Linus is waiting for me outside the coffeehouse the next morning, pulling her pink hair into a scrunchie. Her lower lip puffs out. “Did you see Riley, by any chance?”
When I shake my head, she frowns. “Shit. Okay. Onward.” She unlocks the door to the coffeehouse, presses some buttons on the security alarm. She hangs her stuff up on a peg.
“Julie got a little delayed in Sedona. She might be late. It’s all cool. She runs on kind of a loosey-goosey energy, not clocks, like the rest of us. Meanwhile, you can help me set up. I hear Peter Lee and Tanner closed down the Tap Room last night, so they won’t fucking be on time. That’s a bar downtown. You look a little young to know that.”
She slides aprons from the dishwasher, winces at their dampness, and throws one to me. “I’m guessing Riley didn’t give you any kind of new employee lowdown, so here’s the basics: you can have regular coffee for free, as much as you want, and mostly any kind of espresso drink you want, within reason, unless it seems like you’re taking too much, and then Julie will start charging you. You’re supposed to pay for any food, but again, that can get iffy. Like, what if we make the wrong order? You know what I’m saying? Smoke breaks are outside in front, but sometimes you can smoke in the lounge”—she grins, pointing down past the grill and dish area to a dark hallway littered with mops, brooms, and buckets—“but don’t let Julie catch you. Her office is down there and she hates the smell of smoke.”
She pauses. “And then there’s Riley. There are all sorts of Riley rules and Riley breaks all sorts of rules, but Julie lets him, because he’s her brother, and she has fucked-up notions of what love is. So what this means for you is…sometimes he smokes back there when he’s cooking, when she isn’t here. And sometimes he drinks back there, too. And since you’re back there, and I’m usually up here, it’s kind of your job to keep an eye on him, and tell me if things seem to be going to hell. If you know what I mean.”
She eyes me carefully. “Deal?”
I nod.
“Okay, moving on. First, we make the mojo.”
She leads me to the espresso machine, the urns that hold five different types of coffee, the smudgy pastry case that faces the seating area of the coffeehouse.
“But first first,” she says, “we put out the tunes.” She flicks through the stacks of CDs and tapes on the countertop. More CDs are jammed inside the bottom cabinet amid green order pads, boxes of pencils and pens, extra register tape, and a bottle of Jim Beam, which makes Linus sigh very heavily. She shoves it to the side of the case, out of view.
She looks up at me. “We choose according to our mood. Later, we may choose according to customer, unless we hate them. This morning, we are feeling very…”
She pauses. “Sad. So many things left unsaid in my life. I’m sure you’re too young to understand, right?” She winks at me.
“Van Morrison it is. T.B. Sheets. Familiar? I’m kind of in a Morrison mood at the moment.”
I nod, but I tense up a little, because of my dad. But when Da da dat dat da da da da fills the space, I start to relax; the music is familiar, and soothing, and I try to think of it as maybe my dad being here with me, in a weird way.
She runs through the oily-looking beans in the see-through bins: KONA, FRENCH, GUATEMALAN, ETHIOPIAN, BLUE MOUNTAIN, KENYAN. The teas sit loosely in wooden pull-out shelves. They look like small and fragrant piles of twigs. Out the enormous window that opens onto Fourth Avenue, other places are opening up, too, windows are being washed, sale racks placed on sidewalks, patio tables being lugged out. The whole day is starting for everyone on the Avenue, including, I realize, me. I have a job. It’s kind of disgusting, but it’s mine. I’m a part of something. I’ve hauled myself up at least one rung on a ladder. I wish Casper was here. She’d probably give me one of her goofy high fives or something. I’m so kind of proud of myself that I’d probably let her.
A body appears in front of the True Grit window, blocking the light.
Linus elbows me out of the way, making the watch movement to a dirty-faced man on the sidewalk: tapping her wrist ten times, which must mean he needs to wait ten more minutes. He nods, the brim of his straw hat stiff over his eyes. He leans against the bike rack, tucking a newspaper under his arm. He begins to have an intricate conversation with himself.
Linus resumes grinding, shouting over the sound of beans being mashed. “It’s Fifteen-Minute-Shit Guy. He’s here every day at open. He brings in a newspaper and a bucket. He takes a fifteen-minute shit in the can and then we let him take the old coffee grounds in the bucket.” She points to an empty five-gallon pickle bucket.
I stare at her. I have to yell over the grinder. “For reals? Like, the shitting part? Fifteen minutes?”
She nods. “Reals. And it’s going to be your job, as the disher, to go in there after he’s done and check it. Make sure everything is clean.” She winks. “But you know, he uses the grounds for his garden down on Sixth and damned if that fucker isn’t goddamn beautiful. Sunflowers up to my fucking eyeballs and tomatoes the size of my tits.”
I laugh without thinking, a big fat guffaw, and quickly cover my mouth. Linus says, “It’s okay! You can laugh. I’m fucking funny, aren’t I?” She nudges me with her elbow. I let my hand drop away from my mouth.
I smile back at her.
“That’s more like it. I like that.” She fills up an urn with water and hands me the filter of Ethiopian beans, ducking her head so our eyes are level. There’s a slight mist of dark hair between her eyebrows.
“Julie’s gonna love you, don’t worry. She loves the damaged and you reek of it. No offense or anything. It’s a good thing, in a weird way, for this place. We are all fifty kinds of messed up here.”
She fills two mugs of coffee from the urn and hands me one.
“Now, go let Fifteen-Minute-Shit Guy in.”
—
By eight-thirty, Linus’s face has bloomed bright red and she’s swearing, running from the front of the coffeehouse to the grill station, slicing bagels and throwing them on the toaster shelf. The waitstaff is late; Riley is still not here. He was supposed to come in at six to get the breakfast items ready: the chili sauces in the pots, the home fries on the grill. She’s already asked me to man the potatoes and then sworn at me when I didn’t remember to flip them at regular intervals.
“You have to go get him,” she says finally, shoving a forkful of scrambled tofu into her mouth. My stomach growls as I watch her. I forgot to eat before I left the apartment this morning. “He doesn’t have a phone and I can’t leave or close the café. Julie would fucking kill me.”
She scribbles an address and directions on a piece of paper. She tells me to get one of the moon-faced Go players outside to wait tables while she cooks. “Tell him coffee’s free for the rest of the day.”
Outside I look at the directions she’s given me. It’s downtown, not far, through the underpass, I think. I unlock my bike and take off.
He lives around the corner from a plasma bank in a robin’s-egg-blue bungalow set back behind a few drooling cottonwoods, on a street of funkily colored houses and old cars with peeling band bumper stickers. On the front porch I walk by a full ashtray and a single, empty bottle of beer next to a green Adirondack chair stacked with dog-eared paperbacks.
No one answers my knock and I can see that the screen door isn’t latched. When I push the front door, just a little, it gives. I call out, softly, “Hey, anybody there? You’re late for work….”
No answer. I debate for a few seconds, peeking through the crack in the doorway. I don’t want to find him naked in a bed with some chick, but I don’t want to have to go back to Linus without even trying. And I’m kind of curious, too, about what Riley is doing, exactly. What his life is like, this person who was once in a band and now slings hash.
I push open the door the rest of the way and walk in, nudging aside a pair of faded black Converse. The front room is filled with books—piled on the floor and jammed into a glassed-in oak bookcase that rises from the floor to the ceiling. A sagging burgundy velvet couch is up against the far wall, beneath an open, curtainless window.
I pass into the kitchen and the calendar on the wall catches my eye. Curvy pinup girls from the forties with sun-soaked hair and long legs, breasts pulsating against the fabric of swim clothes. The page is on November.
Today is the last day of May. In the past forty-five days, I’ve tried to kill myself; been put in a psych ward; been shipped by bus across the country; got a job washing dishes in a dumpy coffeehouse; and now I’m lurking in the house of a weirdo with an apparent drinking problem. A cute weirdo, but still a weirdo.
Not even Ellis could make all that sound angelic.
I walk down a dark hallway and slowly push open a door. Tiny bathroom, painted white. Claw-foot tub with a shower. Dirty mirror on the medicine cabinet. Framed postcard photograph of Bob Dylan in front of a Studebaker. Woodstock, 1968, it says across the bottom. I inspect the postcard wistfully. My father loved to listen to Nashville Skyline. He told me Bob had a bad motorcycle accident and stopped drinking and smoking and that’s why his voice was pure and deep on the album. God was coming back to Dylan. That’s what my father told me.
The other door is cracked open just a little. I hesitate before knocking. My heart pounding, I tap softly on the door and then push it carefully, my eyes just barely open, just in case.
He is lying on his back on the bed, still in yesterday’s clothes: the food-stained white T-shirt, the loose brown pants. His arms are behind his head and his eyes are closed. He’s using a folded quilt for a pillow. Clothes are tossed on a puffy leather chair. On the floor next to the bed there’s a loaded ashtray and two crumpled packs of cigarettes. The room smells of old smoke and sweat.
Heart racing, I take a breath, say his name.
No answer.
Is he dead? I walk closer, staring at his chest, trying to see if it’s rising and falling, however slightly. “Riley.” A curious odor lingers about his body. It isn’t the same as alcohol, the same as sweat or smoke. It’s something else. I bend down and sniff.
Suddenly, his eyes snap open and he sits up.
Before I can jump back, he grabs my wrist, pulling me between his legs and locking me in the grip of his knees. It knocks the breath out of me. Adrenaline shoots through my body.
My brain fuzzes in and out with images of Fucking Frank’s terrible face. Riley’s breath is hot against my ear. I’m struggling, but he’s holding me too tight, even as I cry, “Let go! Let go!”
His voice is low and slightly hoarse. “Who are you, Strange Girl? Sneaking into my house. You gonna rob me?”
“Fuck off.” I work hard not to panic, to stay in the moment, not float. I can’t understand why he’s doing this. He seemed so nice before. I position my elbow and try to jab him in the gut, but his fingers are so tight on my wrists, my skin is starting to burn and I can’t move.
“Fucking let go.” Gasping.
His breath swarms against my cheek and neck and now Fucking Frank is gone and it’s the man in the underpass who zooms back to me, a dark memory of fear that triggers my street feeling again, something I thought I’d left behind. No! I yell it.
I use all my strength to twist my hips, gaining some leverage, and then I stomp on his fucking foot as hard as I can. He cries out, his arms springing open, releasing me. I scramble to the open door, a safe enough distance away. He holds his naked foot, his face scrunched in pain. I rub my stinging wrists, glaring at him.
“Jesus, I was just playing around.” He scowls at me. “You think I was gonna do something, or something?”
“Asshole.” I’m gulping breath, trying to force the air down hard enough to put out the tornado starting in my body. “You’re so horrible. That’s not funny. Why would you think that’s funny? Get your own fucking ass to work.”
I keep gulping air, only now I’m hiccupping, too, and tears are pouring down my face, which is the last thing I want.
“Jesus, honey,” Riley says, suddenly serious. “I’m sorry.”
I swipe at my face angrily. Fucking hell. Fucking people. Crying in front of him.
Riley stares at me, the circles under his eyes like black half-moons. Whatever caused those dark stains, it wasn’t just alcohol, I’m sure of it.
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I’m an asshole, I am. Don’t cry. I didn’t mean for you to cry.” His voice is different now, softer.
We look at each other and I see something pass across his face, very gently, a sadness, some realization of me that makes me want to cry even harder, because he knows, he knows it now, that something happened to me, and grabbing me like that wasn’t okay.
He looks ashamed.
“Linus…Linus says get your ass to work.” I turn and run out of his room. I’m out of the house, slamming the door behind me, and then peeling away on my bicycle as fast as I can.
On my way back to the coffeehouse, as I pass through the Fourth Avenue Underpass, somewhere in that sudden flash of darkness that replaces the impossibly white sunshine of this city, it occurs to me that he knew Linus wouldn’t be able to come herself. He knew I was going to be working at the coffeehouse, that I would have to come instead.
He wasn’t sleeping at all. He was waiting for me. I thought he was a nice person and now I remind myself: People aren’t nice, people aren’t nice, you should know that by now.
I stop my bike. I could just turn back, go back to Mikey’s, shut the door, push the trunk in front of it, rescue my kit. Not go back to Grit. Not have to see him. Not have to deal.
But then I will lose what little I’ve gained. I take deep breaths, close my eyes. Blue comes back to me. Was what happened cereal?
A car honks at me, jolting me out of myself. Before I can even process what to think, I’m pedaling to the coffeehouse again.
Outside True Grit, the sidewalk tables are already full, Go players scowling at empty cups of coffee, people fanning themselves with menus. The high drone of customers erupts as I rocket through the employee screen door and rush to get into my apron.
Linus throws down the spatula and swears when she sees me by myself. “Shit. I knew it. Usually, he’s just drunk, but if he’s late like this, like this late? It means he’s been using. I knew it.”
Before I can ask her about using, a guy with neck tattoos bursts through the double doors and calls out “Order!”, slamming the green sheet on the counter in front of Linus. He runs to the front to ring people up as Linus hustles around the grill, sliding eggs onto plates and toasting bagels. I turn back to the dishwasher, steam coating my face. What Linus said about Riley using echoes in my head.
Before he face-planted in the craggy stream in Mears Park and almost drowned, DannyBoy had started trolling Rice Street, looking for a lean-faced man in a black vinyl jacket with purple piping. Whatever DannyBoy took, it first made his face gray, his stomach clench; after that, he was like a baby.
But Riley’s weird smell, the forceful way he grabbed me. Whatever he was on wasn’t what DannyBoy was on. DannyBoy became all heat and sighs. Whatever Riley did last night turned him mean.
