I don’t know how, but we got back exactly when I was supposed to be at work. I hadn’t slept, I was in the same clothes, but luckily it was a uniform (a black polo shirt and khakis) and I wore it every day, so there was no real way to tell that I hadn’t changed.
Still, when Neil walked into the store, he took one look at me and said, “You didn’t go home last night.”
“What do you mean, I didn’t go home last night?” I said.
“Which word didn’t you understand?” he asked.
“I just don’t understand why you’d think that,” I said, still trying to evade.
“Because you’re wearing the same clothes.” Then he added, after a moment, “And your mother called me at three o’clock in the morning.”
“Oh no.”
“Oh yes.”
“Neil, I’m really sorry.”
“I didn’t tell her anything.” He answered the question I’d thought but hadn’t asked.
“Thank you.”
“I mean, other than the fact that a stranger came into the store and kissed you,” he said. He saw my face and he said, “I’m kidding. I told her I wasn’t here when you closed up yesterday. But are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Nope,” I said. “No idea.”
“Well that’s good. At least we’re clear on that.”
“No offense, Neil, but look where my plans have gotten me so far.”
That’s when I saw Tammy’s car pull up across the street. She got out and hurried across the street, but she spotted me through the windows. She glared furiously at me through the glass till she was inside and could say, “Okay, what the hell?”
“Hi, Tammy,” Neil said.
As usual, she barely glanced at him.
“Let me guess,” I said. “My mother called you.”
“What were you thinking? You’re mom’s not well, and you go and disappear on her? Just never go home? I’m sorry, but what is that?”
“It’s called being selfish,” I said.
“Yeah, I know,” she shot back.
“So why did you ask?”
She stared at me.
“Joking. Anyway, I did call her. She just never checks the stupid machine. But what’s the deal? Why are you so upset? I don’t understand.”
“You think I understand getting a hysterical call from your mother at three o’clock in the morning?” Abruptly Tammy turned toward Neil. “Would you understand that, Neil?”
“As a matter of fact—” Neil started to say, but Tammy cut him off.
“Oh my God,” Tammy turned back to me, “You weren’t out last night with him, were you?”
“Him? . . . What, you mean Neil?”
“I’m sitting right here,” Neil interjected. “Please remember that when you speak.”
“Then who?” Tammy demanded. “Please not Dan.”
“Dan . . . Dan Marker?” Neil said. “But he’s married.”
Tammy gave me a look that said, do you believe this guy?
What I couldn’t believe was that she couldn’t figure out who I’d stayed out the whole night for.
“Timothy,” I told her. “Timothy came back.”
For a second Tammy didn’t even remember; I could see the blankness on her face. Then it hit.
“You mean the guy. The one . . .” I could see her mind filling in all the blanks. Of course Tammy jumped straight to the thing she was most interested in. She said, “Oh no, you didn’t.”
“No, I didn’t,” I said.
“Well, for God’s sake, why not? You waiting for the engraved invitations to go out? What on earth did you do all night then?”
“We went for a drive.”
At that point, Neil inserted himself back into the conversation. “All night?” he said, obviously not believing me.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but yes, all night.”
Tammy and Neil exchanged looks.
“Okay, fine. Discuss amongst yourselves, but leave me out of it.”
And I heard the door, and my first thought was relief that a customer was coming in and that would break it up. But when I looked over at the door, I saw my mother.
“Mom,” I said. I didn’t even feel panic right away. There was just surprise. She’d never once come to visit me in the three years I had worked there. I think it was because she was ashamed. Her daughter with a degree from Kansas State, and who came so close to a PhD in economics at Chicago, spent her days making lattes.
I haven’t really mentioned the degrees, have I? That’s because for three years I’ve done my best to forget about them. Early on, after I moved home, I discovered that it was my past that made my present situation so hard to live with. If I didn’t have the degrees and all those years spent studying so hard, then—other than the fact that I didn’t make enough money to cover all the expenses—it seemed like there was nothing wrong with working at Starbox. It was only when I thought of all that work, the studying, the expectations, and I looked at where I should have ended up, and where I was now, that I got depressed. When I let go of the past—when I let go of the fact that life hadn’t turned out the way I had expected—life became bearable.
But I don’t think my mother saw it in quite the same way. And that was why she stayed away.
My mother stood there and looked at me, in my polo shirt and khakis, standing behind the counter.
“I just wanted to know if you were still alive,” she said. She turned to Neil and Tammy. “Do either of you know what happened to her last night? I’m sure I’m not going to get a straight answer out of her.”
Tammy and Neil had both been enjoying themselves at my expense a second before, but now they looked like they wished they were anywhere other than there.
“Okay, I can see that neither of you idiots is going to say anything,” my mother said, dismissing them with a shake of her head. She turned back to me. “Will you be home tonight?”
I thought of Timothy. I thought of him coming back. I thought about how I didn’t have any idea how long he was staying—or what he intended. I had found out more about him during the car ride: his last name, for one. His name was Timothy Whitting. And he lived in New York City. He was in finance. He managed money, but he was fuzzy about exactly what he did. I’m pretty sure he didn’t talk a lot about it because he didn’t expect me to understand anything about it.
The thing was, I hadn’t asked him what I really wanted to know, like how long was he staying and why’d he’d come back. Or had he ever been married. Or in love. Or if there was someone else in his life. It could be that he was in town only one more night.
All this flashed through my mind, and still I said, “Yes, I’ll be home.”
My mother nodded, then turned on her heel and walked out.
Silently Neil got up and came around the counter. He said, “Why don’t you go sit down with Tammy, I’ll make us some drinks.”
I stared at him. “You’ve never let me sit down during work before.”
“Well, you’ve never gone and done something like this before.”
“Like what?”
“Like . . . I don’t know. This,” he said, and shooed me to sit down.
When Timothy came in about twenty minutes later, Tammy, Neil, and I were sitting with our drinks, at one of the tables. I caught a glimpse of him coming through the corner of my eye. I saw the stride, the assurance in it, and then caught the falter in his step when he came in and saw that I wasn’t behind the counter but, instead, sitting down at a table like I was a customer.
I turned back just in time to catch Tammy’s first glimpse of him. Her eyes widened a bit, but then she looked over to me and caught me watching her. She pulled her face back to normal.
“Timothy, this is my friend Tammy,” I introduced him as he came up to the table. “And I’m not sure if you’ve really been introduced to Neil before. He’s my boss.”
Tammy held out her hand, and Timothy took it. Then Neil’s.
There was an
awkward silence.
“What brings you out here?” Tammy finally said.
“I came for Nora,” Timothy told her.
“All the way out from New York City?” she said, an edge of disbelief to her voice.
“All the way,” he agreed.
“How long are you staying?” she shot this next question at him like a bullet.
I held my breath.
“I’m not sure,” he admitted.
“What, you don’t have a return ticket?”
“Not exactly.”
“What does that mean? Did you buy a one-way?”
“No.”
“Then that means you have a return ticket?”
“No, it doesn’t.” He was disagreeing with her, but his voice was mild.
“Okay, you’re going to have to explain that one to me,” Tammy said. A fist had crept up to her hip, her usual combat posture.
“I flew out on a private plane,” he said.
“You have a plane?”
“My family does. Yes.”
“So is it your parents’ or something?”
“Well, we all have shares in it.”
“So you’re, like, really rich then, is that it?”
“Tammy!” I said. She was just engaging in her favorite sport—baiting people to see if they cracked—but in this case I had been the one who cracked. I knew I deserved the look she shot at me.
But to Timothy’s credit, he looked like he was actually enjoying the game.
“Yes, you could say that I’m really rich.”
“Brag about it, why don’t you. Jeez,” Tammy said.
And he laughed.
“Okay, I like him,” Tammy announced to me.
Timothy turned to me as well. “Can I borrow your friend for business meetings? She’d be the perfect secret weapon to knock them off their game. There aren’t many people who aren’t afraid to break the rules.”
There was such admiration in his tone, I actually got a pang of jealousy at Tammy for evoking it. It was also because I was suddenly very aware of how rarely I broke the rules—instead I was friends with someone who did. I let her do the work for me, and I told myself that because she was my friend, it said something about me as well. Maybe it did, but it still didn’t make me a rule breaker.
“I’ll break any rule you can think of,” Tammy said. Then she looked over at me and winked.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said.
“Well, back to business,” Neil announced.
Timothy turned to me. “I don’t want to keep you from your work, but I wanted to find out about later.”
“Later . . .” I took a deep breath. When I opened my mouth, I had no idea what would come out.
The force of habit won.
“I can’t today,” I said.
“Can’t . . . ?”
“Can’t meet you.” I watched it sink in, saw the play of emotions—the surprise, the hurt, the decision, all in a split second. Something in him closed. The expression was the same, the voice, the tone, but it was as if something had been shuttered.
“Okay,” he said.
Tammy leaped in. “If you want to come by the Box, I’ll give you some free drinks. I read somewhere that rich people love free stuff even more than poor people.”
He turned his smile on Tammy. “You heard right. I’m going to go back to my hotel and get some sleep, but if you’d tell me what and where this Box is, I’ll certainly stop by later.”
He glanced over at me, and he held the smile in place, but it wasn’t the same; it wasn’t the way he’d looked at me the night before. Then he turned to go.
“Timothy,” I called after him.
He turned back.
“Promise me you won’t leave without saying good-bye.”
He looked surprised. “Who said anything about leaving?”
“Just, promise me, okay?”
“I promise,” he said.
Nora
The Next Day
He came in the next day. I was so sure he was going to tell me he was leaving. I was waiting for it. I’d gone home knowing it. I’d lain in bed thinking about it. I’d finally fallen asleep, and then the thoughts blessedly went away, but I’d woken with it. Sometimes when I wake up there is a second or two when I’m free of my life. It was not one of those mornings. It was there the moment I opened my eyes.
The craziest thing was that I’d done it. It was all me. I’d said yes to my mother and no to him. I’d sat with my mother on the couch, knowing he was out meeting Tammy. I could have gone. I could have made an excuse and gone out. But I didn’t.
He walked into the store around noon the next day. So the whole morning, of course, I was thinking about how late he must have been up with Tammy. And, yes, I thought about the possibility of that too.
All morning only two customers came in, so I made a total of two lattes in three hours, and the rest of the time I fidgeted and waited for someone to come by and tell me what was going on. Neil wasn’t even there to annoy me and take my mind off things.
Finally, Timothy came in with a bag slung over his shoulder.
God, he was handsome.
“So when are you leaving?” I asked him.
His smile disappeared.
“What’s all this talk about me going? Yesterday you were talking about saying good-bye, and today you’re asking me when I’m leaving. Are you trying to give me a hint?”
“No, it’s just that you have your bag.”
He shook his head at me. “Nora, do you think I could fit all my clothes in this? This is for my work. I have papers and my computer,” he explained patiently, like you would speak to a child. “See, I was in the hotel, doing work, and I figured I could come here and work instead. I saw the sign for Wi-Fi up in the window. Would that be okay?”
I felt really silly. But also incredibly happy. I tried to cover both by saying casually, “Yeah. I guess that would be okay.”
“Oh, and just so you know, even if you did want me to leave, you’re not getting rid of me that easily.”
Then he turned around and went over to a table by the window. He pulled out his laptop and started setting up.
I made him a double-shot Venti latte and brought it over.
He looked up at me. “Thank you.”
He kept looking me straight in the eyes, and it was doing funny things to my stomach.
“Are you sure your boss won’t mind me working here? I’m not going to get you into trouble?”
“It’s a coffee shop,” I said. “It’s supposed to be somewhere that people come to do work or read or hang out.”
“Really? Because it doesn’t have that feel.”
“I know. It doesn’t. I couldn’t even tell you the last time someone came in and sat down here.”
“Join me?” he said. “Just for a minute?”
And I did. It was my first rule breaking, though I wasn’t sure if it counted because Neil had let me do it the day before.
“How was the Box last night?” I tried to ask casually, but my heart was beating fast.
“Well, it was an experience. Your friend Tammy is something else. You two aren’t a whole lot alike, are you?”
“No, not really. I wish I were more like her.”
“Really? Why?”
“I don’t know,” I said—because to tell him why I wanted to be more like Tammy would mean admitting all the things I didn’t like about myself. And if he didn’t notice them, I certainly didn’t want to point them out. “She doesn’t let things get to her,” I said, coming up with a generic answer, which was also pretty much true.
“Tammy has her own problems,” he said.
I wanted to ask him what he thought those problems were (since he claimed he could see them after one night, and I couldn’t after more than two decades), but Tammy came in right at that second.
“Heeey, Tito,” she cried, when she saw Timothy sitting across from me.
I looked at him.
He sh
rugged. “At some point last night, she just started calling me Tito.”
“What do you mean, at some point?” she cried. “Only after you did five tequila shots.” She turned to me. “This man is an animal.”
“This man is too old for that,” Timothy said.
“Did he tell you about what Chrissy Rorden did?” Tammy said.
“No.”
“I thought I would spare her that one,” Timothy said pointedly.
“You’re kinder than I am. Hoo, boy, I need some coffee. Don’t worry, I’ll get it,” she said, when I started to get up.
Neil would have had a fit seeing her behind the counter, but I let her pour herself a cup. Then she came to join us at the table.
About five minutes later a customer came in, so I had to get up, and as I was making her macchiato the customer said, “So you can bring your laptop to work here?” glancing over at Timothy.
“Yes, sure.”
“Is there a limit to how long you can stay?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Well, I might just come back later to do some work.”
Timothy stayed all afternoon, and the woman actually did come back with her laptop. Then someone else sat down and read the paper. We hadn’t had three people sitting in the place at the same time the whole three years I’d worked there. I think it was just the sight of someone sitting with work spread out on the table, obviously at home in the place, that made the store seem more inviting.
When Neil came in, he almost did a double take. He came up to me at the counter. “What’s up with the crowd? You giving away free coffee today?”
I shook my head. “No, they just . . . came.”
“Huh.” He turned around and eyed Timothy. “Who came in first?”
“He did.”
“Figures,” Neil said. And then he said, “Do me a favor, why don’t you try to keep him around.”
Timothy
Timothy Asks Nora to Come to New York
I stayed in that tiny town in Kansas for a month. I spent my days in the coffee shop, doing my work from my laptop (though after a couple of weeks, so many people started to come there that one morning, when I slept late, I arrived and there were no tables left). I kept waiting for Nora to start seeming ordinary. But it didn’t happen. How could it be that a girl who lived at home with her mother and worked at a coffee shop would turn out to be the one that I couldn’t get out of my head? I couldn’t even tell you exactly what seemed different about her, except that she didn’t seem to have the need to fill the space, to talk at every pause to make sure there was never a moment of silence. That first day when I came back and we went for a drive and ended up driving all night, we talked a lot, but a lot of the time we were just quiet.
Through the Heart Page 12
