Even if they pay me today and have hours for me tomorrow, which isn’t likely, there’s no way I’m going to be able to find a place to live by tomorrow night. But I can’t think of other options, so I go to work and hope for an opportunity to present itself.
* * *
There’s a long line at the cafe when I get there. I walk up to the counter and Carly stares at me with narrowed eyes, like she’s considering telling me I need to wait my turn.
“April,” I say. “You hired me.”
“Right, right.” She nods. “Come on back.” She points at a customer, a guy with a brown corduroy cap like old fashioned newspaper boys wore. “You’re up.” She takes his travel mug and starts making his order immediately, leaving me to figure out how to get behind the counter on my own.
There’s a plank door thingy where the counter meets the wall, like at Gary’s bar. You’re supposed to lift it to pass, but this one is piled high with coffee mugs, so I duck under, as low as I can, staying hunched a little longer than I need to because I have visions of sending the mugs flying.
I clear it, stand, and play with a loose thread on my glove while Carly makes the coffee machine hiss and spit.
“You’re short on details,” Carly says, and I can’t tell if she’s talking to the customer.
“Me?” I ask.
She nods. “No address, no phone.”
“I’m new,” I say. “I don’t have everything figured out yet.”
“Let me know when you do.” She gives me a hard stare like my math teacher would when I told her I did my homework, but my dad spilled his beer all over it.
Carly is wearing a blood-red velvet beret, a navy nylon dress like something Mary Tyler Moore would wear, torn fishnets, and combat boots. The points of her blue inked tendrils peek out from the high neckline of her dress. I wonder what they are. Moonbeams? Snakes? Octopus arms?
She shouts, “Half-caff hazelnut cap,” and hands the travel mug back to the newsboy man. “You know how to use a cash register?” she asks. It takes me a sec again to realize she’s asking me and not him.
I nod.
“It’s two seventy-five,” she says. “Ring him up.”
I don’t understand how that cup of coffee could possibly cost two dollars more than a regular cup of coffee, but no one else seems to think it’s a problem. The customer hands me a five, and I thank the gods of new jobs or coffee or whatever, that this register is the same as Margo’s.
“Do me a favor,” Carly says. She’s already on the next order. “Take those mugs to the kitchen, and while you’re there, stick your head outside to tell Bodie his break is over. Tell him I said to stop smoking up and get his ass in here.”
I duck under the plank and grab as many spent coffee cups as I can. There are piles of dirty dishes by the sink, so I put them wherever I find space.
Outside, the blond guy who was behind the counter yesterday is leaning against the wall, balanced on one foot, smoking a small squat cigarette. He’s not wearing a jacket and he doesn’t look cold. He’s sunshine. His blond stubble catches the light and makes it look like his face is glowing.
“You’re that girl who wants to help,” he says, taking a deep drag, holding his breath before he lets it out. The smoke smells like a dead skunk and reminds me of Lion Boy. My face flushes.
“Bodie?” I say.
“Yeah.” He sighs. “Let me guess. Carly wants me to get my ass in there.”
“Pretty much.”
“April,” he says, smiling so wide that his eyes turn to slits like a cat. “That’s your name, right?”
“Yeah.”
He takes another drag. “April showers bring May flowers, but what do Mayflowers bring?”
“Huh?”
“Pilgrims, man.” His top lip all but disappears when he smiles. “Pilgrims.” He stubs his cigarette on the bottom of his shoe, pats me on the back, and says, “Let’s go before Carly’s head like totally explodes.”
* * *
I take my first break at one. Carly sends me to the kitchen to tell Bodie what I want for lunch and says I can eat up front if I promise to be chatty with the customers, because that’s what they’re going for. Everybody knows your name and whatnot.
Bodie makes me a turkey sandwich, snacking on potato chips as he piles them on my plate.
“Onward, Pilgrim,” he says, handing me the sandwich. He leads with his chin when he smiles and even though he’s got this perfectly chiseled face, he still manages to look dopey.
I carry my plate and a plain cup of coffee to a table in the corner. The sandwich has green mushy stuff on it, and Bodie made it, so I’m skeptical, but it’s actually really good. Maybe it’s just because I’m so hungry for real food, or maybe it’s that guys make better sandwiches because they aren’t dainty about it.
I’m so focused on chewing, on the taste of food, I don’t even look out the window. I’m just eating.
“This seat taken?”
I jump. My knees hit the table and I spill my coffee. It’s the guy with the newsboy cap from this morning. He has a bowl of soup in one hand and his coffee mug in the other.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” He puts his bowl down, pulls a napkin from the table stand and wipes up my coffee. “I’ll get you a refill.”
“It’s fine,” I say. “I’m too wired anyway.”
“Okay if I sit?”
I want to tell him that I’d rather he didn’t because I’m having an intimate moment with my sandwich, but I remember what Carly said about being chatty, so I say, “Fine by me,” in as friendly a voice as I can muster.
“Adam Jergens,” he says, offering his hand.
I wipe my fingers on my skirt and shake. “April.” There’s no need to get into last names.
“First day, huh?” Adam says, plunging a spoon into his soup. He holds it to his mouth, making tiny waves as he blows.
“Yep.” I’m not trying to be rude, I just can’t think of anything to say to him. He’s not a student. He’s old. Like maybe thirty. I feel like I’m in over my head talking to Bodie and Carly, so this is just too much. He’s not old like Margo, where it’s easier to talk to her because she’s old. He’s like that in-between old, where I’m sure he thinks he was just my age not long ago.
“Are you a townie or a student? I haven’t seen you around before.” He eats another spoonful of soup without blowing on it. No slurping whatsoever.
“Neither. Just got here,” I say, wishing I could figure out how to speak full sentences again.
“It’s a hard place to leave,” Adam says. “I came for school. Tried moving back to Boston after I finished undergrad, but the world doesn’t seem as right anyplace else.”
“It’s nice here.” I take a huge bite of my sandwich.
“Where you staying?”
I hold my finger up while I chew, but the bread is dense and crusty and the wait for words gets ridiculous. “Here and there,” I say finally, even though I still have food in my mouth. Margo would totally yell at me.
He laughs. “You’re into specifics.”
“Campground,” I blurt out, despite the fact that I meant to keep that information classified.
“Brave girl! You must be freezing.”
“I do okay,” I say.
“I’m sure you do,” he says, smiling. His teeth are too small, so it looks like he has too many of them. He’s not much bigger than me. His cheeks are round and flushed and he has a little button nose. His hat is probably covering a receding hairline and his eyes have the faint start of the kind of crinkles Margo calls crow’s toes. I had this book about Santa Claus as a kid, and Adam looks like one of his elves, the one who wasn’t good at making toys and had mismatched shoes.
“Well, I tell you what,” Adam says, “they know me here. They’ll vouch for me. I’m safe.” He digs his wallet out of his back pocket and fiddles through some business cards until he finds the one he’s looking for. He pulls a pen from his shirt pocket, w
rites a number on the back. “You get too cold at the campground, you call me.”
I want to jump at the chance to take another warm shower and sleep on a couch in an actual building with actual heat, but something about Adam saying he’s safe makes me worry he’s not. My dad always says anytime someone offers you something you have to figure out what’s in it for them. I don’t think Adam could be in it for whatever free coffee I could pass his way, so it’s exactly the kind of situation Margo would warn me about.
Adam holds the card out, but I don’t take it, so he kinda shakes it—the way you jog a fishing lure—until I do.
“Why would you…”
“I know what it’s like to be your age,” Adam says. “I wouldn’t go back if you paid me.”
I tuck the card in the band of my skirt without looking at it. Mumble, “Thanks,” to be polite, but set in my head that his place is not an option.
* * *
I think about dropping hints to Bodie that I need a couch to crash on. Maybe just asking if he knows someone who needs a roommate or where there’s a cheap hotel or rooms for rent. Not coming right out and saying “Can I stay with you?” because that would be needy and gross, but giving him the opportunity to offer. Except every time I get close to Bodie to start a conversation, he nods or winks, or gives me that chin-first smile, and I clam up. I practice what I should say in my head while I wipe down tables, settling on: So, I need a place to crash for a few days while I find new digs. Any idea where to look? I get to the point where I’m pretty sure when I say it out loud, I can make it sound like something I just thought of. But by the time I work up the right resolve and Carly sends me to the kitchen with dirty dishes, Bodie is gone.
Some guy with curly red hair, a backwards baseball cap, and total pizza face is hacking at a head of iceberg lettuce with a cleaver, yelling “Ha!” with every slice, dumping the remains into a bin on the sandwich prep station.
I don’t introduce myself, and he doesn’t bother looking up. I put the dishes on the counter and walk out. As the door closes behind me, I hear the sharp smack of the cleaver against the cutting board again, and he yells, “Take that, motherfucka!”
— Chapter 13 —
Knowing I could be warm on a couch at Adam’s place makes it that much colder at the campground. In elementary school they taught us about stranger danger, but what if hypothermia is a possibility, and the stranger has a warm place to stay?
I start my car and let it run with the heat full blast until it’s so warm I can hardly breathe. Then I turn it off and sleep until I wake up shivering again.
That business card in my bag, tucked in the inside pocket so it won’t get lost—the thought of it makes my teeth itch. At least if I was duct taped to a chair in Adam’s basement I’d be warmer than I am now. I think about calling from the pay phone by the bathrooms. Instead, I start the car again. Soon as the air turns warm, I put my hands in front of the vent. Hold them there until I feel like they might burn.
* * *
When I wake up, the campground man, with his flappy hat and ruddy beard, is watching me through a clear spot the sun melted in the ice on the windshield. My heart jolts. I reach over to make sure the door is locked. The guy taps the window, his finger cracked and yellowed. With his other hand, he slaps a piece of paper on the glass, writing side down, so I can read what it says: Car out 9 AM.
His eyes are the exact same grey-blue as the sky behind him.
I nod.
He crumples the paper, jams it in the pocket of his jeans as he walks away.
It’s too cold to even think about using that shower. I run to the bathroom to pee, brush my hair and teeth, and change my bandage. The cut across my knuckles is starting to scab, but it’s still pretty grisly. At least it’s not red and puffy. According to Margo, when she used to check my scraped-up knees, that’s the sign of infection you have to watch for. She knows all that stuff because her mother was a nurse.
I don’t have anything to pack up from the campground, because I’ve slept in my car the whole time, but it’s strange to just go. I feel like I should take something or leave something. Like this was my first home away from the motorhome and there should be a gesture about that. I choose a stone from the fire ring. It’s smooth and grey, charred on one side. It smells like a campfire, and I wish I’d made one while I was here. I drop the stone in the well of the car door and drive away.
* * *
About a mile from downtown, I park my car on a side street, outside a house with a rainbow flag hanging from the front porch. I scoped it out the day before and all the parking spaces close to downtown are pay ones, or else there’s a time limit. But here it’s free, I just have to move to the other side of the street before morning.
Sometimes I get words stuck in my head, circling until they sort themselves out and play in my mind like a song. On the walk into work, I think, Where you gonna stay, where you gonna stay, where you gonna stay whereyougonnastay, over and over in time with my footsteps. I try not to think it, but the second I stop fighting to keep the words from my brain, they sneak back.
* * *
I like working and I’m good at it. I love the order of everything—that there’s a stack of coffee cups right next to the machines, and a bin for silverware, and a station just for sugar and cream. It’s not the same as Margo’s Diner, but it’s familiar. As long as I’m foaming milk or running dishes, I can forget the workday will end. And I’m proud when Carly looks at me in the middle of the afternoon rush and says, “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” It’s only my second day.
* * *
Adam doesn’t come in even though he said he was a regular. I wonder if he isn’t—if they don’t actually know him at Decadence and he’s not safe. I wonder if he’s mad I didn’t call. Insulted I’d rather sleep at the campground. I wonder if he even remembers he gave me his number.
My shift is done at three, but the girl who was supposed to take over for me calls at 2:45 to say she has a psych exam and can’t come.
“Rich bitch,” Carly mumbles. “Some people only work because Mommy and Daddy don’t send enough beer money.” She looks at me. Presses her hands together like she’s praying and says, “Please, April, can you stay?”
Of course, I say yes. Warmth, another shift meal, as much coffee as I can drink, and a bathroom. The excuse to stay is even better than the extra money.
* * *
The sun is low in the sky when Adam shows up. He’s with a woman. Her hair is bouncy and shiny. She doesn’t look like she has any makeup on her face except for bright red lipstick that turns her mouth into a Valentine. She’s very tall and wears a black coat that buttons all the way up to her neck and goes almost to her feet. It hugs her waist and she’s impossibly skinny, like you can’t believe her stomach and intestines and all the other stuff that makes a person could actually fit in the tiny space of her. And I can’t quite figure out why, but I’m jealous. I guess I wanted Adam to be a lonely guy who was waiting for me to call, but here he is with this woman who looks like an old fashioned movie star. He wasn’t waiting on me last night.
They stand away from the counter. He leans in to talk to her. She looks at the menu on the wall and puts her hand on his arm as she tells him something. I can’t hear what they say, because Carly is blasting this CD that sounds like a dead cat wailing. The woman takes off her coat and sits at the table in the window, the one where Adam and I sat yesterday.
Adam comes up to the register. “Braved the campground?” he asks, and I wish he wouldn’t say it so loud because I don’t want Carly to find out. Luckily, Carly is in her own little world, hunched over the counter as she works out the schedule for next week, nodding her head to the music like she agrees with it completely. Adam orders a black coffee, handing over his travel mug, and then a skim latte. I make the latte with two percent.
I try not to watch them, but I can’t help it. When Adam brings the movie star woman her coffee she flashes him a megawatt smile and takes t
he mug with both hands like the latte is a precious gift. Their fingers touch. He likes that. I can tell. He sits at the table. They pull notebooks from their bags, pointing to each other’s pages with their pens, scribbling and comparing. Eventually they lose interest in their work, chatting and laughing until the sky outside is solid dark and people start ordering food again.
Some guy orders the sandwich special and I have to run to the kitchen to give the Lettuce Murderer the slip. We still haven’t said two words to each other. I should probably introduce myself, but he’s washing dishes and I want to watch Adam and that lady, so I just yell, “Order up!” hit the bell, and get myself out front as fast as I can. “I’ll call your name when it’s ready,” I say to the guy who placed the order, and then I look over at the table and she’s gone. Adam is sitting alone, his notebook open again. At first I think maybe she’s just in the bathroom, but her coat is gone too.
Carly goes out back to smoke. I grab a pot of coffee and duck under the counter to give Adam a refill, like I’ve seen Carly do with the guys who drink drip.
“Thanks, kiddo,” Adam says, and I hate him for calling me kiddo.
“Hot date?” I ask, like a new nerve has suddenly sprouted in my body.
Adam gives me a total as if look. The way my face would be if someone asked me the same thing about Bodie. It scares me that you can get to be an adult and still feel that way.
“Anna’s a client,” Adam says. “I’m working on a design for her.”
I nod. Am I supposed to ask for what? Am I supposed to already know? I never read his business card. I knew if I let myself look at it, I’d call.
My wrist hurts, but I can’t switch hands because the other one is all cut up. I rest the coffeepot on the very edge of the table. I don’t think it will burn the wood, but I don’t want to risk setting it down completely.
The People We Keep Page 9