Biofire, p.22
Biofire, page 22
“ Break? Give her break? What the fuck you talk about? She should bleed on her own time! Good waitress with period is same as no waitress!” He turned around and stomped back into the kitchen, still talking.
P.W. slid out of the booth and slipped his down jacket on as he said, “I’m gonna take Irving back to South Street, McNolte. See you at the apartment in, what—’bout half an hour?”
“Yep, I’ll be there, P.W.”
“Remember, go straight to the apartment and take the back way to stay outta sight.”
“I’ll remember. But thanks, P.W.”
McNolte said so long to Irving, who left change on the table for his coffee and spontaneously and quite loudly impugned the marital status of McNolte’s parents while twitching violently as he left.
McNolte had made a copy of his apartment key for P.W. He had tried to pay P.W. for the protection he provided, but the only compensation he would take was an occasional meal at Wee’s and a movie now and then at the Liberty, an art house that showed everything from obscure foreign films to old Hollywood classics.
After gathering up the sections of the newspaper and setting them aside, McNolte put his spiral notebook on the table and opened it, removing a pen from his shirt pocket. He went back to work on the chapter that was currently in the typewriter back at the apartment, scribbling a few lines, stopping for a while, chewing on the pen, looking around absently, then chewing the pen more until he bent forward and wrote a few more lines.
“You want pie, Pooky?” Wee asked.
McNolte looked up to see Wee showing Pooky a thick wedge of pie.
“I got apple pie left over. You want?”
Pooky shrugged his bony shoulders, “Sure, fine with me.”
“You want pie hot or cold?”
“Heat it up, please,” Pooky mumbled.
As Wee put the pie in the microwave, McNolte pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, shook one out, and lit up.
Pam came to the booth with a pot of coffee and, in spite of her condition, a bright smile.
“More coffee, McNolte?”
“Sure, Pam, thanks.”
For a couple of months now, Pam had been living with the café’s dishwasher on her shift, Manuel, who was not exactly a catch to write home about. McNolte knew that Manuel was a heavy drinker, and he could not help noticing the bruises that showed up on Pam’s arms and neck now and then, not to mention the swollen, purple eye she had been sporting last week. And yet, her pleasant mood never changed. McNolte pitied her, was angry for her—and a little angry at her for sticking around for such treatment—but he found her rather inspiring. She endured.
“You’re not letting Wee get you down, are you?” he said.
“Oh, no,” she said as she refilled his cup. “I know he doesn’t mean it. Wee’s a pussycat. He’s just a really loud, yowling, cranky pussycat.”
She went away, leaving McNolte with his thoughts and his notebook.
The microwave hummed as it heated Pooky’s pie.
Voices chattered from the radio in the kitchen.
The door of Wee’s Café opened and a figure stepped inside wearing a heavy, olive-green rubber poncho with a hood pulled up over the head, the kind of poncho that used to be issued by the military. The figure glanced to the right, turning its black sunglasses toward McNolte, and he saw a woman’s face buried in the cave of the hood. It seemed to be a rather delicate face, although it was difficult to tell because it was darkened by the hood’s shadow.
McNolte’s journalistic instincts kicked in and he took a mental photograph.
She was about five seven and the poncho fell just above her ankles, where too-large jeans bunched up over a pair of once-white Converse High Tops, which were not only filthy and soaking wet but about two sizes too big for her. The laces had been tied tightly, with plenty of string left over. Her arms, sticking out between the snaps that went up each side of the poncho, were enclosed in the baggy sleeves of a blue plaid, quilted shirt, the cuffs of which fell to her knuckles, leaving only her pale fingers visible.
She stepped forward and ducked into the first booth, the one closest to the entrance, so that she was facing the door. She made no attempt to remove the poncho or the hood, even though all that rubber made sliding into the booth difficult. She locked her hands together on the table, fingers and thumbs waggling nervously.
Her head leaned forward sharply, she raised a hand to her forehead, massaged one temple, then looked around quickly. Her face was tense, as if with pain, as she looked around the café, as if searching for something. Then she stopped looking and fixed her eyes on something.
McNolte followed her gaze until his eyes fell on the microwave oven heating Pooky’s pie. He sipped his coffee as he watched her slide out of the booth, stand, and look around uncertainly. Finally, she walked all the way to the back of the diner, toward the single restroom just to the right of the door that read EMPLOYEES ONLY, past Pooky, past the man in the brown suit who was still reading his magazine, to the very last booth. She scooted into the seat facing the entrance. Her shoulders rose as she took in a deep breath, then fell slowly as she reached her hands into the hood and massaged her temples with her fingertips.
First, she fidgeted in the booth, head swallowed up by the rubber hood. She changed her position again and again, folded her hands, then placed them flat, then folded them again.
After sitting in the booth a couple of minutes, she pulled the hood back until it was bunched together behind her neck, and removed the sunglasses.
The sunglasses intrigued him most of all. Why was she wearing sunglasses on a stormy night?
She shook her head slightly and ran both hands roughly through her hair. It was short and damp, dark and spiky. She rolled her head in slow circles, as if trying to loosen up a stiff neck. Her large eyes, above high cheekbones, wore no makeup and looked puffy and stressed. Her face looked out of place in Wee’s Café. In fact, it looked out of place in that neighborhood. She was dressed like a homeless person, and she had the jittery movements and trembling hands of someone struggling with a chemical addiction, but hers was the pristine, milky-skinned face of someone who took good care of herself and normally wore better clothes. McNolte had a feeling she was not homeless, and he even doubted that she was from that part of town.
Her hair looked expensive, probably done in a plush salon, and she looked like a woman accustomed to expensive things. These were gut feelings, of course, nothing more. But McNolte trusted his gut, even when he sometimes did not understand it.
Something about her was…odd. There had been something unusual about the way she walked when she came into the diner. Not too fast, and she had moved with purpose, back straight, chin up. Confidence, that was it. She moved with confidence, something rarely seen among the people who occupied this part of town.
From his experience at South Street, McNolte had learned that there was a certain similarity among the homeless. They usually kept their heads bowed, their shoulders were stooped, their back sometimes hunched, beaten down, defeated. Their movements were slow from constant fatigue brought on by spending every hour of every day and night in the act of surviving. They looked that way from the day-to-day humiliations of their lives, from the wear and tear on their souls. It was the mark of every person who lived in the dark corridors that separated wanting from desperately needing, success from failure, and civilization from savagery.
The woman wearing the rubber poncho did not bear that mark. If anything, she seemed its antithesis. There was pride in the way she held her head. Even the way she held herself as she sat there in the booth clashed violently with her appearance, in spite of her restless fidgeting, in spite of the costume she wore.
Her jitteriness suggested some kind of chemical withdrawals. Drug addiction was common among the homeless, but McNolte still doubted she was one of them. In spite of the clothes she wore—clearly a costume, as far as McNolte was concerned—there was a smugness about the way she held her head, the expression on her face as she searched for a waitress; it was the expression of someone not accustomed to waiting. She was troubled, maybe even afraid, there was no doubt about that, but she did not belong there.
The microwave oven beeped several times. The woman looked at it again, but now her face showed tremendous relief. McNolte noticed that her relief seemed to be triggered by the beeping of the microwave.
Wee appeared from the kitchen, opened the oven, and removed the plate.
“Here your pie,” he said, slapping the plate onto the counter in front of Pooky. “You enjoy, cause it free okay? Okay.” He glanced at the woman in the rear booth, then went back to the kitchen. “We got new customer! You stop bleeding and go wait on new customer! You do that now or you fired!”
A moment later, Pam hurried through the swinging door, order pad in one hand while she patted her hair with the other. Her uniform consisted of a white blouse, a black skirt that fell a few inches above her knees, and black sneakers. She swiped a menu from the rack at the end of the coffee counter as she passed.
McNolte watched carefully as Pam went to the woman’s booth. He did not even try to hide his interest.
Pam spoke briefly with her usual smile, and the woman shook her head as she responded. Pam turned away just seconds later, still holding the menu. She replaced it in the rack, retrieved the coffee pot and an empty mug, and took them to the woman’s table. Pam said something and the woman shook her head in quick, spastic jerks without looking up, and Pam turned and headed toward McNolte.
“Can I get you any dessert, McNolte?” she said.
“No, I’m fine, thanks. But, uh…what’s her story?” he said, nodding toward the woman seated in the back booth.
Pam shrugged. “Doesn’t even want to look at a menu. Says she just wants coffee. From the looks of her, I don’t know if she can pay for that. But knowing Wee, he’ll probably let her have the coffee, and I won’t get a tip. Oh, well,” she said with a shrug and a smile, “things could always be worse.”
“Speaking of things being worse, how’s Manuel?”
She averted her eyes and her smile faltered a bit. “He’s, you know…still Manuel.”
Pam walked away and replaced the coffee pot, then disappeared into the kitchen once again.
A moment later, Wee’s voice wailed from the kitchen.
“Wah you do back hee? We got cussomuhs out deh! Dat man wah his oduh! Dey wah coffee! Dey wah dee-zut! No wunnuh we ahways hah so much pie leff ovuh! You no sell it! You go back out deh now!”
Pam came back through the swinging door carrying a plate of food. Got the coffee pot, put the order in front of the man in the brown suit, warmed up his coffee, warmed up Pooky’s coffee, then grabbed a rag and started wiping tables, doing her best to look busy.
McNolte watched the woman in the rear booth as she sipped her coffee. It spilled now and then in her unsteady hand, and she glanced repeatedly out the window to her right, eyebrows gathered in a tight frown. They were not the absent glances a lone diner might toss out a window over coffee. They were nervous, expectant looks. Worried, frightened looks. She was waiting for something she did not want to happen, something she dreaded.
The poncho was so big that it completely concealed her body. But from the look on her face and the position of her feet beneath the table—they looked ready to push her out of the booth at any second—McNolte decided she was ready to bolt, ready to shoot out of that booth, perhaps even out of the diner.
This was not a homeless woman off the street who was happy to have a place to sit and a cup of something hot. This was a woman afraid of something, awaiting trouble.
She drummed the fingers of both hands on the tabletop, scratched the side of her nose or an eyebrow, ran her fingers through her hair again and again, tugged at her chin, at her ear. And she kept looking out that window, into the night and the small parking lot on that side of the diner.
McNolte tried again to take his attention away from her and put it back on his work, but failed. His gaze was always drawn back to that rear booth and the strangely attractive, frightened woman who could not seem to hold still.
McNolte was startled when their eyes met. He almost looked away, embarrassed for staring at her, but instead he smiled and nodded once.
She jerked her head to the right and looked out the window again.
McNolte sighed and looked over his shoulder at the clock on the wall above the pass-through. It was already quarter after eight, and he wanted to be home when P.W. arrived so the man would not worry about him.
Glancing at the bill, he pulled out his wallet and began thumbing through the singles. He heard the door of the café open, but was too preoccupied to pay any attention at first. He pulled out the appropriate number of bills, looked up, glanced at the man who had just walked in, then did a double-take.
He was tall and wore a black leather overcoat beaded with rain, and his shiny black hair was pulled back in a ponytail that fell halfway down his back. The lower half of his face was covered by a white surgical mask, and he wore latex surgical gloves on his hands.
The man began to walk toward the back of the diner with long, purposeful strides before McNolte had time to ponder the mask. Turning to the woman in the rear booth, McNolte saw her eyes become enormous with terror.
She knocked her cup over as she tried clumsily to slide from the booth, spilling coffee over the table. The man blocked her path before she could get out of her seat. He put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her back down. Hard.
The woman pulled away from him, slid backward over the seat, and pressed herself against the windowsill, but did not escape his hold. She said something and the man responded, leaning forward now, still clutching her shoulder, his fingers digging deep into the rubber poncho as he pulled her toward him.
“I will not!” she shouted, her hoarse voice rising above the Chinese radio station and the sounds of rain and traffic from outside. “Leave me alone! You know what will happen, you know what I’ll do.” She began to fight him, pounding him with her fists again and again.
The man let her go and stepped back, stiff now and fidgeting nervously in place. A long moment of silence stretched out between them as they stared fiercely at each other, still and deadlocked, the woman’s wide eyes filled with naked fear and hatred.
“Calm down, now, just calm down,” the man said, barely loud enough for McNolte to hear. He took a step forward and clutched her elbow, pulling her toward him again.
McNolte got out of his booth, stuffed his wallet into the back pocket of his jeans, and rounded the corner of the coffee counter in a hurry. “Hey,” he said as he approached the woman’s booth, “hey, come on, buddy, knock it off, okay?”
The man glanced at him for an instant, then continued to pull the woman from the booth. She was losing the struggle.
“Hey, hey!” McNolte shouted. “Come on, let her alone!” He stopped when he was standing two feet away from the man, whose jaw worked slowly and angrily as he glared at McNolte.
The man’s face was narrow, with slightly sunken cheeks, which made the rounded surgical mask even more out of place than it already was, clinging to his nose and mouth with the aid of a rubber band. His close-set eyes were small, glimmering bullet holes in his face. “Back off,” he said in a near-whisper. “This is none of your business. I’ll only warn you once.”
Behind him, McNolte heard the swinging door being kicked open in Wee’s inimitable way, but ignored it.
“If you’re going to rough this woman up,” McNolte said, “once won’t be enough. This is anybody’s business, okay? That’s the way things work. You can’t go around—”
Still holding the woman’s elbow with his left hand, the man reached inside his overcoat with his right and pulled out a gun, just far enough for McNolte to see it, just enough for McNolte to know he was armed and not in the mood for any differing opinions.
“Do you see this?” he asked, his voice a low rasp.
McNolte froze and stared at the gun.
“Well,” the man growled, “do you see this or not?”
“Yeah,” McNolte said, stiffening. “I see it.”
“Then I suggest you back the hell off, okay, my friend? This is none of your business. You just back off now and I won’t—”
He swallowed his words when the thick, threatening sound of a pump action shotgun being cocked went through the diner with an ugly crack.
With a flick of his eyes, McNolte saw Wee standing a few feet behind the man, aiming a sawed-off shotgun at his back.
“You no fuck with my customers!” Wee shouted. “You wanna show guns, do it in the street. You understand?”
McNolte watched the man’s eyes roll to the left, watched his jaw slacken ever so slightly.
The man spoke cautiously: “Uh…I’m not sure I, uh…understood you.”
“You get the fuck outta here!” Wee squealed. “You understand that?”
“All right,” the man said slowly, putting the gun away. “I’ll do that, I’ll leave. I’d like to take this woman with me, though. She’s sick and she needs help right away.”
McNolte looked at the woman.
Her eyes teared up, jaws flexed as she clenched her teeth repeatedly. Her back was stiff and her wide eyes stared blankly at the cup of coffee on the table; they were blank in the way eyes got in moments of sheer terror and panic.
“She wanna go, that fine with me,” Wee said. “She don’t wanna go, then you get the fuck outta here.”
No one moved or spoke for a moment.
Standing with the barrel of his shotgun in the man’s back, Wee leaned toward the booth and asked, “You wanna go with him?”
The woman did not respond, only continued to stare blankly at her coffee cup.
“Hey!” Wee shouted. “You wanna go with him? Or you wanna stay here?”
Still, she did not respond. Her lips began to tremble and her eyelids fluttered, then lowered to half-mast.
“I don’t think she wants to go, Wee,” McNolte said. “But she’s too terrified to say so. She’s afraid of this man.”
