Through the Grinder

by Cleo Coyle

  “They helped you?”

  “Yeah, they paid for my education and helped hook me up with some prestigious projects. I was dutiful and grateful and I stuck it out with Maxi for a long time, even after she became very hard to live with…very damaging. I was changing and she didn’t like it. I wanted to improve things, and I thought moving East would do it. I wanted to make my own mark anyway, start my own business, and I thought if I did that, and we got away from her family, I could prove something to myself as much as them…as much as her…and I did…I built my own company…doubled the value of the property Maxi bought, like I said—”

  “But you still feel guilty?” I could hear it in his voice. “You still feel you owe something to your ex? To her family?”

  “Yeah, part of me does, I guess…but part of me doesn’t. Part of me feels used, Clare. I spent a lot of years with a woman who made me feel as though I were nothing—barely worthy of her. Maxi’s beautiful, like I said. She’s rich, she’s cultivated. She taught me a lot. And I really did love her. But she also made me believe I was worthless for a long time. Then one day, I stopped believing it.”

  “That’s the way it happens. One day, you stop believing the lie.”

  “So you can see, that’s the very reason I’m not threatened by Matt. Maxi and I, we ran our course. I’m a different person than I was when we first met. In many ways, I think she still can’t accept it, but there it is. And I know you must have your own reasons for divorcing, too. So that’s why I’m not threatened by Matt. Do you understand now?”

  “Yes, I do…I do…” I said slowly, but, my feelings weren’t quite as resolved as Bruce’s seemed to be.

  Not that I would ever admit it out loud. But, in my heart, I hadn’t lost all affection for my ex-husband. Matt was still a business partner…a father to my child…and a friend. The truth was, I didn’t necessarily want my ex out of my life as completely as Bruce wanted his gone from it.

  I found myself staring into the flames of the fire.

  “Clare?”

  “Sorry. I was…uh…thinking about—”

  The investigation, I told myself. Keep going, Clare, keep him talking.

  “—about the woman you left the Blend with last week. After the Cappuccino Connection…Joy mentioned that you knew her from school or something?”

  “Yes,” he said with a nod. “Her name is Sally McNeil. Crazy girl. Back in college, she changed it to ‘Sahara’ to sound more exotic.” He laughed. “I know her from college, that’s all. We hadn’t spoken for years—not since Maxi and I moved East, anyway. So we just had drinks at a bar that night, and I walked her home. I’ll probably stay in touch with her to be honest with you, but just as a friend.”

  Why was he speaking about her in the present tense? The woman had been killed this morning…unless…he didn’t know she’d been killed yet…my god…he doesn’t know….

  “Just last night, she e-mailed me the phone numbers of two old friends I hadn’t seen in years. They’d dated her—in succession. To be honest, I never saw why. She’s such an artsy phony. Pretty superficially out for herself, too, you know? Not my type at all…you know why?”

  “No.”

  He smiled. “You’re my type.”

  Bruce leaned in. I leaned back.

  “And what about other women? You mentioned Valerie Lathem already…and that didn’t work out…but you said you tried on-line dating?”

  Bruce laughed. “You’re seriously going to give me the third degree?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. All right. For me, dot-com dating was an unmitigated disaster. It just was the wrong thing for me to get involved with.”

  “How many women did you meet?”

  “About six or seven, I guess. Maybe ten tops.”

  “Anyone in particular strike your fancy?”

  “If that’s a cute way of saying did I sleep with any of them, yes, I did. One of them.”

  Oh, god. I didn’t know if I really wanted to hear this, but it wasn’t just me wondering, it was Quinn…

  “Tell me. I want to know. Who was she? Did you practice safe sex?”

  “Of course, I practiced safe sex, and her name is Inga Berg. She lives in one of those new condos by the river, and I used to see her at the Blend, although not lately, and frankly, I’ll be happy if I never see her again.”

  I noticed Bruce’s verbs were present tense. He was talking about Inga as if she were still alive. Like Sally McNeil, he didn’t seem to know about Inga’s death. It wasn’t all that hard to believe, actually, since the news of Inga’s plunge hadn’t hit the front page of the papers like Valerie’s had. With all the crime and death in this city, Inga’s was just one more. There’d been a small item in two of the tabloids, but that was it. If you weren’t a daily reader of either paper, you could easily have missed it.

  “You want my unvarnished word for her? You’ll probably think I’m a pig, but I found her…” He sighed. “Disposable.”

  “Oh, that’s not a good word to use, Bruce.”

  Especially when Quinn questions you tomorrow or the next day, or whenever he’s got enough of a case to pressure you into a “confession.”

  “I’m sorry, but Inga Berg is such a psycho. She’s attractive, sure, but she made me sorry I got involved with her in pretty much less than two weeks.”

  “So you went to bed with her?”

  “No bed was involved.”

  Not the SUV. Please not the SUV.

  “I want to know.”

  Bruce sighed. Not happily. “Your really want me to totally wreck the romantic ambiance of this evening of ours, don’t you?”

  “I just…I just need to know…”

  “Fine, you want to know everything, I’m an open guy, I want you to trust me, so I’ll let you know everything. Inga wanted to sleep together from the beginning. She wanted to do it in her new SUV on the roof of her building, but I said no. We ended up against the wall of her apartment’s living room the first night. After that, she wanted to hook up in public places, which I dissuaded her from.

  “Our last night together, she’d taken her panties off at dinner, put my hand under her skirt, which gave the waiter a thrill but not me, frankly. Then she went crazy in the back of the cab home. She was just all over me…I wasn’t that turned on by her, but she was aggressive and I went with the momentum. But the event was more sordid than sexy, frankly.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. The idea of this stuff may fly in a fantasy porno magazine, but in reality, when you’re not young and drunk and you can’t stop worrying about one of your crews showing up on time for an important job the next day, it’s just…skeevy. The cab driver kept glancing in his mirror and…”

  Bruce took a long swig of wine. “I’m just not an exhibitionist, I guess. When she got out of the cab, she was half naked, and didn’t seem to care. So I made sure she got up to her apartment safely—then I left. For good.”

  “I see.”

  “I like sex. I like hot sex. But I’m a conventional guy, Clare. I actually like the finer things. I like romance. I like elegance. To be blunt, I don’t want to worry about a woman I’m escorting embarrassing me. I’ve got too much on the line with my business, city officials, my work, everything I’ve built. I think at least one former president will agree that we may all be just one intern away from disaster. Anyway, the bottom line is, my work aside, I could never respect a woman that out of control. And if I can’t respect a woman, I can’t love her, can I?”

  I swallowed uneasily. He sounded angry now. This really was turning into a wrecked evening. But…I had my answers.

  Bruce had a plausible reason to leave the Cappuccino Connection with Sahara McNeil. And I’d always known Inga Berg liked to “shop and drop” men. Now I also knew she could be a reckless woman, one who could have gone out with any number of men who’d snapped and gone violent on her. And, clearly, Bruce was not the SUV guy. Unless he was lying to me, but with the wine and the emotion in his vo
ice, I could tell he wasn’t.

  “Thanks for being honest, Bruce. I needed to hear what you had to say.”

  “Well, I’m sorry you had to hear it.”

  “I’m not.”

  He sighed and poured more wine. We’d come to the bottom of the bottle.

  “You’re entitled to ask me the same questions,” I told him.

  “I don’t need to. I’m with you now, no matter who you saw in your past, and I’m interested in being with you—and making you happy enough to want to be with me…maybe even…eventually…exclusively.”

  Whoa. Did I just hear what I thought I heard?

  “You haven’t known me very long to say a thing like that,” I said softly.

  “Clare, I’m too old and too freaking busy to play games. These days, it doesn’t take me long to know what I want. But…I can see you need time…and I can respect that.”

  “I think I know what I want, too, Bruce,” I said softly. “You won’t have to wait long.”

  He smiled. “Good.”

  I smiled, too. “Are you ready for some cappuccino, maybe?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  I set up the Pavoni for him on the scratched counter of the old, unfinished kitchen, filling the water reservoir, plugging it into the electric socket, and quickly assembling the portafilter parts. This was an extravagant home machine model—probably worth around four hundred dollars—and it included its own grinder, doser, espresso maker, and steam wand for creating foamed milk.

  I hated to tell him I still had the five dollar stovetop machine my grandmother had brought over from Italy with her—and it still made the best espresso in town as far as I was concerned.

  “Remember the night I met you at the Blend?” asked Bruce. “I warned you I can drink espressos all day and night, but I can’t for the life of me make them myself.”

  “It’s not that hard. Remember, you’re a man who can improvise, right?” I teased.

  “Still steamed about that snowball, huh?”

  “Now pay attention, Rookie. The requirements for making a good espresso can be summarized by the four M’s.”

  “The four M’s. Check. Will this be on the written portion of the exam?”

  “Macinazione—the correct grinding of coffee blend, Miscela—coffee blend, Macchina—the espresso machine, and, of course, Mano—barista. That’s you.”

  “Check.”

  I ran through the basics with him, then ground the espresso beans, dosed it into the portafilter, tamped it, clamped it, and asked, “You have whole milk in that fridge?”

  “I’ll get it.”

  I rinsed out the stainless steel pitcher and half filled it with cold milk. “You should really prepare your milk before you draw your espresso, so your shot doesn’t deteriorate. At the Blend we dump anything that stands over fifteen seconds.”

  “Whoa, that’s a tough window.”

  “Better to lose a twenty-five cent shot than a regular customer.”

  Bruce nodded. “I feel that way in my business, too. I’d say ‘Quality Is Job One’ but somebody in motor city stole my motto.”

  “Fancy that.” I laughed. “I only wish I could clone your attitude for a few members of my part-time staff. Sometimes they can be hard to motivate.”

  “Tell me about it. Hey, I meant to tell you, I tried that trick you told me about on my downtown crew yesterday, and it worked like a charm.”

  “Late workers come on time when you tell them to be there a half hour earlier than you need them. I use that on Esther all the time.”

  He laughed. “Okay, so how about some more tips for me—I’m very receptive. Very receptive.”

  The tone was suggestive, but I stayed cool. “Let’s do the milk,” I said, redirecting my attention. “When you’re just steaming milk—for a latte, for example—then you want to place the wand’s nozzle close to the bottom of the pitcher.”

  “I see.”

  Bruce’s eyes were on me so intensely, I felt a little flustered all of a sudden. “For a cappuccino, however, you want to do more than steam. You want to create an angelic cloud of froth, which means you need to add air, so you want to place the tip of the nozzle just beneath the surface of the milk and gradually lower the steaming pitcher as the foam grows.”

  “Go ahead and show me,” said Bruce.

  I did, filling the pitcher halfway with whole milk, clearing the steam valve, then placing the nozzle inside the container.

  “Rookie baristas think it looks cool to move the container all over the place,” I explained. “Up and down and round and round—but that’s not the way to do it.”

  Bruce stepped up behind me. “Wait. I want to get this straight. Let’s go over it again.”

  “Which part?” I swallowed, trying not to let the heat of his body affect me, which was about as easy as trying to keep an ice cube from melting on the surface of the sun.

  He placed his hands on the hips of my little plaid skirt, gently but insistently pulling me against him. “Up and down? And round and round? Not the way to do it, you say?”

  Slowly, he moved my hips with his.

  “Uh, not when it comes to foaming milk. No. You just want to lower the pitcher slowly as the foam builds. That’s why you only fill the pitcher halfway—to leave room for the foam to grow.”

  “Room for growth?” he said, his hands still moving my hips with his. “And round and round and up and down?”

  “No,” I said softly, “you don’t want to do that. It gives you an inferior product. Overly aerated foam with big short-lived bubbles and lousy texture.”

  “I’m hearing you. What else do I need to know?” I felt his mouth on my hair, gently inhaling, then kissing and caressing my neck.

  “Ah, let’s see…” Still trying to stay in control, and barely managing, I licked my lips and cleared my throat. “The milk shouldn’t spurt or sputter, either, but should sort of roll under the tip of the wand. A gentle sucking sound is what you should hear—”

  “Say that again.”

  “What?”

  “What you just said.”

  “A gentle sucking sound?”

  I felt his mouth, warm against my ear. “Again.”

  “Bruce…”

  “Say it.”

  I inhaled sharply when I felt his lips touch my earlobe.

  “Gentle sucking sound,” I whispered.

  He turned me in his arms. The kiss wasn’t gentle, it was full of heat and hunger and I wasn’t stopping him.

  When we came up for air, he reached behind me and hit a button on the machine. The little ON light faded out.

  “Change your mind about that cappuccino?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “I think I’m stimulated enough.”

  I smiled as he covered my mouth with his again, and the world went away.

  This time when we finished, he took my hand and pulled me gently back into the parlor and onto the soft futon in front of the fireplace. He kissed me deeply, then stretched out beside me.

  “Are you okay with this?” he asked.

  His eyes were kind and warm and waiting for my answer. “Better than okay,” I said, touching his cheek.

  And then, for a long time, there were no more words.

  SIXTEEN

  TWENTY years ago.

  The Mediterranean sun was a lemon in the sky. Brightness full of promise yet painful, too, like a squirt of citrus to the eye.

  A young man played with a dog on the sand. He wore fraying combat fatigues cut into shorts and nothing else, the woven hemp choker appearing white as spun sugar against his deeply tanned chest.

  The young woman was not a native of this Italian village. She was just visiting, staying with her father’s relatives so she could study art history for the summer. One week before, she’d been ogling the works of Michaelangelo in Rome, and she looked at this romping man the same way—like a sculpted statue come to life.

  She admired how his chiseled calf and thigh muscles contracted and relaxed a
s he ran along the sand. How his flexing bicep flung a Frisbee into the surf over and over again for a happy, excited dog to fetch. She found it mesmerizing, and, at the time, had no way of knowing this was simply a “rest day” for the young man—a brief break from his typically more strenuous pursuits of bicycle racing, wind surfing, rock climbing, and cliff diving.

  She didn’t know his name, had never been introduced to him or his family, and, despite her admiration of him, or maybe because of it, she kept walking.

  It was the big black mixed Lab that for some reason came right for her. Probably the heavily perfumed shampoo she’d bought in the village, which gave off a strong lavender scent, most likely the same scent as someone the dog knew and loved. As if they were old friends, he bounded right up, jumping high, his big paws landed and she was slammed down into the sand.

  “Mama mia! Scusi, signorina.”

  Long, damp black hair, loosed from its ponytail, hung into his face. It was a pleasant face. Open and joyful. It was the kind of face that took pleasure in everything it could. And the brown eyes were curious and kind.

  “It’s okay,” she said, surprise reverting her to English. “I’m not hurt.”

  “You’re American! You’re from home!”

  The pair chatted amiably. He told her he’d been backpacking across Europe and was passing through, visiting extended family and friends all over the Continent. He invited her to dine at his cousins’ house that evening. But she declined his invitation and kept walking.

  The young man would tell her, much later, after they were married, that he’d kept his eyes glued to her ass the entire time she’d walked away. Her chestnut hair had reached all the way down her back then, and he’d been mesmerized, first by her green eyes, then by the way she’d looked leaving him, her long, dark wavy hair swinging just above what he’d call her “sweet-looking blue-jeaned booty.”

  A few days later, she found him reading at a café. When she asked about the cast on his forearm, he explained that he’d broken his wrist spinning out on a motorcycle. He wasn’t sexually aggressive in the least with her, just warm and genuine. And when he politely asked if he could accompany her on her next long trip to Rome, she found herself agreeing.