I take it with me. Obviously. These two things go together perfectly and I will not be explaining how.
I might slam the door on the way out. Hard to say. It’s loud in here.
The coffee place around the corner is bright and loud and full of people who are not, as far as I can tell, leaving anyone notes.
Definitely not leavingmenotes, and that’s the important part.
I order what I always order. The barista gives me a look. Or she doesn’t. I’ve hit the part of the morning where I assume everyone’s looking at me. She’s got the face of a woman whose Saturday is going exactly as planned. She does not look hungover and her only deadline is the time she’s done with her shift. Must be nice.
I get my table. The good one, by the window, where on a normal day I’d watch strangers and invent whole lives for them instead of writing.
Not today. Today I’m focused. Today I am a professional with a document open and my hands on the keys, functioning, look at me go.
I type one sentence.
Then I take the note out and read that instead.
No.
I put it face down on the table, which holds for about four seconds before the back of it starts looking at me too.
Now I’m annoyed. At the note, at the speed-walking ghost, at the oolong, but mostly at myself, because I am the one who brought the haunted paper to coffee. I turn back to the screen. I find the sentence. I rewrite it, badly, and I’m already reaching for the note again when —
Someone stops at my table.
I don’t look up. People stop at tables. They want the chair, the outlet, the wholeis anyone sitting here.Normal. Fine. Happens constantly.
“Hey there.”
Shit.
Chapter 10
Erik
She comes out of her door like she’s won an argument with it.
Coat half on. Bag swinging. She hits the sidewalk and turns toward the coffee place without breaking stride, and I watch her go from the curb with my helmet still on.
Nobody needs to know I’ve been around the block twice already.
I give her a lead. Far enough that following her doesn’t look like following her. She’s at the counter by the time I reach the window, and I don’t have to hear it to know the order — the seasonal one’s done, so it’s back to the mint mocha, and she’ll take the table by the window because she always takes the table by the window.
She takes the table by the window.
I go in, get a coffee I don’t want, find a seat far enough back that she won’t notice me and close enough that I’ll catch it if she starts talking to herself.
She will.
She lasts maybe thirty seconds before something comes out of her coat pocket. Small. Folded. She reads it, puts it face down, makes it four more seconds, and reaches for it again.
I look at my coffee so I don’t look at her.
She grumbles at the paper.
I’m smiling before I decide to. Three years and she still doesn’t know she does that — argues out loud with objects, and loses horribly.
Then someone stops at her table.
