“You’ll be all right until I’m home?” Clara asked, once Jess was lying on the bed in clean pyjamas, wrapped in a towel and staring at the ceiling. But Jess just shrugged in response, and all Clara could do was promise to bring dinner when she returned.
She had just ten minutes to get to work, hustling along and across busy streets, cutting through the hospital parking lot and nearly getting hit by a streetcar on College Street. Shearrived just as the kiosk was scheduled to open, already in trouble because she was working with Connie, who greeted her with a grunt, brewing resentment along with the coffee she’d had to get started alone.
“I’ll make it up to you,” Clara promised, tying on her apron and pulling her hair into a ponytail. When the caterer showed up, Clara made a point of accepting the order, loading scones and muffins into the display case. They weren’t busy, so Connie could have given her a break, but she didn’t.
Once customers started arriving, Clara didn’t have time to think about Connie, focusing instead on the steady line-up of students. She was busy steaming milk, filling cups, bagging muffins, crowning an extra-large hot chocolate with a blast of whipped cream, and then suddenly Lori and Holly were at the front of the line—her friends, but really Jess’s.
“Howisshe?” Lori asked, before Clara could take her order. This was no simple inquiry, as her tone made clear. Lori lived in Clayton’s house, but it had only been a couple of hours since the breakup, so how did she already know?
Clara could feel Connie watching her, so she didn’t waste time. She took Lori and Holly’s orders, poured their coffees, and asked, “Jess, you mean?”
“Well, at least it’s all out in the open,” Holly said with a sigh as Clara knelt down to get two low-fat bran muffins from the case below her till.
“And honestly, she’s nice,” Lori called over the counter. “You really can’t blame her.”
“Who—?” said Clara, standing up as the muffin in her serving tongs tumbled to the floor. Stepping back, she felt it squish beneath her shoe.
“You’re going to have to mark that down!” Connie called over the racket of the steam wand.
The girl’s name was Natasha, from Clayton’s Soviet history course. She and Clayton had tried to ignore their attraction until it became impossible.
“They were friends,” said Lori. “And then…”
“I don’t know her,” said Clara. How could Clayton have a friend she didn’t know?
Holly said, “It’s complicated.”
Lori said, “And there’s two sides to every story.”
Holly added, “Or three.”
“Less chatting, Clara,” called Connie. “Keep moving.”
Holly said, “This is kind of awkward. Sorry!” Her final syllable was a trill ringing over her shoulder as they hurried away, leaving room for the next in line: a kid who paid for his order in nickels, which took forever, followed by a woman who changed her mind seven times before settling on an Americano. Clara kept expecting Lori and Holly to come back for refills, to help her make sense of what they’d told her, but they’d scuttled off somewhere else.
Oh, this was going to be bad. Jess was already a mess, and she didn’t know the half of it. Would Clara have to be the one to tell her, launching her further into a tailspin of despair? Jess would start listening to Fiona Apple again. Clara knocked a cappuccino, which spilled all over the counter. “Seriously,” Connie muttered as she wiped it up. “What’s with you today?”
And then a half hour before the end of her shift—so busy she’d missed her break—there was Ferber, towering over everybody else in line.
“You’re here,” she said, when he finally got to the front.
He said, “I like to watch you work.”
“What are you having?”
“The girl behind the counter, I hope.”
She said, “You’ve got to order something or Connie is going to kill me.”
He said, “A coffee?” Finally. And then he waited over on the benches, rifling through a stack of campus papers. Ferber reading—Clara could have died, it was so incongruous. And kind of sexy.
They closed at four, and Clara washed out the urns while Connie wiped down the counters. There were muffins left over, but Connie had bagged them and thrown them out before Clara had a chance to grab them.
“You’re in a hurry,” Connie said, gesturing toward Ferber, who’d abandoned the paper and was drumming on his knees.
So Clara made a point of finishing everything as thoroughly as Connie would and telling her, “Thanks for picking up my slack today,” as she put on her coat and they locked up the stand.
And then finally she found herself in Ferber’s arms, against that chest.Inhale.
