve. He dropped his prices. He stayed an extra hour. He stocked pastries topped with colorful icing. He did anything to attract customers because he believed that once he attracted them he would get them back. But none of it worked. At the end of the morning, when the bench began to fill and he could feel the eyes of the one named Ned on him, he would hitch his cart to his Chevy and drive slowly back to Queens.
Late in August, the feds began establishing security for the trial in the courthouse next door. They set up barricades, erected checkpoints, blocked streets, and closed the busy pedestrian thoroughfare between the two courthouses. The barricades shunted people past Joe's cart, and slowly, during the interminable days of jury selection, Joe's business improved.
"Are you back to normal?" Russ asked one morning. There had been nine people ahead of him, a line Joe quickly broke down.
"Business-wise, yes. But here." Joe tapped his heart. "No. Maybe never."
He reached a cup under the coffee spout. The flow trickled and filled the cup only when he tilted the urn.
"Out of coffee?" said Russ.
"Amazing," said Joe. "That never happened before."
"What do you do now?" said Russ.
"I get water somewhere or I close," said Joe. He pressed a plastic top onto the cup and stuffed it into a bag with a sesame bagel.
"You can get water in my office," said Russ.
The office Russ and Ned shared was street-level in the back corner of the courthouse. Russ waited in the lobby while Joe and his bucket cleared security, then led him through a large courtroom and a small lunchroom to a door with a frosted glass window. Ned's white shirt glowed fuzzily in the glass. Russ lifted a finger as if to say Wait, then pulled the door open.
"Hey," Ned grunted, eyes glued to his computer screen.
"Hey," said Russ.
Ned swiveled around and saw Joe.
"What the hell's this?" he said.
"Joe needs water."
"Oh yeah? Well he can get it somewhere else."
"That's crazy, Ned. It's Joe. It's water. He's finally getting his business back."
"Yeah, because he's got a captive audience now. I don't care about his water."
"It's not his water," said Russ. "It's not even our water. It's not like we live here."
"We do live here. Nine-to-five. Monday through Friday."
Joe nervously shifted his bucket from one hand to the other. He caught Russ's eye, then shrugged as if to say this isn't worth the argument. But Russ was not to be swayed. He grabbed the bucket from Joe.
"What are you doing?" said Ned.
"I'm getting some water," said Russ. "I'm thirsty."
Ned grumbled and swiveled back to his computer. Joe listened to the rush of water from the tiny bathroom. He could see through the window and out to the street and a corner of the federal courthouse. He usually drove down that street after he hitched his cart to his Chevy and headed for home. Now it swarmed with police, soldiers, satellite trucks, reporters. You couldn't even walk it without a security pass. He glanced at Ned and saw the tail-end of a smirk as Ned turned away.
"You used to be a nice guy," he said.
"I'm still a nice guy," said Ned. "Ask anyone on the bench."
"I can't. They don't come to me."
"Well, maybe it's because of a little old thing called 9-11."
"I did that? Me?"
"Not you. Your homeboys back in Kabul."
"They were Saudis, and that was years ago."
"Yeah, and funny thing, all those people who went to work in the towers that day are still dead."
"I am sorry."
"Sorry. That's great. All you guys smile and sell your coffee and make small talk. Until the day none of you show up and the bombs start exploding."
"He moved out?" said Eric.
"Went straight to the Chief Clerk's office as soon as he finished filling that goddamn bucket," said Ned.
It was lunchtime that same late summer day. There was a hint of fall in the breeze, and the leaves of the maples shading the benches already curled yellow.
"Chief Clerk told him there weren't any open offices. Could be weeks, even months. So he dumped his work into a box and brought it to the library."
"But you guys have been friends for twenty years," said Eric. "How can you fight over Joe?"
"He won't back down," said Ned. "And you know I don't back down. So there you have it."
"It's too bad," said Eric.
"There's been worse collateral damage in the war on terror than two office mates splitting up," said Ned.
They sat in silence. Without Russ to play off Ned's strong opinions, conversation lagged. Meanwhile, at the top of the courthouse steps, Russ and Foxx stood between two columns. Russ was telling Foxx about his argument with Ned and his plan to work in the library until a new office opened up. Foxx half-listened, his eyes focused on Joe as he closed his cart.
"Why does he persist?" he said.
"You think he's a terrorist, too?" said Russ.
"Just asking," said Foxx. "He could get someone else to run his cart."
"Like his cousin? That was a big success."
"No, someone else again. He should be a smart enough businessman to figure out his problem."
"Which is?"
"Public relations."
"Maybe he's stubborn. Maybe this is all he knows."
Foxx said nothing, just pulled out a cigarette.
"I didn't know you smoked," said Russ.
/> "Only when I'm thinking," said Foxx.
Jury selection ended and the terror trial began. The defendant was charged with participating in the African embassy bombings in 1998. Each morning, federal marshals and armed soldiers escorted the defendant through a tunnel from the federal detention center to a secure elevator and then up to the courtroom. Security on the streets tightened, but not so tight that the bench became inaccessible at lunchtime. Joe's business continued to improve. Hardly a day went by when he did not need to close briefly in the middle of the morning and lug his bucket up the courthouse steps for water to refill his urn. He did not knock on Russ's door. Russ now worked exclusively in the library, waiting for a new office. But there were other spigots in other bathrooms, and Joe used them all.
"Why don't you bring more water?" Foxx asked one day as Joe set his empty bucket beside the lobby magnetometer and walked through.
"I don't want to jinx my good fortune," said Joe.
It was a Tuesday, and precisely ten o'clock, when Joe slammed the window and climbed down from his cart.
"Hey, buddy, where you going?" said a construction worker.
"Need to refill my urn," said Joe. He swung his bucket.
"I only want two crullers and three buttered rolls."
"Sorry," said Joe. But as he walked up the steps he muttered an American expression. "Asshole."
The court officers in the lobby had become familiar with Joe's routine over the last few weeks: the apron, the empty bucket, the promise to stock more donuts. Joe had won them all back, just as he knew he would. He breezed through the mags, lifted his arms as the wand swept over his apron, picked up his bucket, and headed deep into the courthouse. In the second floor men's room, he reached under a sink for his roll of duct tape. In the third floor men's room, he plucked the knife from the top of a marble stall divider. It was a throwaway knife, the clear plastic so thick it had a gun-metal cast. He had filed away the serrations, honed the edges thin as a razor and the tip as sharp as a needle.
He went down to the first floor and peeked into the large courtroom. A clerk stood at a podium, calling names and numbers. Joe slipped in through the door. The gallery was crowded, and with each call, one or two lawyers brought papers to the clerk. Joe waited a moment, saw that no one noticed him, and headed to the door in the rear corner.
The lunchroom was empty, the door to the office shared by the one called Russ and the one called Ned was closed. The white shirt of the one called Ned glowed in the glass, as it had that day the one called Russ filled his bucket. Joe remembered everything about the office: the window, the bathroom, the arrangement of the furniture. But mostly he remembered the perfect position within the courthouse, how he could descend a set of stairs and exit through the rear door, how that door put him directly into the forbidden thoroughfare between the two courthouses.
He knocked on the office door, saw the one called Ned approach, the white shirt bright and blurry. The door opened. Ned's eyes widened, then narrowed, then widened again as Joe punched the knife into his gut and jerked it quickly upwards. The sensation was like slicing a bagel, tough on the outside but soft underneath.
In the library, Russ pawed through his box of books and papers. He thought he had brought everything when he decamped, but he now saw that a set of notes was missing. He knew exactly where he must have left it: right side of his desk, bottom drawer.
The clerks were still calling the motion calendar as Russ went through the large courtroom. He had not faced Ned since their argument three weeks ago, and his heart thumped at the likelihood of cold stares or hot words. But once in the lunchroom, Russ thought that he might have gotten lucky. The light was on, but there was no sign of Ned in the glass. He jiggled the doorknob. It was locked, a sure sign Ned was out. He took out his key and opened up.
The sight of Ned face down in a pool of blood barely registered before something grabbed Russ's arm and yanked him inside. The door banged shut, and then the office spun and his face slammed against the plaster wall. Fingers dug into the back of his neck.
"You don't make sound or what happen to him happen to you. Understand?"
Russ tried to say 'yes', tried to say 'okay', but what came out was half-groan, half-whimper.
The hand left his neck and spun him around. It was Joe; he held a knife.
"Don't move," he said. He lowered the knife while he wrenched a length of duct tape from its spool. The knife sliced easily through the tape. Joe tossed the spool onto Russ's desk, wrapped the length twice around Russ's head to seal his mouth. It was only then that Russ looked down at Ned again. The blood pool was still expanding, sliding smoothly on the linoleum. In the middle of it, Ned looked like a broken toy. A thick, salty odor hung in the air.
"Give me your hands," said Joe.
He taped Russ's wrists together, then pushed him past the desk. Russ slipped in the blood, falling to his knee. Joe pulled him up by the shirt, threw him into the bathroom, sat him on the floor and hooked his hands over the radiator valve. Blood from their shoes smeared the tiles.
Joe flicked the knife with his thumb, pressed it into the duct tape on Russ's chin. Russ could feel the point prick his chin even after Joe pulled it away.
Joe's bucket stood on Russ's desk. Joe pounded the bucket with the meat of his fist and plucked out a flanged circle of galvanized metal. Then he took off his apron. It was a big apron, way too big for his wiry frame. He always wore it baggy, the strings wrapped completely around him and tied in the front. Russ, watching, now knew why. Joe reached back into the bucket and pulled out something that looked like a long, exotic snake. But it wasn't a snake; it was a series of small, olive-colored bricks held together by thin black wires. He lifted his shirt, coiled the bricks around his waist, taped the wires directly to his skin with pieces of duct tape. The last link of the coil was a small cylinder with a red button. He let that dangle at his hip as he slipped the apron over his head and tied the strings around his belly.
Joe stepped back into the bathroom and crouched beside Russ. For a moment, Russ thought Joe would push the red button.
"This room is safe, the walls strong." Joe patted the cast iron radiator. "You will survive."
He smiled the same smile Russ had seen hundreds of times. And then he was gone.
Russ stared into the office, his eyes losing focus as Ned's blood continued to slide across the floor. Ned's words about the day the bombs would explode came back to him.
Russ jammed his feet against the opposite wall, pushed himself up to unhook his wrists from the valve. He struggled to his feet, edged between his desk and the blood of his friend on the floor. But his feet slipped out from under him, and he fell back, banging his head so hard, the ceiling went dim around the edges. Ned's blood seeped into his clothes.
The office door opened. Foxx poked his head in, and Russ sensed him comprehend everything at once: Ned, the blood, the bucket on the desk. The door closed. Foxx's running footsteps pounded away. Russ squirmed past the desk and beneath the window that a blast would turn into a thousand glass daggers. He thought he heard a commotion outside. Shouts, running feet, a scuffle. He stretched out because exposing himself was the only way to stop Joe from winning this one.
And then he waited for the bomb.
Tommy, Who Loved to Laugh
by Marc E. Fitch
Reefer smoke and the deep dark; stargazing on the porch surrounded by tall trees and patchy grass. Manure scents on the cool wind blowing in from over the county lines. I listened to the police band and let the high take me away. The mind forms connections, you see. Coincidences that when you look back on them years later, you pick up on them and they form a pattern. Then, in your enlightened state, you realize that there really is something more at work, something greater than mere chance and coincidence. That perhaps you were prepared for this moment from the beginning, and that moment a preparation for something else in the future. All of that residually swirling in my mind as officers crackled and bandied back and forth over liv
e-streaming internet feeds. Their world becomes my world temporarily.
Reports of a gunshot and a teenager lying in an alleyway. This small little urban outpost surrounded by farms in the Ohio valley; it was nothing more than brick ruins of a rust-belt genetic mutation. I lit up the bowl and was carried away on the smoke. I left my body behind and sailed through the ether, rousting street names and avenues from my brain-map like they were numbers and stars to Hawking. Sirens sounded through the night, carried on the breeze. The dull glow of Akron pulsing in the distance. I flew in for a quick inspection, police band narrating my vision.
One dead. Gunshot wound to the head. Young male, adolescent. Back alley between Kroger's and Valley Liquors, just off Seneca and Main. Police doing a comb of the area. Detectives rousted from their slumber and en route to the crime scene. Fresh steam rising from the hole in the kid's face.
One of those what has this world come to? moments forever plastered in the papers and festooned with gaudy, makeshift crosses and flowers left by a grieving community.
I fell asleep on my porch chair, mind bending the stars, soul sailing through the night.
The cold snapped me out of it in the morning. Fresh dew on my clothes, pale light, cold in June, something about a polar vortex. I showered but couldn't get warm.
The paper had front-page coverage. Thomas Penrose: found dead, murdered with a gunshot wound to the head. Police investigating all leads and believe there may have been some kind of physical skirmish; two types of blood found at the scene; a bottle of lighter fluid nearby was being tested for prints. Meth deal gone bad? Tommy wasn't a meth-head and, naturally, every article ran pictures from his sophomore high school yearbook—smiling and full of life with such a bright future—and the typical comments from classmates of "he was just full of life and loved to smile and laugh."
I fucking hated smiling. I hated people saying that the deceased loved to laugh even more because it always meant they either had no idea who that person was or were hiding the darker truth. There's no white light, just lighter shades of gray. Those that tell you otherwise are of full of shit.