The Sabotage Cafe

by Joshua Furst

  “What are you smiling about?” she said.

  “Am I smiling?” I was beaming, I knew it.

  “Yes, you're smiling.”

  “Well, I can't imagine why.”

  A gob of dough clung to the corner of her lower lip.

  “Do you want the other one? I made Crystal Light too.”

  She shrugged and nibbled at her pinky.

  “The lime kind.”

  “I haven't drunk that stuff since I was, like, fourteen.” Her tongue was thick with dough.

  “That was just last year.”

  “So.”

  “So, it wasn't—”

  “Last year was a whole year ago! That's a long time!”

  And something about the conjunction between these emphatic childish words and the blunt gravity of the expression on her face made me laugh. And laugh. In a way I'd thought I'd never laugh again.

  “What!” she said. “It's true, Mom!”

  “Okay.”

  “It's a long time! A whole year! That's—” She caught it too, her argument's silliness, and the laughter began to bubble in her as well. “Mom, that's a whole twelve months!”

  We clutched at our stomachs. Our faces burned red. A tiny line of spittle spooled down Cheryl's lip. Minutes slid past. We couldn't stop laughing. When, finally, we regained control of ourselves, we were in an altered headspace.

  Robert had said: “She wants to go back to before all this happened. Just like you, Julia. She just doesn't know how to do it.” Well, now we'd both succeeded, or it appeared we had. As our laughter petered out, self-consciousness settled in and our awkward desire for normalcy hovered between us.

  Her fingers rose to graze her cheek—so softly, like they were cradling a baby or feeling for a message imprinted there. A small twitter of charitable feeling worked its way out from under her skin.

  Maybe I'm not the most organized person. Maybe I need help keeping the dust balls and dirty clothes from taking over our house. Maybe I overthink every last thing and see resonances other people can't in the tiniest, most mundane human interactions—I get premonitions; I dwell over implications other people choose not to notice. Maybe things that should be easy are hard for me. Sure. I'll admit it. I'm easily spooked and I'm always on the lookout for the next person who's going to label and dismiss me, but it doesn't matter. None of it matters when Cheryl smiles at me in that quiet way. This small gesture of recognition, this—I want to call it adoration— it's the spitting image of how Sarah used to look back when she would coax me out of my fear. When I get this look from Cheryl, I can bear myself for a little while.

  We floated in a shallow silence, both of us conscious of the safety contained there. Though we weren't speaking, we were communicating. As long as we didn't say anything, neither of us would say anything wrong. We were timidly straining to let each other know how calm and peaceful—and normal—we could be.

  The safety of home was reinforced everywhere. I could hear it in the house sparrows chattering at each other, in the chipmunk rummaging in the rain gutter. I could see it in the pine needles floating on top of the tarp on the pool, in the way the cedar stain Robert had slathered on the deck had already, in just two years, begun to fade. Every tiny detail reminded me that, though this place gave off the texture of great tranquillity, I couldn't let myself sink into it, not while the memory of that frigid day continued to hover like no-see-ums over the yard.

  I wanted to say, “So, there it is, then. Now you know who I really am. I wish I could have told you in some other way,” but I knew I couldn't bear to hear her say she wouldn't forgive me.

  The thing I said instead was “I love you, Cheryl.”

  She shifted a tiny bit, pulling back like she was sliding out of a daydream. “Don't,” she snapped.

  “No, really, this is important. It's important that you hear me say this.”

  “I know you love me. Can't we not talk about it?”

  Her words were clipped and sharp, but I was persistent. “I love you and I understand there are things about me that must be hard for you to understand.”

  She shook her head back and forth, as though unceasing movement could ward off everything she wished wasn't true.

  “Cheryl—”

  “Stop!”

  “There are things, experiences—”

  “Stop! Stop! You have to!”

  “I've had experiences in my life that it wouldn't be right for me to tell you about.”

  “Then, don't, Mom! Stop! Stop it! I don't want to hear about things I shouldn't know! Why can't we just have a nice time? Why do you have to ruin everything?”

  The way she was looking at me! Like I'd just told her I wasn't her mother.

  “Okay,” I said. “You're right. I'll stop.”

  We sat there, both of us wishing we could go back to the moment just before when everything had seemed like it was all right.

  “Are you sure you don't want any Crystal Light?” I said.

  “No.”

  “It's just right inside. I'll go get it for you.”

  “I said no, Mom. I don't want any Crystal Light. I want—” Right there. That was the moment when she made up her mind. “Forget it,” she said. “I don't want anything.”

  Robert had told me, “She'll bounce back. She can't hold what happened against you forever.”

  He couldn't have been more wrong.

  ON THE MORNING OF AUGUST TWENTY-FIRST, I saw a short piece, just a paragraph, in the “Local News in Brief” section of the Pioneer Press, which fortified and confirmed the flecks of Cheryl's life I'd been receiving:

  COFFEESHOP FIRE

  Minneapolis firefighters responded to a two-alarm fire in Dinkytown last night. The fire, which blazed for nearly three hours, took place at the corner of Fourth Street and Fifteenth Avenue, in a converted warehouse that, most recently, housed the Sabotage Café, a coffeeshop owned by Mr. Richard Milton of St. Paul. In 1999, this establishment was shuttered by the Department of Health. Since that time, the building has remained vacant. Police are investigating the possibility of arson.

  It threw me into a panic. I was nauseous, hyperventilating. Without thinking through what I was doing, I called Robert at work.

  “Something's happened,” I said. “Cheryl and her—they were— she's—it's—she's—Robert—she's—something bad's happened, I know it I know it—”

  “Take a deep breath, Julia,” he told me. “I can't understand you unless you calm down.”

  I screamed at him. “I can't calm down! Your daughter's in trouble!”

  I could hear his fingers tapping at his computer keyboard.

  “Okay?” he said after enough time had passed in silence for him to believe he'd quelled something in me. “Better now?”

  “Did you see the paper?”

  “Today? I glanced at it.”

  “You didn't see about the fire?”

  “I guess not.”

  “In the café?”

  “Nut-uh.”

  “There was a fire. The Sabotage Café. That's what the place was called. And Cheryl was staying there.”

  “Was she?” He perked up.

  “She was there. She was living there. With her boyfriend.”

  “You know this.”

  “Yes, I know this. I wouldn't be telling you if I didn't know this.”

  “How? How do you know this?”

  “Let me read you the article.”

  “I've got it right here. I just pulled it up online.”

  “So, you see what I mean, then.”

  “It doesn't say anything about Cheryl. It doesn't say anybody was living there at all.”

  “She was there!” I said.

  “She could be anywhere, Julia.” There was weariness in his voice, trepidation.

  “She was staying there! She told me!”

  “When?” His voice tightened and leapt in pitch. “When did she tell you?”

  “She told me.”

  “Then, why didn't you tell me?
Her case is still open. I could have had someone go—” The bottom fell out of his line of thought. “Richard Milton. Who's this Richard Milton?”

  “That doesn't matter.”

  “He was in that band, wasn't he? He's that guy Cap. That guy you—” Something softened on his end of the line. “He was that guy,” he said again, this time sadly, mournfully.

  I couldn't remember what I'd hoped to achieve by calling him. I'd had a real reason, a practical reason, but now my desire for a comfort I couldn't bring myself to request garbled my mind.

  “I'm going to ask you a question now,” he said, “and it's probably going to make you angry, but—are you taking your pills? We agreed you'd take your pills. Are you taking them?”

  “Do I seem like I'm not taking my pills?”

  “I don't know,” he said. “I really don't know.”

  “Maybe you don't understand what I've been saying. This is an emergency. All I need to know is if you're gonna help me.”

  “What are you planning to do?”

  “Just—will you help me?”

  I could hear him squeezing his eyes.

  “Julia, I need something more than your intuition to go on before I drop everything and run over there. What if I make some calls and—”

  “And nothing. Either you will or you won't.”

  “I can try to finish early. How's that?”

  My mind was barging forward, searching for the questions that would lead to the right answers, narrowing in on the plausibilities, piecing out the story the paper had ignored. I headed down the hall toward the bedroom.

  “Can you hold on till then?” he was saying. “And I'll call the precinct, okay? Maybe, six or so?”

  “Fine,” I said. Cradling the phone against my ear, I was pulling blouses out of the closet, holding them up to myself in the mirror, trying to find one Cheryl would appreciate.

  “Hey,” Robert said before hanging up the phone. “Julia? I'm sorry. Really. Hang in there, okay?”

  I knew she'd be spooked by the cloak I'd made. I picked something else, a bright festive violet getup. Then, quickly, I dressed and grabbed my purse and drove off toward Dinkytown to find her.

  THERE HAD BEEN NO PASSING OUT, lit cigarette in hand, or kicking over candles in a drunken stupor. Intent had been involved in the setting of the fire.

  Maybe they'd gone out in the late afternoon to sit by the river and escape the stifling tension of the squat. Cheryl and Trent and Devin, even Mike. It was chilly. The cold front that followed the rain of two nights ago had thrown down spikes and tethered itself to the plains.

  Walking four abreast down the wide sidewalk, they played punching games, Trent's fist slamming hard into Devin's bicep.

  “Don't hit me, dick.”

  “What?”

  “Don't fucking hit me.”

  “Don't look at me, fucking Mike's the one who hit you.”

  This behavior no longer charmed Cheryl. Hidden behind it, she now saw a menace that wasn't rooted in any ideals. She was beginning to believe there was a difference between moral outrage and the impulse toward total self-negation, the blunt downward urge toward ruin.

  “Mike didn't fucking hit me. Mike's way the fuck over there. Alright, dick?” Throwing a thumb over his shoulder, Devin glared at Trent. He didn't notice Mike crab-crawling up behind like a commando to flick his earlobe and spin away. “Leave me the fuck alone, Trent.”

  A shove in the chest, a leap, fist in the air, and Devin had Trent down on the sidewalk. The bottles they were carrying slid from their hands, somehow not breaking, though the brown paper bags were skinned off by the concrete. They rolled over each other, arms flailing, knees jabbing, across the curb and into the street. Then, when they were exhausted, they lay on their backs and stared at the traffic signs above their heads. The inevitable laughter came pouring from their mouths.

  She knew her feelings were transparent. The best she could do to hide them was keep her mouth shut. Let Trent and the other guys think she was just pouting, asserting her prerogative as a girl. She felt dirty in her army jacket—not dirty-grimy but dirty-skanky, condemned. It itched. It smelled like all the things she'd once imagined she'd become with Trent. But she couldn't take it off in this wind. The shame she felt wearing it kept her sharp, suspicious, alone and alert.

  And on they walked, over to the West Bank, heading up Riverside toward the St. Anthony Falls.

  Their taunts had a harder edge to them tonight, and the silences lasted longer than usual. Cheryl wasn't the only one to feel the end nipping at her back.

  Today was Mike's birthday; he'd given Chipotle his notice days ago and he'd already stopped down by the strip mall on Washington to work things out with the recruiter. His bluffs and boasts had turned out to be true, and tomorrow he'd be enlisting. As this sank in, Cheryl suspected, his contempt was lighting up Trent and Devin's minds like tiki torches; his words flaming there: derelict, dead-ender, small fry in a small town. Their anger was spiced through with the same futility they'd been trying to dodge when they first ran from the adults who'd loved and despised them. None of them had known what to do with it before, and none of them knew what to do with it now.

  When Nineteenth merged and rose into the Tenth Avenue Bridge, they jumped the safety railing and slid single file, their arms spread like cranes, down the crushed-rock embankment that fanned toward the water's edge. First Mike and then Devin. Then Trent a second later.

  They were just below the dam; the water in the deep center of the river churned chaotically, but behind the jetty angling in front of them, the water was still. As Mike and Devin each hit the lip of the retaining wall, their boots caught and bucked and they had to twist, leap, contort their spines, to veer under the iron girders of the bridge.

  Cheryl skated in, recklessly, behind Trent. The slipping stones, the speed, the rush of lost control sent a pulse of adrenaline shooting up her system. Her ideals were gone now, but there was still fight in her—and resentment, because, even now, knowing how rancid Trent really was, she couldn't throw off her attachment to him. She suddenly loathed him, suddenly understood that, just like her, just like me, just like so many people, he was mostly lashing out at himself; the difference was he didn't care who he damaged along the way. She was stronger than me, though. Whereas my life in Dinkytown had eroded under me, dropping me into a place I couldn't escape, she had thrived in this subterranean world and she could choose to leave it on her own terms.

  Lunging, she knocked Trent in the back with both hands. He fell forward, catching his foot on a loose pebble, and reeled toward the edge of the retaining wall and Cheryl suddenly wanted to take back what she'd done.

  “Fuck-shit—Trent!”

  His arms pinwheeled at his sides and he tumbled flailing into the river.

  Floating slowly downstream, he grabbed at the sheer concrete, wrapped his fingers around streamers of algae that disintegrated at his touch. He was pulling away, slipping toward the rapids.

  Cheryl calculated the geometry. She ran under the bridge and around onto the jetty, hoping to catch him as the waters merged, but when he hit the current, he was pushed toward the bank. She circled back the other way.

  Devin and Mike, watching from under the bridge, did nothing to help. They didn't even bother to move out of her way.

  “There's a fucking ladder, Trent, grab it! Fucking grab it!”

  But the safety ladder slid out of his reach and he floated on downstream, past the edge of the concrete, trailing now along mudbanks. He lunged at ferns and saplings, pulling off handfuls of leaves.

  Cheryl's boots stuck in the mud as she ran. She high-stepped through nettles, swiping the thorny branches away with her forearms. She tracked him, a hand here, a glint of t-shirt there.

  When he caught a loop of root and hoisted himself out, she clung to him, babbling—“I was going too fast. I swear to God. I'm sorry. I couldn't stop. I'm so sorry, Trent”—knowing she was lying. And as he stood there refusing to forgive her, his waterlo
gged clothes sagging toward the ground, dripping, she cried.

  He pushed her away. “You're a fucking bitch,” he said. “And you're fucking going fucking first this time.” With a shove, he started her marching toward his friends.

  On the gravel, Cheryl picked up the six-pack she'd dropped. She cracked a beer and it sprayed all over her face. Mike stared at her from behind hooded eyes as she sat down, letting her know she couldn't hide from him. She gave him the finger.

  For a long time, the four of them huddled under the bridge, dosing themselves with bourbon and beer and dourly celebrating the end of everything. When one of them did periodically say something, a wisp of sniping curled into the air.

  “The Marines, man,” Trent might say. “The fucking Marines.”

  “Yeah, be all you can be.”

  “That's the army, jackass.”

  Mike would clarify, talking mostly to himself. “Semper Fi, that's the Marines. It means Always Faithful. Fucking Always Fucking Faithful.”

  “The Marines are a bunch of fucking suckers. Fucking cannon fodder. They're the ones fucking who get blown up so the motherfuckers in charge don't have to.”

  Cheryl kept silent. She sipped her beer and dully watched the water flood past.

  They were lost inside themselves. Each alone and angry, afraid of what would come next.

  “That's why I'm kicking this shithole,” Mike said a while later, like he was giving voice to some conversation entrenched inside his mind.

  The look that passed across Trent's face was so close to sorrow that it made Cheryl sick. What's going to happen, she wondered, when I leave? Will he be as brokenhearted as he is over Mike? How many ways can I think of to hurt him? She yanked the bottle of Jim Beam from his hand, spilling a dollop of the brown liquor on her jeans.

  “That's fucking mine, you prick.”