The Drifter(20)

“I’m taking requests,” he said, pointing at the audience with one finger and wrapping the others around a Rolling Rock. “And no fucking Skynyrd.”

It was Gavin. She knew his name from hearing Mack say it, and seeing him around at parties and shows. He’d caught her eye once or twice. And last year, she drove out to his house with Caroline one night, but she hadn’t paid much attention until that moment.

Twenty minutes later, midway through a more shouted than sung version of “Sweet Home Alabama,” Betsy had a new crush. Ginny had had enough.

“I feel like Strawberry Shortcake, or what’s her name, the blueberry scented one, in this place,” she said, glancing at her crisp T-shirt and handing an empty can of PBR to Betsy. “And I either need to do a shot or go home.”

They slipped out the back door into the alley without saying hello or goodbye to Gavin. And there he was, looming before her at Bagelville, taller than she remembered.

“Hey, Gavin,” she said, nodding at him, looking past Mack’s shoulder.

“Hey, Betsy.”

He knew her name. He admitted he knew it. This might be easier than she thought.

“Y’all know each other?” Mack asked. “I mean, well enough for you to serve him a bagel?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen him around.”

“You, too.”

“That was quite a performance at the Dish last spring,” she said, wondering if she’d brushed her teeth that day as she tucked an unwashed strand of hair behind one ear. She ran her tongue behind her upper lip to check and hoped he wouldn’t notice. “How long did you stay up there?”

“I ran out of songs I knew by heart pretty fast,” he said. “Some asshole kept shouting ‘Tom Sawyer’ but I haven’t been able to sing high like Geddy Lee since seventh grade.”

“Um, I’ll have a large coffee and a sesame, toasted with chive cream cheese, thanks for asking,” said Mack, sliding a ten-dollar bill across the counter. Betsy moved to the counter to slice his bagel and put it in the toaster.

“We have light cream cheese now,” said Betsy. “I just thought you should know.”

Mack clenched his teeth.

“It looks like you leaned out over the summer. You don’t want to get, what’s that word?” She motioned vaguely to the underside of his unshaven chin.

“Jowly,” said Gavin.

“Yeah, that’s it! Jowly. You don’t want to get jowly. Again.”

Mack brushed his jawbone reflexively and grunted something obscene.

“I’ll just have coffee, no juice for me,” said Gavin.

Tom barged through the swinging doors from the back with a brown paper sack full of cinnamon raisins. Steam carried out the yeasty, sweet smell of bread baked with fruit.

“It’s $2.75 for the juice,” Tom said, looking dead straight at Mack. “I know you don’t pay, Newland.”

“There’s a murderer on the loose and all you care about is money,” said Mack. “I don’t want any of that shit anyway.”

“I’d charge the killer double,” said Tom.

“What killer?” said Betsy, trying not to seem alarmed as she spread a thick layer of green-flecked cream cheese and watched it melt into the warm bagel.

“Two girls were found dead in two different apartments in the last week. They think they’re connected. That’s what I was talking about earlier,” said Tom. “By the way, Newland, where have you been the last couple of nights?”

“Ah, hilarious,” he said. “Who knew you had to be funny to make my breakfast for a living?”

Gavin took his coffee. Mack grabbed his bagel and wandered over to a table in the corner near the window. Betsy tried to look busy, slicing tomatoes, refilling the cream cheese bin, straightening the refrigerator case, sweeping up the relentless downpour of poppy seeds on the floor, but her eyes kept darting to the corner. Melissa, a bird-like blonde from South Carolina, came in to help with the morning rush. She washed her hands in the steel sink and wiped them on her paint spattered Duck Head cutoffs.

“Hey, so did you hear about the dead girls?” Melissa said, slicing and scooping a salt bagel with her fingers for an impatient and bleary-eyed med school resident in hospital scrubs on the other side of the counter.

“Somebody mentioned something,” Betsy said, thinking If that guy’s going to be a doctor one day, he should know better than to ask a stranger to dig her fingernails into his bread, even if it meant a few extra calories. “Some lunatic was ranting about a murder a few minutes ago.” She glanced over at Mack and Gavin’s table, where they were, without question, talking about her. “But I thought it was the usual bullshit. So it’s true? Two girls are dead?”

“Yeah, they found a girl dead at her apartment out by the highway or something. Then another one this morning. They think it’s related. One of them worked as a dispatch at the sheriff’s office. It was all over the police radio,” said Melissa. “I ran into my landlord and he told me. That crazy bastard has a scanner, like a police radio. What a cliché. Anyway, that’s how he heard. The cheap asshole was replacing all of the broken locks in our complex today so it must be serious.”

“Jesus,” said Betsy, thinking of her pre-dawn bike ride, trying to remember if she’d locked the door at Caroline and Ginny’s behind her. She thought about leaving Caroline at the bar.