Reagan was on lunch while the whole Cute Latte Guy saga unfolded. Thank fuck for that, since that means she didn’t see me fumble his drink. Not that I think she’d give me shit for it or anything. She totally doesn’t seem the type, but still, first impressions on the first day and all that.
He’d still been at his table when she’d gotten back, sipping his drink with those full, rosy-pink lips of his. It wasn’t long after that he’d packed up his laptop, that I’m not sure he’d really even used, and sloped out of the shop, leaving me wondering just how bad, on a scale from no biggie to totally fucked, it is that I’mkindahoping he’s a regular here.
Obviously, I could have asked Reagan, but she’d had her nose buried in her book by then, and I hadn’t wanted to interrupt. My not askingdefinitelydidn’t have anythingat allto do with the fact that doing it would have meant admitting just how much the answer to that ‘how bad’ question would have been leaning toward the ‘totally fucked’ end of the scale.
Nope. Not one bit.
So yeah, I’m not kidding when I say it’s a relief when seven thirty finally rolls around. Reagan and I’d already shut mostly everything down and done nearly all the cleanup before the last customer straggled out of the shop.
The walk back to my new apartment clears my head a bit. Definitely, the legitimately freezing air has something to do with that, but so does the fact that I’m able to turn most of my thoughts to mentally calculating whether I’ll have enough money to buy some warmer clothes when I get my first paycheck, or if I’ll have to wait for the next. One of the reasons I chose the apartment I did is the low rent and the fact that the girl who’s subletting it only asked for first month plus security. Still, between paying that and getting myself all the way to Seattle, I don’t have much left over.
Why Seattle? Because it’s far the fuck away from Tucson.
And because Seattle was the place I wanted to see most when I was a kid.
The night my mom and I left Reno, there’d been this rack of travel brochures for all the different places the bus company went. While my mom riffled through the random shit she’d thrown in bags for us, trying to find the cash she’d shoved down at the bottom of one of them, I’d wandered over to look at the shiny photos. Trying to imagine what it might feel like to be in those colorful places they showed felt a hell of a lot better than being stuck where I was at that moment.
Mom must have found her money while I was staring at those pictures, because suddenly she was shouting in this whispery hiss for me to get the fuck back over to her. In the last year, the happy, smiling woman I’d always known had turned hard and sharp, and I’d quickly learned not to piss her off more than I could help. So I did exactly what she said and gotthe fuck back over there. But not before snatching my favorite of those brochures, the one with this picture of a sunset lit city looking out across shining water to a snowy mountain stretching up into a glowing sky.
I must’ve thought those brochures were books or something. Something you had to pay for, which the new version of Mom sure as fuck wasn’t going to do, no matter how much I wanted one, ‘cause I shoved the thing up the back of my shirt and partway down the back of my pants to hide it until she’d passed out on the bus.
We weren’t going to wherever that picture was. I knew that. Mom had already told me we were going to Dallas, where, she said, Fucking Bruce couldn’t find us. In Dallas, everything would be better, she’d said.
Fucking Bruce was the man we’d lived with for the last year, since I’d started kindergarten.
Glad as I was that he and his late-night knock down drag outs with Mom wouldn’t be joining us there, something already told me Dallas wasn’t going to be any better than Reno had been.
Well damn.Maybe dwelling on Cute Latte Guy and his shy smile and adorable awkwardness would have been better after all.
Supposedly, based on some articles I looked up online, I’m not supposed to try to keep all that shit buried. Apparently letting it out so I can, as they say,confront itis healthy. Well, look at me being healthy. But that was totally enoughconfrontingfor one night, thank you very much.
By the time I’m up the rickety, sketchy AF fire escape-style stairs that lead to my apartment, I’m as jittery and wound up as if I’d personally matched every last customer I served today,espresso shot for espresso shot. Whether it was that charming little trip down the broken-glass-and-garbage-strewn streets of memory lane, or whether it has something to do with a certain pair of blue-grey eyes and an unstyled mop of blonde hair, not to mention thehighlyquestionable things their owner made me feel today, I’m not exactly sure.
What Idoknow is that, either way, I sure don’t have any interest in considering the question or its possible answers. Neither one is particularly good.
The apartment is a drafty old place in the upstairs of a drafty old house. I have three windows and I swear not one of them closes properly. Considering the fact that I don’t have money to throw away on luxuries like running the heat all day while I’m out, it’s fuckingcoldwhen I step inside. Like no-warmer-than-outside cold.
Cranking the dial on the radiator that looks more like it belongs in a museum than in someone’s actual living room-slash-bedroom-slash-kitchen, I peel off the coffee-stained shirt I’d hidden under my sweatshirt so I can set it soaking in the kitchen sink with some dish soap and vinegar to lift the stains. This treatment, plus one good wash, and it’ll be good as new.
That done, after jumping in a quick shower and pulling on a pair of sweats and a fresh sweatshirt,‘cause damn I hate the cold, I wander over to my paints and easel.
I’m tempted to start on a new painting, but a nagging voice in my head tells me that I’m not so sure I’d be very pleased by what would end up on the canvas tonight. Already, my mind is conjuring up bold black lines tracing a tall, thick figure, sweeping in splotches of mismatched color for the clothes, a vivid, blushy-pink for the skin, golden sunshine blonde—
Nope. Not painting tonight.
Instead, I wander over to my keyboard. Music is safe. It can take whatever shape it wants, and, no matter what I’m thinking about as I let it out, there won’t be any evidence left over to fuck with my head later.
6
Jesse
I’ve just struck on a really excellent few sentences—the first worthwhile idea I’ve had in forever—to sum up my theory of a corollary relationship between geographic isolation, belated arrival of new trends in religion, and subsequent bouts of fanaticism and intolerance for those resistant to said new trends, when a now familiar interruption shakes loose every word I’d been racing to type before forgetting.
Tonight, though I don’t recognize whatever melody winds through my neighbor’s improvisation, just the first notes are enough to capture every shred of my attention as always. Whatever he’s playing has a simple tune that wanders up and down through the keys, swelling and falling, louder and then quieter again, but always soft and slightly lonely sounding as it flows on.
Like every time I’ve heard him playing since that first night he joined my shaky rendition of Swan Lake, the urge to recreate that strange, separate duet pulls at me, tugging me on willing feet over toward my piano. I won’t touch it though. Just like I haven’t.
As I listen to the slightly muffled music, out of nowhere, the one-dimpled smile of the new barista at Upshot burststhrough my thoughts.
