Love is a Bloodhound

by Reid Astor

  Love is a

  Bloodhound

  Reid Astor

  Copyright @ 2015

  R. Astor

  You have held my eyelids open;

  I am so troubled that I cannot speak.

  I have considered the days of old,

  The years of long ago.

  I will remember my song in the night;

  I will meditate with my heart,

  And my spirit ponders:

  Will the Lord reject forever?

  And will He never be favorable again?

  Has His loving kindness ceased forever?

  Has His promise come to an end forever?

  -Psalms 77

  PART I:

  CHAPTER ONE

  There are two things you can do when you find a coffee shop in your mother's redrafted will in the shabby old apartment you grew up in.

  Firstly, and probably wisely, you can sell the place. There are pictures when you look it up online from your phone while you take a break from sorting out her things (donation boxes, keep-these-boxes, garbage boxes, boxes of things one doesn't quite know what to do with). The faster you sell it the better. Frankly, it looks like it is ready to plunge in on itself and do all the demolitionists a favor. Some chic bookstore can open up in its place, or maybe a McDonald's.

  Alternatively, you can make the mistake of putting the will and the phone on the side and finding your mother's keepsakes. They're in the bottom drawer of her bedside table.

  One chilly autumn day, Niklas pulls the second option. He finds her things while down on the floor, crouched by the bed, emptying shelves. (She hadn't died in that bed. In the end, after all the tirades of how it was much more natural to die cleanly on at home as opposed to the artificiality of a hospital death, Anna Dmitryovna had a stroke and landed on bedpans and catheters for two years before passing.)

  He fingers through diaries with pages browned by age, their secret words hidden from him by Anna's illegible handwriting. He finds faded ticket stubs, remarks in her mother tongue scrawled over them much more elegantly than she ever achieved in English. "I enjoyed this one." "That actor was handsome." "He kissed me!" He wonders if that 'he’ is Alexei Baranov. With the age of these things, it's sorely tempting to think so.

  And then he finds the photos. They fall out all at once from a folding pocket at the back of Anna's older journal, a leathery bound thing with a faded sticker and butterfly-themed strap, flicking over his knees and shoes and the carpet of the floor. Niklas picks one up, and breathes in harshly.

  It was always subtly visceral, the moments he spent as a teenager. He'd be in front of a mirror every so often, trying to deconstruct his own facial features and find something of his father in them- it was trying to take Niklas Baranov, and subtract everything he knew was his mother's (the gray eyes that made people look at him twice, the lips, the merciless brow and ash blond hair) and see where his father lay, somewhere in what remained. He wanted to know what had left his mother the way she was. Now, he doesn't have to try.

  The Anna in the picture is in the middle of laughing so hard her eyes are scrunched and her slightly crooked teeth catch light even in the dullness of the Polaroid. The red of her cap is vibrant even now, and the pattern on it- the crisscrossing gold- still evident. Behind them, the cafe colors are unmistakably mirroring Anna's hat, with red lanterns draped across the support beams, dark wood faded into dull shades. She's leaned over a rounded old table and he has his arm over, clutching her hand.

  He doesn't look a thing like Niklas imagined him, but somehow he only has to see the man once and find that image of a sturdy, ideal fake fade away in his mind. This one feels more real. He smiles the same asymmetrical, weak smile. He has just the same inclination to thinness. He can mock just as well from an old Polaroid as he has in absenteeism throughout Niklas's entire life.

  Niklas flicks the photo and it snaps right back onto the pad of his finger, brittle, filmy. He looks upon the chaos of his mother's belongings, upon the will on the table bathed in sunlight, still half-pulled from its envelope. The world smells old in Anna's apartment, but it still smells a bit like his childhood (Ritalin and beetroots and a pleasant kind of aged must). He places the photo in his breast pocket, liking the way it eases in and out like it was meant to be there all along, and takes his cell phone off the kitchen table.

  He's going to call someone about that cafe.

  * * *

  Somewhere along the way, Niklas kept the cafe and lost his prospect of passing the bar exam. Imagine a line chart where his grades were plotted in green and the cafe's state in red, and see how the green begins to gradually teeter downward as the red rises, converging at one point and then going their separate ways. Red rises with ease, never plateauing, and green continues its dubious descent, as Niklas takes it one day at a time without thinking and finds himself cleaning off tables and painting a cafe facade faster than he can recall the theory on statutes of limitation. He tries not to think about what his mother would say about it.

  Niklas runs out of money to pay for law school, sets the loan statement beside the hospital ones, and sells his mother's house. It's six months after the day he found his mother's will. By then, all his worldly possessions fit in three boxes in the attic of the closed, dusty and creaking shophouse, and he's not quite sure what he will do, but he knows he must do it fast.

  It's an afternoon after two solid months of job hunting when an old friend of Anna Dmitryovna calls in and cries over the phone upon hearing of her death. Niklas barely catches her name- Svetlana or something- before she is saying, she has the spare cash if he needs any help. His pride says no. She asks where he's staying, he stares up at the creaking, termite-eaten ceiling and tells her.

  And that is how Niklas blunders his way into opening a cafe. Amidst spending nights hunched over law books, seeing words and absorbing nothing, he spends days supervising a minor renovation team, watching managers come and go, blinking as the cafe- the Ishmael as it had been known in its glory days, Svetlana told him- redresses itself before his eyes.

  Svetlana is nice. Queer, but nice. She is a grand galleon ready to launch off on tales of her voyages, her old town, her family that Niklas never sees, and sometimes, Anna. She never mentions an Alexei Baranov. No one does. Niklas is used to that. But she is kind, often dropping by to check on the progress. On rainy days she will take him off for lunch somewhere he can never afford to eat at on his own, laughing about how she's snatched herself a handsome young man out for a date. She talks too much, and her mind wanders with the conversation, but it is all in a way that reminded him of his mother, so he lets her.

  His best mistake is that he lets Svetlana staff the Ishmael as well as supervise its renovation. She puts him at the head. He doesn't think enough to say no. There are no other jobs available and winter is upon him. What else can he do?

  * * *

  He thought he would get his affairs together well enough to finish law school and start working towards actually breaking out of the plateau of his debt and income. That had been The Plan. That had been three years ago. He still kept the brochure for his old school in his otherwise empty desk shelf. The Plan sits rotting in the back of his life where it once was intended to be his life.

  The day is bright but his head is an abyss of pain that seems to get only deeper as he spends more time awake, but Niklas drags himself out of bed anyway, five minutes before the alarm. He jams open the rusted window by his futon. He treads lightly all the way; the floorboards squeal something hellish in this building, and he doesn't want Tethys knowing he is awake yet. The man has made himself known in the indistinct clatter and humming from downstairs even if it isn’t his shift.

  The wind that comes in when the pane grates upward
is chilly, but tolerable, so he leaves the window like that and stumbles through the gray and white of his room for the customary items- apron, undershirt, shirt, pin. Eyepatch.

  A shower can wait; he needs to see if all is in order downstairs. The headache put him out of commission last night, leaving Viola and Tethys to close up, and he just didn't trust that. Viola was a decent worker, if scatterbrained and mousey, but Tethys... well, Tethys's zeal often did more harm than good. Niklas shudders to imagine broken glasses, scratches on the wood tables, upholstery stinking of incense oils... and by the time he's mentally browsed the entire itinerary of potential disasters, he's got his apron on but forgotten his pants. He goes to find them by the futon where he'd folded them the night before, mentally taking note to do the laundry after he showers.

  In the end, the cafe isn't as symmetrical as he'd like, but better than he'd expected. The chairs are propped up mostly in order and the tables are all bussed, albeit a few spots stand missed and proud. The dishes are done, as well, and stacked precariously and top-heavy behind the counter as is Tethys's disorganized custom. The Ishmael looks dark and cramped with half the shutters down, but Niklas now associates that with coolness, comfort and the scarce holiday.

  "Captain Baranov. Good morning!"

  Ah. There it is. Niklas hears the sound of coolness and comfort drain away to somewhere safe. Somewhere far away from Tethys Glysborne, who stands before him with a rag, smelling so pungently of a cocktail of cleaning agents and incense that it's all Niklas can do not to gag. He can't talk to Tethys yet. Not before at least some water.

  The glass slams on the counter and clinks, Niklas tastes the oddest minerals and a trace of soap swishing around his mouth as he swallows, but the headache is vaguely suggesting that it may go away somewhere else. Perhaps to get away from Tethys Glysborne as well. The cadaverous man in question is still standing at attention. Niklas is almost certain he's slowly hovering in closer, shuffling, huffing and circling. Like a buzzard.

  "I heard you from upstairs. I'm fairly certain this isn't your shift," Niklas decides to start out mildly. He knows this for a fact, too, because he outlined the shifts himself and has reminded Viola what they are about twenty times this month. He opens alone on Thursdays. He likes opening alone because he does not have to account for any of his staff but himself. It's a time when all he has to do for hours is bake and read the do crosswords.

  The Ishmael is not in the part of town where owl-eyed commuters enter at 7 to get their morning coffee, but rather, it exists in the quiet bohemian scape that is quite past its time. Niklas is quite certain morning shifts are proof God still exists. It's the evenings when the gaudily-dressed customers who think they're savvy flood in with their beads and pop culture t-shirts and loud discussions on movie adaptations- and that's a time when Niklas actually needs Tethys around.

  Tethys has the decency to look a little flushed. "I had nothing else to do this morning, Captain. You need not pay me. Serving in your presence is pleasure enough. Do try not to forget to take your vitamins, you look rather pale." He waves his rag and gets back to work, all the while humming something with a seriously lacking beat.

  He doesn't know where the epithet Captain comes from- possibly from the eyepatch, but Tethys otherwise makes no comment on its existence. Come to think of it, he has no idea where the hell Tethys comes from. Svetlana just seemed to have yanked the man out of a hat and disposed of him on his doorstep with a resume full of shady circus acts. "Go start on the baking, then... And clean the stove while you're at it. And the restroom." And Tethys obeys, acting suspiciously tolerable. Niklas completely ignores the reminder to take his ' vitamins' and goes straight to brewing the Earl Grey.

  The combination herbs the man gives him twice a month look like something dead, dried and crushed after living in an addict's basement for three years and rest mostly forgotten in a bottom counter shelf. Niklas does not know why the man bothers. Gratefulness for a job he can understand, but his unyielding enthusiasm... well, Niklas would try to explain it to himself, but he wouldn't like the answers.

  With Tethys out of the cafe front, Niklas gets to setting down the tables and clearing up whatever his employees have missed (or left behind), working faster than he has to. He can feel the weariness hitting him already, emerging from the receding fog of his headaches, and the faster he gets the shop ready, the faster he can go away in his mind in the shower.

  Outside, a rumble of faint thunder heralds the weather of today. They're a comforting prospect, storms. The people who come in today will probably be sympathetic souls in need of shelter and a good warm drink. Niklas sets aside his broom and sits down to confirm the weather on the immaculate smartphone Svetlana gave him his last birthday.

  He ends up falling asleep propped up at a table while reading the weather report on his phone, and it's past opening time when Tethys prods him awake with an endless chide about how his attitude is draining his spirit energy. Tethys believes in chakra and claims Niklas is absolutely seething with it, which makes no sense because Niklas can't remember being anything but tired for at least half a decade. The only thing he seethes with is irritation when some entitled sod comes in on their phone and can't feign enough decency to leave a tip. He gestures for Tethys to man the cashier and opens and leaves to take a shower.

  He's doing the laundry when Svetlana calls. She calls his cell, like always, but she's the only one who actually calls him, so Niklas knows the moment the briiiing noise pierces the placid air.

  "Baranov speaking.” The hard phone sidles between his shoulder and ear as he empties the clean darks into the dryer, all the while praying this isn't the day the floorboards give up on him. The laundry machines are in the upstairs bathroom near his bedroom, in a space where everything feels twenty years out of place with the rest of the world. An evident coat of rust embellishes the sides of the door of the wash brown, but Niklas can't quite yet afford to replace it. Or the floorboard. Or anything, for a while. Ever.

  "Niklas, boy, you always sound…” a thoughtful pause, a grasp at what he knows is a coming simile, “…like someone just died. Every time you answer the phone."

  And Niklas doesn't smile, but he doesn't frown, either. It's hard to be bothered by Svetlana when she seems to only ever have the best intentions. "Madam Morris, . You didn't tell me you were in town."

  "And I'm telling you now, aren't I? Listen, I can't make it for a date today, but we still have a reservation for two at the Temple, one o'clock."

  “You want me to call in and cancel them."

  “Oh, no, absolutely not." He breathes in sharply. Svetlana has dragged in fair, wealthy daughters of socialites to Couer just to meet him before, much to his chagrin. Once she even brought a man his age. She seems to always forget he can hardly afford to keep a roof over his own head. "I will reimburse you, of course, if he does not offer to pay."

  He? "Madam Morris..."

  "It's Svetlana." She insists this routine so strongly he has to shut up or fear her wrath. "This is a man from the offices and a very old friend of mine. He's here to see the cafe and tie some bridges together for you. If he likes you, of course. Try to be nice. He may be late. He is not Russian, but you must try to like him for old Svetlana, yes?"

  "Why?" Niklas almost barks the word, desperate to get it in before or if Svetlana hangs up abruptly, as she's wont to do. The woman just sails in where she pleases, throwing contacts behind her like birdseed and with just as much foresight. Niklas isn't even sure what she does, just knows she was married once, that she has people, and that the path she traces over the countries is honestly nothing less than whimsical.

  “Kolyenka, your memory is going worse than this babushka's. Didn't I tell you last time I was in Couer? We're going to reinvent this café of yours! He's just here to back the matter, say, give it a... legal face."

  Niklas does not like the sound of that. What is she doing?

  "I will see you on... Oh, say, Saturday. Well I must go! People to meet! Say hello to
that Viola for me, yes, Niklas? And try to be fatter next time I see you than last! Give Svetlana a kiss!"

  “Muah," he monotones. There is a soft, sharp giggle on the line.

  And there it is. Niklas is frozen listening to a long tone, then he breaks out of silence and shoves the last of the whites into the wash and turns everything on. He checks his watch- it's only ten-forty, Viola gets on at four- in those three hours where he's gone to the Temple for this matter, the Ishmael will be run by Tethys. The idea makes him feel older than he is. They won't be making money today.

  He can breathe the thick, cold ozone in the air even up here; suddenly, going to the Temple without Svetlana's car to take him there is a much less appealing prospect. He hears the soft chime of the front door all the way from the laundry room and over the buzz of the machines. He tears his apron off the banister where it's draped and is tying it up on his way down, praying the whole way that it's just a regular. Hopefully someone who knows him, and won't presume to think a barista is a black hole where they must vent all their homogenous gossip and complaints.

  Tethys is not at the counter when Niklas makes it to the ground floor, which annoys him more than he expected. On one hand, he doesn't want the man to take customers, because Tethys has a knack for taking recipes into his own hands and acts as if the coffee machine is conspiring against him. On the other, someone needs to be manning the place at all times. He strides into place as fast as possible, crouching and grabbing ahold of three sizes of cups to throw up and get this over with as soon as possible. "Welcome to the Ishmael cafe, may I take your order." He deadpans the words intermittently as he sets the cups down and ready and rises.