Page 15

FOURTEEN

The coffee shop across from the Herald is bright and buzzy, but at 9 p.m. Alex is the only customer. Canned pop music plays from the speakers as a man begins to mop the floor behind her, eager to close for the night. At the counter she orders an Americano from a bored-looking barista. She hasn’t eaten since this morning’s bagel, she realizes, suddenly famished.

“What’s that?” she asks, pointing at the last thing in the food case, an unidentifiable beige baked good wrapped in plastic.

“Chocolate chip muffin,” the woman mumbles. Behind her the door to the shop opens and closes. Out of the corner of her eye she sees a man walk up behind her. She can feel the impatient shuffle of his feet as he waits to order.

“Sure. I’ll take it.” Her streak of eating terrible food is ridiculous, but she’s going to need fuel to get through all the letters in the bin. The thought of it piled high with envelopes makes her throat go dry. She can already feel the pressure mounting behind her eyelids as she anticipates another night of little to no sleep. And that isn’t even the worst of it.

Reading them all is one thing, but she isn’t even close to choosing a letter to answer. Sure, she’s found a few possibilities and set them aside. She’s beginning to wonder if it isn’t the fear of failure that’s holding her back now more than anything. She imagines herself finishing the column and turning it in. The disappointment in Howard Demetri’s eyes as he tells her he has to fire her. It would hurt at first, but would part of her also be relieved?

She takes her purchases to the side counter and removes the lid of her coffee. As she reaches for the creamer a hand shoots out and intercepts her, a set of large fingers taking hold of the pitcher and snatching it away.

“Oh—” She looks up, startled, as the man obliviously tips it into his coffee. He’s wearing a light-gray suit, perfectly cut to his frame, which is slender with broad shoulders. His hair is combed over to one side, though it looks a bit ruffled, like he’s recently run his fingers through it. And the top button of his shirt is undone, his tie loose around his neck. He looks almost old-fashioned, like an extra from a movie set about Wall Street back in the day. The only thing that ruins the image is a set of puffy red headphones clamped onto his head. He stirs the creamer into his cup, his eyes flickering with focus on whatever he is listening to. When he is done he places the creamer at the far side of the counter where she can’t reach it. She starts to say something but remembers the other day, the man at the restaurant. Alex doesn’t need any more unsettling conflicts with strange men. Annoyed, she moves to the other side of the counter. Now he turns to look at her, pulling down the headphones so they dangle around his neck. He points at the creamer. “Sorry, were you going to use this? I thought you were done.”

“I was about to. It’s no big deal,” she assures him, shaking off some residual irritation. Why do men always fill in all the space around them?

“No, really. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t wear these things out in public.” He smiles, revealing a deep dimple in his left cheek. “I’m a menace. Completely in my own world.” He hands her the pitcher, and she forgives him internally without even meaning to.

“What are you listening to?” she asks, finding she’s actually curious.

“ Great Expectations ,” he says casually as he rips open a packet of sugar and dumps it into his cup.

“You’re listening to an audiobook?” Alex says with true disbelief as she replaces the lid on her coffee.

“I like to put them on while I work. It passes the time between extremely stressful phone calls I couldn’t care less about.”

She looks at him suspiciously. What thirtysomething man listens to Great Expectations at work? “And are you enjoying it?” Alex doesn’t know why she is drawing out the conversation. Maybe she isn’t quite ready to return to the tomb-like quiet of the office. Or maybe it is the honey brown of his eyes sparkling down at her. It has been a long time since she has even met a man she was attracted to. Dangerous, Alex.

“It’s a great story. I mean, I’ve read it before in school probably, but these voice actors are really something. Though I have to say I don’t know why Miss Havisham is so sad about being stood up. It’s a dodged bullet, if you ask me. I keep wishing I could go visit her—maybe I could have talked her out of years and years of misery.”

“Oh, I doubt it,” Alex says quickly. “The thing with people like her is they want to suffer. She was addicted to the pain of it, basically. If it wasn’t her marriage, it probably would have been something else. There’s nothing you could have done.”

He looks at her with obvious surprise. Then his eyes wrinkle at the corners. “You sound just like my therapist.” Alex’s own smile wavers. “That’s a good thing, she’s quite intelligent.” He nods at her small bag containing the muffin. “Chocolate chip muffin? I’ve been there before.” He winces. “Desperate dinner of those behind on work. You’re staying late at the office, too, I take it?”

“Yeah, trying to catch up,” she says, suddenly too aware of her face and the way her mouth is moving. “I mean, this is actually my first week, so trying to get started actually.”

“Oh yeah? Congratulations on the new gig.” He looks at her for a beat longer than she is used to. She feels her ears getting hot.

“You’re at the Herald too?” Alex asks, knowing from his clothes that he isn’t. No journalist wears an actual suit anymore and this guy is dressed well. He reminds her of Gregory Peck in the very old movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird .

“No, I work directly across from it, over there.” He rocks back on his heels and gestures with his coffee cup at the brightly lit gray marble exterior of the Excelsior Bank Building. “Boring money stuff, nothing as fun or interesting as journalism.”

“Well, I guess somebody’s got to do it,” she says, not entirely sure that is true. All right, maybe not Gregory Peck.

“Yeah, sometimes I wonder.” He laughs a bit sheepishly. “So, what do you do over at the paper? Are you a reporter?”

“Sort of. Something like that.” Alex takes a sip of her coffee so she doesn’t have to elaborate any further and winces as it scalds the back of her throat. It’s too early to be sharing her new position with anyone, not when she hasn’t even turned her column in yet. The column. Her stomach drops at the thought of all those letters she still has to read. She’s promised herself she’ll stay late enough tonight to finish all of the ones left on her desk. “Speaking of that, I should get back to it.”

“Right, right. Me too.”

They start for the door at the same time and there is an awkward moment where they nearly collide. He stops and steps back, motioning for her to go ahead. “After you,” he says.

“Thanks.” They lock eyes for a moment, and she feels a sharp fizzle of electricity between them.

“The least I can do after holding the creamer hostage.”

“That’s true,” Alex says, smiling.

“Well, have a good night,” he says. “Oh, I’m Tom, by the way. Maybe I’ll run into you again. We are work neighbors after all.”

I’d like that, she thinks, surprising herself. “I’m Alex. I’m sure I’ll see you around.”

As she walks across the street and into the lobby of the Herald Building, she finds a smile spreading across her face.

The light is still on in Howard’s office when she tiptoes back through the newsroom. Through the cracks at the edge of the blinds she can see a slice of his back as he sits at his desk. His computer monitor is dark, his phone face down on his desk. He isn’t moving. For a horrifying moment she thinks something terrible has happened to him, that he has had a stroke or a heart attack. But then she sees the slight quiver of his shoulders and the movement of his fingers through his hair as he buries his head in his hands.