Once I’ve dropped the dogs off, I’ll seek out a café to hole up in, I think. A place where I can drink coffee quietly in a corner, anonymous and unobserved.
3.
Callie
You can’t tell me it’s never happened to you before.” Dot and I are wiping tables in the coffee shop after closing, exchanging theories on the customer who walked out without paying earlier. This is always my favorite time of day—winding down and trading stories, restoring the shine to the room. Beyond the window, the early-September air is warm and delicate as peach skin.
“Maybe it was an honest mistake,” I say.
Dot pushes a hand through her crop of bleach-blond hair. “Seriously. How long have you worked here?”
“Eighteen months.” It sounds more incredible every time I say it.
“Eighteen months, and you’ve not yet had a walkout.” Dot shakes her head. “You must have the right kind of face.”
“I’m sure he just forgot. I think Murphy distracted him.”
Murphy’s my dog, a black-and-tan crossbreed. Well, he’s sort of mine. Anyway, he’s living the dream being pet-in-residence at the coffee shop, because there’s no end of people here willing to fuss him and sneak him illicit titbits.
Dot snorts. “The only thing that guy forgot was his wallet.”
I’d never seen him before. Then again, I’d never seen a lot of today’s customers before. The rival café at the top of the hill usually absorbs the commuter footfall of Eversford, the market town where I’ve lived mywhole life. But it closed this morning without warning, and its regulars began drifting mutely in as soon as we opened, all pinstripes and aftershave and well-polished shoes.
But this customer was different. In fact, I’d be slightly embarrassed to admit just how much he stood out to me. He couldn’t have been en route to any office—his dark hair was solely bedworthy, and he seemed saddled by exhaustion, like he’d had a rough night. At first he appeared distracted as I came to take his order, but when he finally turned his eyes to me, they gripped tight and didn’t let go.
We exchanged no more than a couple of words, but I do recall that before he walked out without paying—and between bouts of scribbling in a notebook—he formed something of a silent bond with Murphy.
“I think he might have been a writer. He had a notebook with him.”
Dot disagrees through her nose. “Of course—starving writer. Trust you to put a romantic spin on theft.”
“Yes, but if it were up to you, we’d have one of those signs, like you get in petrol stations.If you do not have the means to pay...”
“Now,thatis an excellent idea.”
“It wasn’t a suggestion.”
“Maybe next time I’ll floor him with my best roundhouse.”
I don’t doubt it would be good—Dot’s recently taken up kickboxing, committing to it with an energy I envy. She’s always doing the next thing, running wild through life like a creature uncaged.
By contrast, she thinks I’ve shrunk back from the world—that I’ve slunk into its corners, started blinking into bright light. She’s probably right.
“No martial arts moves on the customers,” I tell her. “Café policy.”
“Anyway, there won’t be a next time. I’ve memorized his face. If I see him in town, I’m demanding that tenner back.”
“He only had a coffee.”
Dot shrugs. “Call it our tax on eat-and-run.”
I smile and move past her into the back office to print the order for tomorrow’s delivery. I’ve been gone only a minute when I hear her calling out, “We’re closed! Come back tomorrow!”
As I stick my head around the office doorway, I recognize the figure at the door. And so, it seems, does Murphy—he’s sniffing the hinges expectantly, tail wagging.
“It’s him,” I say, feeling my stomach skitter slightly. Tall and lean, gray T-shirt, dark jeans. Skin that hints at a summer spent outside. “The guy who forgot to pay.”
“Oh.”
