“Okay, okay, I’m going,” I mumbled. Then, yanking my little wheeled case of French presses behind me, I headed for the door.
The rest of the afternoon and evening went by in a blur. It was Friday, an electric night for the Village, and the crowds of coffee drinkers and pastry eaters just kept on ringing the little bell above our front door.
After the office and hospital workers left, the pre- and postdinner crowds flooded us: couples on dates, NYU students hanging out, older acquaintances having long talks, cold, tired tourists hoping to warm up and wake up with a hot beverage. And though Saturday and even Sunday evenings were the biggest of the week for the bridge and tunnel crowd, Friday had its fair share of business from the residents of New Jersey and the other four of New York’s five boroughs.
Esther and I worked well as a team. The faster the crowds came in, the faster we turned them over with espressos, lattes, cappuccinos, muffins, cookies, cannoli, tarts, and, bizarrely, even a few icy coffee frappes—a chilling choice on a frosty November night, but who was I to judge a paying customer’s coffee craving?
By ten o’clock, the pace at the bar finally slowed, although dozens of customers were still lounging on the shop’s first and second floors, mostly clustered around the warmth of the fireplaces. By eleven fifteen, we were getting ready to start cleaning and closing.
“Do you want me to shoo the rest of the customers out?” Esther asked, wiping her hands on a dish towel.
I shook my head, wiping my own hands on my jeans—I’d changed back into work clothes after leaving Solange. “I’ll do it myself. You did a great job today, Esther. If you’ve finished restocking, you can hit the road.”
“Thanks, boss.” Esther yawned. “I’ve got to sack out fast and recuperate before BB takes me out tomorrow. I’d hate to be wrecked for our big date.”
“You’re still interested in that rapper?” I asked, too weary to mask my skeptical tone.
“Am I still interested?” Esther gawked at me through her black-framed glasses as if I’d just asked her if the Earth was flat. “I’ll have you know that boy rocks my world. And unless a dirty bomb goes off somewhere in the tristate area mañana, he’ll be rocking it at exactly this time twenty-four hours from now.”
I sighed. Esther was about the only person I knew who’d even consider bringing a nuclear fallout reference into her anticipation for a Saturday night date.
“Then I’m happy for you, Esther,” I told her sincerely. “Have a good night.”
“Ciao, boss!”
By midnight, my Goth girl barista was long gone, and I had shooed the last of the customers out, too. I was about to twist the key on the front dead bolt when I noticed a familiar figure in a long, cinnamon-colored overcoat negotiating the traffic across Hudson Street.
The lanky, broad-shouldered detective strode right up to the Blend’s entrance and stood there, looking down at me through the beveled glass. I cracked open the heavy door.
“Hi, Mike.”
“Hi, Clare.”
“Can I come in?”
“Yes…of course…”
I stepped back and let Mike Quinn step through. A bone-chilling blast of damp air swept in with him off the river just a few blocks away. I shuddered, remembering that humidified cave of Keitel’s that had led to the misunderstanding with my daughter.
I still hadn’t heard from Joy. And I’d checked in with Matt so often, he’d told me to cool it already because his cell’s battery was about to die, and he still had a long night ahead squiring Mr. and Mrs. Kona Coffee, Jr., around.
While the Waipuna kids were with a sitter at the hotel, Matt had taken their young parents to a Broadway show and a late dinner. Now they were on their way to the first in a long list of nightspots that they’d read about on the Internet and wanted to visit.
“Did you get my voice mail message?” Mike asked. His tone was flat, his face impassive. The man had all the life of an ice sculpture.
“Your message?” I repeated weakly. “You mean the ominous one that said you wanted to have ‘a talk’ with me?”
Mike nodded. “I stopped by twice earlier, but Tucker told me you were uptown on business.”
“Yeah. That was your idea, if you recall. I pitched Solange on serving coffee from the Village Blend.”
“Oh, right…How did that go?”
“They want the contract, but it was still a catastrophe…”
I had so much to tell Mike: Joy’s close friend being murdered, Joy being looked at as a suspect, my infiltration of her workplace in search of the boy’s killer, the disastrous misunderstanding when my daughter found me in the arms of her married lover. Oh, where to begin?
“So…do you want your usual latte?” I asked, turning from the door. I began walking toward the espresso bar, but Mike didn’t follow.
“I can’t stay long, Clare,” he said sharply.
I turned back around. His face was still a stark plane. And his eyes, which were always so alive when they gazed at me, were now still, blue stones. There was no sentiment in them, no playfulness, no affection, hardly a bit of life.
“You don’t have time for coffee?” I said weakly. “Not even one cup?”
“It’s Friday, and the clubs are crowded,” he said. “We’ve doubled the number of undercover officers tonight.”
“Oh, right…the May-September gang. Still no bites?”
“Nothing yet. And they struck twice last night; a man and a woman were victimized after leaving two different clubs. We missed them both.”
I could see that failure had been hard for him. Really hard. It was there in his tense jawline, his weary posture. “Well, hang in there,” I said gamely. “The biggest clubbing days are tonight, tomorrow, and even Sunday. I bet you’ll nail them before the end of the weekend.”
“Yeah…” Mike said, but he failed to buck up. Then his dead expression became downright grim. “Listen, Clare, I don’t have much time, and I didn’t want to do this over the phone.”
Oh, God. “The talk.” Oh, God…
“I’m sorry, Clare. I really am…”
I stepped back, closed my eyes. He’s really going to do this. He’s going to break us up. I could feel tears already welling up in my eyes and throat, choking me.
“Just say it, Mike.”
“Okay.” He took a breath. “I want you to kick Allegro out of your apartment.”
I opened my eyes. “What?”
“I want you to take away his key, throw out his pants and his shirts and his shoes. I want you to evict him from your living space.”
“I can’t do that, Mike. My ex-husband has a legal right to live there. His mother owns the duplex, the entire building, and she had us sign papers—”
“Then you need to leave, because I can’t go on like this. I want a relationship with you, Clare. I do. And I know you want more from me. Believe me, I’m willing to give it. But I need to know the woman I’m falling for isn’t going to make a fool of me.”
“Mike, I don’t know why you think—”
“Hear me out, Clare!”
His sharp tone floored me. Mike rarely raised his voice. And when he did, it was a holy terror—the kind of intensity that came from years of cowing defiant criminals and taking command at crime scenes.
“Okay,” I said softly. “Talk.”
“I’m not a kid anymore, some Dudley Do-Right in a uniform that I was at twenty-six when I met my wife. I won’t just stumble along in a relationship again, letting things happen to me, hoping things just work themselves out. I’ve been through too much craziness already in my marriage. So you take the time you need to think about what you want—”
“Stop, Mike. Please!”
Quinn did. And I was stunned to see the look of pure dread come over his face. I’d never seen him scared before. My God, he thinks I’m going to choose my ex-husband.