by E. C. Bell
“You can’t stop anything,” she said. “We can do whatever we want. Right, girls?”
She turned to the rest of them but no-one answered her. Not even Mr. Middleton, who stared at me as though he was afraid if he looked away I’d disappear. I wondered if he was afraid that if that happened he’d disappear next. They’d all disappear. All of them.
Rita had told me once, a long time ago, when it looked like we might be friends, that something had drawn her to the diamond the first time. And she thought it was me.
“I knew there was someone here,” she said. “Not all of these people, of course, but one, for sure. And it was you. I could feel you. It was like you were calling me.”
I’d told her she was crazy, of course. No-one could have that kind of power. It was softball that pulled everyone here, not me. But deep down, I’d wondered if maybe she was right. If I was calling them all to this place somehow. Allowing them to collect here every spring and summer, for a few good months, every year.
I’d never asked anyone else if they’d felt compelled to come to the diamond, but I’d watched them when they first wandered in. They’d always looked at second base. At me.
After that, the welcome wagon, which included Mr. Middleton and Mr. Kelly, took over, and the newbies were welcomed with open arms. But in those first few minutes before the old umps swooped in, every ghost looked for me on second base.
Now, I didn’t know if I really could make the whole thing stop. But I figured no-one else knew either.
They’d have to call my bluff.
“All right, Karen.” That was Mr. Kelly, old, half-blind and still for some reason one of the best umps, living or dead. He was the one who brought calm when things got too crazy. Apparently, he’d decided that things had veered into “too crazy” territory. “Maybe we can talk about the shunning.”
“She’s going to win?” Joanne screeched. “You’re going to let her win, just because she was the first one here? She doesn’t have that much power, for God’s sake!” She turned to Mr. Middleton, beseechingly. “Come on, Isaac, make her do the right thing for all of us.”
I wondered when he’d told her his first name.
Mr. Middleton acted like she hadn’t even spoken. Like she was invisible. Like maybe, just maybe, she was the one who was going to be shunned.
“Yes,” he said, looking at me. Not Joanne. Me. “Maybe we went too far, shunning Marie.”
“Isaac—” Joanne stammered, but Mr. Middleton cut her off.
“You will call me Mr. Middleton,” he said, without looking at her. “And I think we should vote again.”
AFTER THE VOTE, Joanne yelled that maybe she’d blow the whole thing up herself—and then she disappeared.
“Don’t worry,” Mr. Middleton said to me. “We’ll talk to her. Get her back.”
Even though I didn’t care if I ever saw her again, I nodded. “Sounds good,” I said. “Can we play ball now?”
“Yes, of course,” said Mr. Middleton, a big smile on his face like it was his idea. But the rest of them looked a little afraid, and I realized they were actually waiting for me to make the first move to the ball diamond.
So, I led the way. Hey, why not? I’d won the vote and I wanted to play as badly as the rest of them. Maybe more.
As we settled into our game, everyone stopped acting weird around me. Even when I missed an easy grounder and yelled “Shit!” as I chased after the ball, Mr. Middleton called out, “Karen! Language!” just like always.
Maybe it would be all right, after all, and I could talk to Marie without the rest of them treating me like a traitor. I had things I wanted to tell her. Not about myself, of course. No way she was getting all my deep dark secrets. I had them buried, and that was the way it was going to stay. But I could talk to her about softball. After all, I’d been at this game for over forty years.
A small voice in the back of my head whispered, “You took such a chance. You never did anything like that before. Why did you do it now?” But I ignored it.
I didn’t have an answer for the small voice. So, I shunned it. Just the way they’d all tried to shun Marie.
Marie:
The Coffee Factory, and Millie’s Pee Dance
THE NEXT DAY, James and I had a free couple of hours between appointments, so we headed over to the Coffee Factory, where Karen had worked. According to the research I did online it had been in the same spot forever. The same owners and the same location. Everything the same. There was a chance that some of the people who were there when Karen worked there could still be around. Maybe.
At the very least, I hoped they’d be able to give me contact information for people who had been working at the same time as Karen. But it had been a long time.
“Do you think we’ll have any luck?” I asked James.
He shrugged. “Not really,” he finally said. “But hey. You never know.”
Great. Not even James thought this was a good idea.
“Well, why didn’t you tell me that before I made the phone call?” I asked, rather nastily I belatedly realized, and tried to smooth it over. “What I mean is, I don’t want to waste your time.”
“Hey, any time I get to spend with you isn’t wasted,” he said. “And besides, it’s better to check for facts than assume. You know?”
“I guess.” I glanced out the passenger window and saw we were back on Ninety-Ninth Street. “This seemed to be her hangout, didn’t it?” I asked. “She lived on this street, worked on this street—”
“And probably died on this street,” James finished. “Yeah, I noticed.”
We turned up 77th Avenue, heading toward the railway line that bisected that part of the city. That railway line was the reason, primarily, that Ninety-Ninth Street on the east side was for houses, and on the west side was for businesses. It must have made for some uncomfortable cheek by jowl living.
The buildings down that small street were, generally, run-down looking, so the Coffee Factory stood out, like a little, clean, living gem. There were flower pots—with living flowers—on either side of the door, and the grass outside was close cropped.
“Looks nice,” James said as he stopped the Volvo in front of the building. He opened the car door and smiled. “Smells even better,” he said.
The smell of roasting coffee hit me, and I closed my eyes and revelled in it for a second. It smelled the way I imagined the best coffee in the world would taste. I wanted to sit there in the car with the windows open so I could enjoy the smell for the rest of my life.
“You coming?” James asked.
“Of course,” I said, and threw the passenger door open. We walked through the front door and up to the counter. I rang the bell next to the cash register.
“Be with you in a second!” a man cried from the back of the building. So, I took that second to look around the front end of the Coffee Factory.
It was small, but clean. Lining one wall were rows of bags of coffee. Dark to light roast, something for everyone’s taste. Along the far wall were coffee machines of every different size and shape, and down the window wall were cups and other coffee related bric-a-brac. And everywhere, that intoxicating smell of freshly roasted coffee.
“I could live in this place,” I whispered. To James, I thought, but another man answered.
“Thank you,” he said. “We try.”
I whirled and felt my face heat. I tried to think of something to say and failed, but luckily James picked that moment to step in and take over.
“My name is James Lavall,” he said. “I believe we have an appointment?”
“Ah.” The man’s face stilled, and his smile slowly disappeared. “You’re here to talk about Karen.”
“Yes,” James said. “We are.”
“It’s been a long time,” the man said.
“Forty years,” James said. “Were you working here at that time?”
“Well, I own the place,” the man said. “So yeah.”
“Mr. Wesson,” I said, fi
nally pulling myself together enough to get involved. “I’m the one who called you.”
“Ah,” Mr. Wesson said. “Why now?”
“What?”
“Why are you bothering with this now?” he asked. “It’s been—”
“Forty years,” James said again. He stared at Mr. Wesson’s face for a long moment, as though measuring him. Then he went into our “we’re helping clean up cold cases,” spiel.
“So, you’re not doing this for the family?” Wesson asked.
“No.”
“Oh.” His face fractured as he tried to smile but couldn’t pull it off. “I thought maybe her parents hired—”
“No,” James said. “This is through the police.”
“That surprises me,” Mr. Wesson said. “The police didn’t seem to take Karen’s disappearance very seriously at all at the time. I mean, they came here and talked to us, but it was only once.” He shrugged. “I guess that’s all the time they had to spare.”
“It could be that the police had decided, at that time, that there was no reason to reinterview any of you,” James said. “However, we are talking to everyone who had contact with Karen in the days before her disappearance. Are you okay with that?”
“No problem here,” Mr. Wesson said, and his face softened. “She was a wonderful girl. I still don’t believe that she just walked away from her family—her whole life. You know?”
“Yes,” I said. “We know.”
“So, what do you want to know?” he asked.
We hit him with the usual questions. Was there anyone left in the business, besides himself, who had worked with her? No. What did she do, when she worked here? Cashier, but she was showing an interest in learning how to roast coffee.
“I couldn’t believe she wanted to do the heavy work—she was such a little bit of a thing,” Mr. Wesson said. “But she had an affinity for it. She’d even joked with me, a time or two, that maybe someday she’d take over the business.”
“Would you have considered it?” I asked.
“Oh, she was only with us a year or so,” Mr. Wesson said. “I’m sure she would have found something else to do with her time. But she did have big dreams. She talked about going to Columbia, way down in South America, to find the best coffee. Things like that.” He shrugged. “I think what she wanted was to travel. But back in the seventies, Columbia was not the best place for a woman to travel to alone. Still, it impressed me that she even thought about it.”
“Did you ever socialize with Karen outside work?” James asked.
Mr. Wesson shook his head. “Not really. She came to our Christmas parties with her parents for a few years before she started working with us, but that was about it.”
“So you and your wife were friends with Karen’s family?”
“It started with the wives, Christina and Edna,” he said. “They met at some group they joined. Knitting, I think, and became fast friends. Which meant Rupert and I became friends, too, even though they were older than us. We hadn’t even had Patty—our daughter—when we first met them. They already had Karen, so, we watched her grow up.” His lips tightened. “We stayed friends with them until Karen disappeared.”
“Why didn’t you remain close after that?” James asked.
“We tried to stay in contact,” he said, “even though it was hard as hell to watch them fall apart. But after a while, they stopped returning our calls. To be truthful, it was almost a relief. And then, Christina got sick, and I didn’t have the energy—emotional or otherwise—to try to keep in contact with them.”
I could tell by the look on his face that his wife had not survived and was trying to think of a way to tell him how sorry I was, when James spoke.
“Can we speak to your wife?” he said. “Just to confirm what you’ve told us.”
Both Mr. Wesson and I turned and stared at him as though he had suddenly lost his marbles. “My wife died,” Mr. Wesson finally said. “Cancer.”
Damn cancer.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” James said, though to be honest he didn’t sound very sorry. “Is there anyone else we can talk to who can corroborate the facts?”
Mr. Wesson’s face closed. “Maybe her parents, if they’ll talk to you.”
“Other employees?”
“Not from that long ago,” he said. By his tone, he was evidently finished with us, but unfortunately for him, James wasn’t done with him.
“What about customers?” he said.
“From forty years ago?” Mr. Wesson asked. Then he stopped. “Actually, I might be able to give you some of those names. Christina and Karen set up a database when she started working with us, so we could keep in contact with our customers. You know, mail them flyers and the like. I haven’t sent out mailers in a few years, though. Just Christmas cards.” He smiled. “Christina loved Christmas.”
A database, I thought. Even something put together forty years before should be accessible—
Mr. Wesson pointed at a bank of old-fashioned card file holders. Like the ones that libraries used to use, before they became computerized. “They’re all there,” he said. “In alphabetical order, of course.”
I tried to smile. “So, all your customer data—”
“Is written down on index cards,” he said. “I thought about getting it all on computer, but I couldn’t bear to. You know.”
“Because your wife built it,” I said.
“Exactly,” he said, sounding relieved that I understood.
“Any chance you could get me a list of your customers?” I asked. “With contact information?” He had to have that computerized. After all, nobody wanted to look up every name and address, every Christmas—
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m the only one working here full-time anymore. Just a couple of part-timers to help me.”
“Oh.”
“And I don’t have the time to go through all the cards for you,” he said.
Damn.
“But if you want, you can do it,” he continued. “Just promise me you’ll put everything back exactly the way you found it.”
I glanced at James, and he shrugged. This wasn’t his deal. Not really. It was mine. If I wanted to take the time to do this, I could.
“Can I come back tomorrow?” I asked.
He finally smiled. “I open the doors at seven,” he said. “And coffee will be on.”
“YOU DO REALIZE that tomorrow is Saturday,” James said as we walked back to the car. “And you have to go to Sylvia Worth’s place. To meet her dead boyfriend.”
“I know,” I said, and sighed. “Looks like tomorrow’s going to be busy.”
I STAYED WITH James that night, and we talked about whether I would use his car the next morning. I was starting to feel guilty about how much I was using it, but he scoffed.
“You gotta get around,” he said. “And I don’t mind a day off.”
“Can you actually afford that?” I asked. I knew he had three jobs on the go and needed to go to the office, even though it was Saturday. “I’ll bus it to the Coffee Factory—and maybe cab it to Sergeant Worth’s.”
I didn’t much like the idea of taking a cab to Sergeant Worth’s because that meant when I was done, I’d have to wait at her place for the cab to return. All that time, waiting. Small talking. With her.
“Maybe I can use the car for Sergeant Worth,” I said. “But honestly, I can bus it in the morning.”
“It’s up to you,” he said. “But remember, I offered.”
We retired and I tucked myself around him on his little bed. He’d talked about getting something bigger but I didn’t want him to do that. Didn’t want him to change too much about his life for me. Besides, I liked how protected I felt wrapped in his arms as he slowly settled and relaxed. I could listen to his breathing, steady and slow, and go along with it. My own breathing would slow. My heart would slow. My muscles would relax, and finally, finally, my brain would slow. And then, I could sleep, wrapped in his warmth and safety.
Four hours later, the nightmares kicked me awake. This one was “crazy girlfriend part two” and was a real scorcher. Watching someone shoot themselves was hard to take, even eight months after the fact. I managed to keep from waking James, but when I walked into the living room covered in sweat, Millie was waiting for me. Good old Millie the comfort dog. She stood by my feet, waiting.
“Hi, girl,” I said. I reached down and scratched the top of her head, then straightened and went to the sink. I got myself a glass of water and drank it, hoping that that would be enough, this time. That I’d be able to go back to sleep this time. But it wasn’t and I couldn’t.
Millie curled up in my lap as I sat at James’s computer, playing games so I didn’t have to think about just how little sleep I was getting. Again.
After thirteen games of solitaire, I rechecked how long it would take me to get from James’s house to the Coffee Factory by bus, looked at the clock hanging on the wall above James’s desk, and sighed. It would take me just over one hour, which meant I would catch the bus at 6 am. I still had a couple of hours before I had to be at the bus stop.
“Should I try sleeping a bit more?” I asked Millie. She stared at me with her big brown eyes like she was actually thinking about answering me, then huffed and jumped off my lap. She walked to the door, then turned her head and stared at me, expectantly.
“Need to go out?” I said.
Her look seemed long-suffering. Like she couldn’t believe the idiots she had to deal with. Of course, I have to go out, her look said. Unless you’d rather I pee on the carpet.
I glanced down at what I was wearing. One of James’s old tee shirts, and a pair of shorts. Good enough. I rammed my feet into my sneakers, scooped the keys from the bowl, grabbed her leash and collar, and hustled her out.
The moon was huge and hung above the horizon like a staring eye. It kind of creeped me out, to be honest. I didn’t want to follow Millie to her usual pee spot, but dogs are nothing if not routinized, so she won, and I stepped around the corner of the apartment building into total blackness.
