"For what?"
"For the company."
He walks to the door. Pauses. Looks back at me over his shoulder, and the light catches his face in a way that makes him look younger. Or older. I can't tell anymore.
"I'll see you tomorrow, Monika."
The door chimes. The wind blows. And I'm left standing behind the counter with a fifty-dollar bill in my hand and apiece of apple pie in my stomach and the strangest feeling that something has started that I don't know how to stop.
He comes back the next night.
And the night after that.
And the night after that.
I start calling him "the suit" in my head, because I still don't know his name and he still won't tell me, and "the man with the grey eyes and the expensive taste in tailoring" is too many syllables. The suit. It fits.
He comes in every night, always after midnight, always ordering black coffee and whatever I recommend. He's developed a taste for the apple pie—eats it slowly, deliberately, like he's savoring something he doesn't get to have often. I've started saving him the edge piece, the one with the most crust, and I don't know why I do it. Habit, maybe. Or something softer.
He asks me questions. Always questions. About the farm, about my mother, about my father's quiet grief and my sisters' loud lives. About the books I read and the music I listen to and the dreams I had before the city swallowed me whole. He listens to every answer like it matters, like he's collecting pieces of me for some purpose I can't see.
I ask him questions too. He answers none of them.
"What do you do?" I try, on the fifth night.
"I'm in logistics."
"That's not an answer."
"No," he agrees, with that small smile. "It's not."
"Then what's the real answer?"
He looks at me over the rim of his coffee mug. The steam curls between us, fogging the air, softening the edges of his face.
"I move things," he says. "From one place to another. Things that people want. Things that people are willing to pay for."
"What kind of things?"
"The kind you don't ask about."
I should stop. I know I should stop. But there's something about the way he says it—not threatening, not even secretive, just matter-of-fact—that makes me want to push harder.
"Things like what? Cars? Boats? Weapons?"
"Monika." His voice is gentle. Almost kind. "You don't want to know."
"I'll decide what I want to know."
He sets down his mug. Leans forward, just slightly, and the space between us shrinks. I can smell him now—cedar and smoke and something clean, like rain on concrete. His eyes are very grey, very steady, and they're looking at me in a way that makes my heart do something inconvenient.
"You're a good person," he says. "You're kind. You're gentle. You help people who bleed in your diner at two in the morning, and you don't ask for anything in return. Those are rare qualities. Don't let me ruin them."
"I don't think you could ruin me even if you tried."
He holds my gaze for a long moment. Something passes between us—something I don't have words for, something that feels like a door opening and closing at the same time.
Then he leans back. Picks up his mug. Takes a sip.
