"Silk" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kiernan Caitlin R.)

2.

As McJobs came and went, Daria had certainly done a whole lot worse than the Fidgety Bean. Whenever the crowd of yuppie poseurs, the wannabes and could’vebeens, began to eat away at her fragile resolve not to get canned, all she had to do was remind herself of the months she’d put in at the Zippy Mart, two armed robberies in as many weeks, and that last time, the slick and shiny barrel of the.38 or.45 or whatever so close to her face. Or the fast-food nightmares, scalding showers after every shift, scrubbing with sickeningly perfumed soaps and shampoos until her skin was raw and her hair worse than usual, still stinking like deep-fried dog turds.

There were no drug tests or polygraphs at the Bean, no security cameras. And at least Claire and Russell, the two aging Deadheads who owned the Morris Avenue coffeehouse, allowed her to dress like a human, the less threadbare of her own clothes instead of some middle-management fuck’s idea of dress-up, somebody’s poster child for corporate identity.

Tonight, Friday morning already, the Bean was quiet; there’d be a little rush toward dawn, when the clubs along Twenty-first Street emptied out and the rave crowd, sweatsticky and half of them sizzling on ecstasy, wandered in. But so far, things had been calm, lots of Nina Simone and Alison Moyet sighing through the stereo and a handful of night owls sipping at their pale lattés, hardback books or laptop computers open on the tables in front of them. One conversation toward the back, a black woman and two men with gray beards and pipes, smoke like burning cherries and occasional laughter. And Russell, stomping someone’s ass at chess across the bar.

Daria finished setting out the careful rows of freshly washed mugs and glasses on top of the big silver Lavazza espresso machine, squat mugs the color of old cream and the crystal demitasse like cups from a child’s tea party. The Lavazza was sleek and utterly modern, efficient Italian engineering, none of those antique Willy Wonka contraptions at the Bean. She’d heard enough gripes and horror stories from baristas who’d worked with those funky old brass octopuses to be thankful that Claire had insisted on function over flash. Daria never had any trouble with the Lavazza, except once or twice when someone else had forgotten to turn the thing back on after cleaning it and she’d had to stand around waiting for the boiler to build up steam, watching the pressure gauge’s slow creep into the red as orders backed up and people began to grumble and complain.

“Hey, Daria,” Bunky shouted at her from the register. “Make this guy a double with lemon.” Bunky Tolbert was the worst sort of slacker, scab-kneed board weasel, late more often than not, and Daria couldn’t believe Russell hadn’t fired his ass, that he’d actually hired him in the first place.

The “guy” was tall and lanky, expensive suit that hung off his shoulders like scarecrow rags, and she thought immediately of Keith, of the shitty, spiritless excuse for a rehearsal and the way that he’d finally just packed up his guitar, not a word, and left her and Mort and Theo in Baby Heaven.

Daria nodded, removed the filter and banged it upside-down over the dump bin until the old grounds fell out as a nearly solid disc, miniature hockey puck of spent espresso. She rinsed the filter clean beneath the scalding jet on the far right side of the machine and scooped a cup’s worth of the fine black powder from the can on the countertop. The espresso flowed from the scooper like liquid midnight, dry fluid so perfectly dark, so smooth, it seemed to steal the dim coffeehouse light, to breathe it alive and exhale velvet caffeine fumes.

Daria added a second scoop and packed it down with the plastic tamper, slid the filter back into the machine and punched the “double” button above the brewer. She glanced at the register, and the scarecrow was counting out the dollar-fifty for his drink in quarters and dimes and nickels, a handful of change spilled on the bar and his long fingers pushing coin after coin across the wood to Bunky. He didn’t really look anything like Keith, too healthy despite his thinness, much too alive. Sometimes she thought the only part of Keith that had survived the junk was his eyes, his strange granite eyes trapped in there alone, and that everything else was just clumsy puppet tricks with string and shadow.

The espresso drained from the brewer’s jets, twin golden streams, smooth as blood from an open vein; Daria caught the steaming coffee in a demitasse, waiting for the machine to finish. In the glass, the liquid was as black as the powder had been, black as pitch, and the layer of nut-brown créma thick and firm enough to support sugar crystals. She took a strip of lemon peel from a plastic container and rubbed it around the rim, then passed the glass to Bunky and the scarecrow carried it away.

Daria looked up at the huge Royal Crown Cola clock, vintage plastic glowing like a full moon above the fridge, and the shelves crowded with their heavy glass jars of freshly roasted beans. Half her shift gone already, and she hadn’t so much as stopped for a cigarette, driving herself, finding things to do when there were no orders to keep her busy. No doubt Bunky would think she was just brown-nosing Russell, trying to make him look bad in front of the boss. But the night was catching up with her, Mr. Jack Baggysuit having somehow managed to unravel all her defenses, the rough mantra of movement and distraction that kept the crap in her head and the ache in her muscles from taking hold and dragging her down.

“I’m taking a cig break,” she said, stepping past Bunky, handing him the soppy rag she’d been using to wipe down the bar.

“Oh. Yeah, sure,” Bunky said, sounding sullen and supremely put upon.

“Try not to hurt yourself for five minutes.”

As she walked away, Bunky mumbled, muttered something she didn’t quite catch, but enough meaning conveyed in the sound of his voice that the words didn’t much matter anyway. Russell looked up from the chessboard, one white plastic bishop in his hand, flashed her a grandfatherly scowl, his everybody play nice or else face, bushy white Gandalf eyebrows knotting like epileptic caterpillars.

Daria shrugged, dredged up half an apologetic smile that she hoped would pass for sincere. Tonight, it was the best she had and was going to have to do.

She fed two dollars and fifty cents into the cigarette machine, too much to pay, but it was her own fault for not having picked up a pack on the way over after practice. A booth she liked near the back was still empty, back where the two men who looked like professors and the black woman sat talking in their shroud of pipe smoke. Daria slid into the cool Naugahyde, fake leather the unlikely color of eggplant, and tapped the fresh red Marlboro box hard against the palm of her hand before peeling away the cellophane wrapping.

“Mmhmmm,” the woman said. “In the Sumerian and Babylonian fragments. The Semitic tribes were still worshipping their rocks and trees.”

Daria had purposefully sat down with her back to the discussion, had always hated listening in on other people’s conversations, even by accident.

“Watch her, Henry,” one of the men warned the other, his voice low and full of mock admonition. “Let her go and change the subject now and she’ll have you arguing patriarchal conspiracy theories ’til dawn.”

She lit her cigarette and thought about moving back up to the bar, decided instead to concentrate on the music, the big Sony speaker rigged up almost directly over her booth, and not the voices behind her. But the Alison Moyet disc she’d put on was ending, the last song over, and she could see Bunky making straight for the little stereo sandwiched in between the soft-drink cooler and the coffee grinder. Bunky had recently developed a fondness for an old Johnny Cash album that bordered on the fanatic and stuck it in every chance he got.

“I mistrust that word,” the woman said.

“Which word, Miriam?” one of the men asked. “Which word don’t you trust?”

“Demon,” the woman replied.

Daria shut her eyes, holding the first deep drag off the Marlboro like a drowning man’s last, useless breath of air, wishing the smoke was something stronger than tobacco. Overhead, Johnny Cash began to sing, rumbling voice, broken glass and gravel and the time when she was seven, almost eight, and her father had driven her all the way to Memphis just to see Graceland.

She opened her eyes and exhaled, forced the smoke out through her nostrils.

“God, Bunky, we have gotta talk,” and she reached to stub out her cigarette, would finish it later, somewhere free of the song and the argument she’d tried not to overhear. But her hand froze halfway to the ashtray, possum-on-her-grave shudder, and she felt suddenly light-headed, not dizzy, but light, pulled loose, and the pale hairs on the backs of her arms prickled with goose bumps.

How long had it been since she’d thought about that trip, or anything else from that awful year?

You’re just wasted, girl’o, that’s all.

Too much Keith and too much Stiff Kitten, the better part of the night spent pretending that she wasn’t pissed beyond words, pretending that what Theo had said wasn’t the truth. Too much of that weary-ass Little Miss Martyr routine. And any way you sliced it, definitely way too much Bunky Tolbert.

Christ, you haven’t even eaten anything tonight, have you? Just cigarettes and coffee and great big greasy dollops of denial.

The smoke curling up from the fingertips of her right hand made a gauzy question mark in front of her face. And her hands were still shaking, dry wino jitters; the sense of dislocation had faded to the dullest gray unease.

And is that all it is, Dar? Malnutrition and caffeine, nerves and nicotine? Are you absolutely sure that’s all it is?

Daria finished the cigarette while Johnny Cash sang about Folsom Prison, while the three behind her began to talk about the time, how late it’d gotten and how early they each had to be up in the morning. Slowly, the shakiness passed, and she promised herself she’d grab one of the muffins or poppy seed bagels in the pastry case before she went back to work.

Five minutes later when the Asian girl in the ratty army jacket walked through the door, she was still sitting there.