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Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a curtain flutter out from one of the open upstairs windows of the Café. Will was still waiting for the custom screens. And that’s when I knew. I burst in through the door, back through the kitchen and into the dining area, where two customers had grabbed a window table next to where Claire was bent over her phone, flanked by two new friends from school who were also looking at something on her screen.
“Claire!” They leapt like I’d interrupted delicate surgery. “Can you stick around for a little while longer? And please get those people some menus. I’ll pay you double overtime. I have to check something upstairs. I won’t be long.”
I didn’t even wait for her to answer. I would have been a crappy, bossy mother, I decided, as I quietly took the stairs. The knob for the new oak door was on back order, so I had to gently nudge it open with my shoulder. The door would eventually separate the old Café from the new space, once the stairs leading directly outside were complete, but right now Will kept it shut to keep the construction dust from wafting into Café Rose.
The space was dim for the middle of the afternoon. Then I noticed all the curtains were drawn. Newspaper trails still lined the floor to catch spatter from the ceiling paint. But the tables had finally been delivered, a cluster of twelve of them, with marble tops and wooden legs. I let a hand caress a cool, smooth surface. And then I saw them, Will’s bare feet on the floor peeking out from behind the cocktail bar, a mickey of whiskey, one quarter empty, on top. Will wasn’t much of a drinker, and he never drank during the day, so this was probably his idea of “making quite a dent in the bottle.”
“Is that you, Officer?” he asked, his voice groggy.
“Why? Are the police after you?” I went along with him, slowly rounding the bar until I stood at his feet.
He was in his jeans, no shirt, using the duvet as a pillow, the mattress bent like a loose taco to fit the narrow space, his face wrinkled from sleeping, probably unsoundly.
“They will be after me when they find my truck out on North Peters,” he said, clasping his hands behind his head, stretching awake.
I couldn’t read his tone. I couldn’t tell if he was still sad or mad or well past both and into an emotional zone even he’d never visited before.
Oh, Will. I wanted to crawl down there, wrap my arms and legs around his pain. Instead, I said, “What’s your truck doing out there?”
“Took that bend at Saint Ferdinand,” he said, using a hand to trace the truck’s path. “And there was this huge possum in the middle of the road and bam—”
He clapped and mashed his hands together.
“Poor possum.”
“Possum’s fine. My truck is wedged in the ditch, stuck between fence posts near the lumberyard. Had to smash the back window to get out. At least, I hope the truck’s still there. Actually, it might be worth more if I claim it was stolen.”
He laughed softly, but I couldn’t. Should I ask? Where have you been and what are you thinking and can you be mine now? Can we be each other’s?
“But you’re okay, right?”
“Okay? I’m fucking great. I’m a damn country-western song, Cassie. Guy loses everything he thought he had in one day. Losing my truck kinda rounds out the chorus, don’t you think?”
There it was, the sarcasm hiding the sorrow, that man I knew so well. The one I loved so much. Here is your opening, Cassie. Say it.
“You haven’t lost everything, Will.”
“That’s true. Day’s not over yet. Or is it? I can’t tell with the curtains shut. What do you think of them? They’re pretty nice, aren’t they?”
“They’re beautiful. See? You have the curtains … and …?”
His eyes moved from admiring the curtains to studying me.
“What else do I have?”
He sat up on an elbow, his gaze heavy.
Say it, Cassie.
“You have … those marble tables. They’re g-gorgeous,” I stammered.
“That’s true. They are gorgeous,” he said.
I was nervously fidgeting with the edge of the bar.
“And … what else do I have?”
For chrissake, say it.
