The woman glared back at the audience. “Screw them,” she said.
“How about a fresh cup of coffee?” I asked.
“I drink tea. Not coffee.”
“We have tea. How about a nice Earl Grey—”
“Green. Decaffeinated. Better for the skin,” she said as she began to dig into her Coach bag for a pack of Camels.
A chimney. Great. There was no smoking in the coffeehouse. Or in any coffeehouse, for that matter, ever since the city’s new statutes against smoking in public places. So I thought fast.
“How about we go up to the second floor?” I suggested. “We don’t open it up until evening. It’ll be nice and private.”
And, I added silently, I can sit you and your pack of Camels beside an open double-pane window to prevent your smoke from driving out half the customers down here.
“Fine,” she said. “But I don’t have all day.”
So far so good, I told myself. At least four yeses and she hadn’t once threatened fisticuffs—a routine occurrence in my old neighborhood, where use of brawn was preferred to use of brain by a margin of at least two to one.
After I prepared the coffee and tea, we settled in at a table on the deserted second floor. I learned her name was Darla Branch Hart. I told her my name was Clare Cosi. And the accusations instantly resumed—
“Anabelle is in the hospital for one reason—negligence,” the woman said, stabbing the air with her unlit Camel. “She had a workplace accident. So I expect you to pay Anabelle’s hospital bills.”
“Anabelle’s covered, Mrs. Hart,” I said, watching her place the cigarette between her lips and fire it up. (Why was I suddenly picturing the small burst of flame igniting the fuse of a cannon?)
“What do you mean, she’s covered?”
“When I promoted Anabelle to assistant manager,” I said, “she received health insurance and hospitalization coverage under our HMO plan. The bills will be paid. Except for the fifteen-dollar copayment. And there might be some deductibles—”
“Well, you have to cover all that. In fact, I’d like that fifteen-dollar copayment. Right now.”
I stared at her. “Fifteen dollars?”
“Yes,” she said, sucking in a lungful of tar and blowing it out the side of her perfectly lined lips. “Now.”
I suddenly found myself reconsidering the use of fisticuffs as a conflict resolution strategy. After all, as I’d already mentioned, it was preferred two to one in my old neighborhood. And in the words of Joe Pasquale Cosi (aka my father), who was often forced to collect his fair share of earnings from one deadbeat business partner or other: “Cupcake, you just can’t beat the purity of communication in a simple punch to the nose.”
But Grandma would have disapproved.
“Mrs. Hart, I’ll gladly give you fifteen dollars if it will make you feel better.” I dug into my Old Navy jeans and came up with a ten and a five. I moved to place them on the table between us. She snatched them up and stuffed them into her Coach bag before the worn green bills even touched the coral-colored marble.
“Where’s my daughter’s things?” Darla next demanded. “The hospital told me she didn’t have a purse when they brought her in—and her roommate, that ethnic-looking girl, what’s her name? Esther? She told me Anabelle must have left the purse here.”
“The police have it,” I told her, trying to hold my temper (“ethnic-looking” could pretty much describe me as well as Esther and I didn’t appreciate the insulting tone she’d used in stating it).
“The police?” Darla Hart’s face looked stricken. I made a significant note of that. “Why would the police have it?”
Why would you look stricken at the mention of the police? I wanted to ask, but saved that question and instead asked—
“Why do you think the police think Anabelle’s fall wasn’t just a workplace accident?” I asked. (Okay, so I fudged the facts—the police did think it was a simple accident. But the Petty-Cash Queen here didn’t know that.)
Darla’s mouth turned down, her eyes widened, then shifted to stare out the open window. She took a long drag. The white of the cigarette paper against the blood-red polish of the woman’s manicured nails reminded me of a line from Clare Booth Luce’s play The Women: “Looks like you’ve been tearing at somebody’s throat.”
“What do they think?” she asked, still staring into the afternoon rain clouds. Her fingers were slightly trembling.
“Well, the police called it a ‘crime scene,’” I said. “They took fingerprints, collected evidence, that sort of thing. Seems like she could have been pushed.”
Darla turned back, stared hard into my face. “Who do they think would have pushed her?”
I didn’t know, of course. So my instinct was to turn away, but I didn’t. I forced myself to hold her gaze. “Whoever they suspect. They wouldn’t tell me.”
Darla frowned again. Abruptly, she rose to her feet, almost spilling her untouched green tea. “I have to go.”
“Where can I reach you?”
“The Waldorf.”
She searched the table a moment and, after finding no ashtray, carelessly dropped the burning butt into her teacup. I grimaced, watching the pale rolled paper rise to the top of the green liquid and float there, dead and cold.
“I want you to know—and you can let all the owners of this place know—I’m hiring a lawyer,” she said. “I don’t care if all Anabelle’s hospital bills are covered by insurance. My stepdaughter deserves some money for her pain and suffering, and I’m gonna see she gets it.”
With that, Darla shoved the short handles of her fashionable Coach bag onto her shoulder, turned on her Gucci boot heel, and headed for the exit.
I watched her go, noting that her movements were as graceful as her stepdaughter’s. A former dancer, no doubt.
I leaned back, averted my eyes from the cold, dead butt floating in the green tea, sipped my house blend, and considered the fact that Darla was staying at the Waldorf yet snatching up a worn ten and five like she was down to her last dime. And I remembered Esther had said something about Darla showing up a few days ago to take care of some sort of “business.” I needed to find out what exactly that “business” was.
As I cleared the table, I quietly thanked my Grandma Cosi. I guess her method (not to mention Socrates’s and Abe’s) was really the best way to go—at least when you were trying to gather information from an angry source. Hostility handled and channeled through reason and strategy—
“Clare? Are you up here? It’s dire I speak with you!”
It was Matteo. Back from god knows where, doing god knows what. And using the dreaded D word again.
I sighed, wishing my grandmother were still alive—then maybe she could tell me why, when it came to my ex-husband, I almost always wanted to use the more straightforward conflict resolution strategy my father employed—and (need I add) preferred two to one in my old neighborhood.
Fourteen
A few hours later, I was heading up the back stairs to my new second-floor apartment. Everything was under control downstairs. Tucker was on duty as assistant manager, and our evening barista, one of our many part-time workers, had just arrived.
After the events of the day, I really needed a few hours off. Joy was coming for dinner, and I wanted the time to clean up, set a nice table, and listen to some Frank Sinatra.
When I unlocked the door to the duplex, Java greeted me with her usual ear-piercing jaguar yowl. She wasn’t used to her new surroundings. Well, neither was I. But at least Java’s problem could be solved by a scratch or two behind the ears and a can of Fancy Feast Chopped Grill Platter. My dilemmas weren’t so easily solved.