Don't You Cry(26)

I am not alone. Dr. Giles and I, the both of us, watch as the woman goes, watch as she evanesces over the hill and into the morning’s fog.





Quinn

I call the bookshop on the ride home, apologizing effusively for the poor reception on the bus. I try hard to sound sincere. I really do. I don the kindest voice I can possibly round up, a whole mishmash of kindness, sincerity and concern like a fragrant potpourri.

The woman who answers the phone is a lady by the name of Anne, who’s uptight, high-strung and rule abiding, all attributes I gleaned the one and only time we met, when I’d come to the bookshop to keep Esther company for her thirty-minute lunch break. As I walked in the shop that day and announced the reason for my visit, Anne quickly pointed out that I was early, that although it was 12:24 and the shop was destitute, hollow and wanting for life, Esther’s lunch break didn’t begin until twelve-thirty. And then she proceeded to watch like a hawk as Esther organized books—face out and spine out—on a wooden shelf until twelve-thirty arrived and we were given permission to leave. And in that moment I decided I didn’t like Anne one bit.

So it’s quite unfortunate, really, that of all the booksellers in the shop, Anne is the one to answer my call. I tell her who I am. I try to play it cool, not letting her in on my little conundrum, the fact that it’s been thirty-six or more hours and I still don’t know where Esther is.

From the other end of the phone, there’s silence. At first I picture the old, cadaverous woman searching the bookstore for Esther, and a faint trace of hope fills me with the possibility that Esther really is there, at the bookstore, working, arranging those books face-out on the wooden shelves. At least that’s what I hope is happening in the ten or twenty seconds of dead air. But then the silence goes on so long that I’m absolutely certain we’ve managed to disconnect somehow, our conversation broken up by the faulty connection on the bus. I pull the phone from my ear and stare at the display screen, watching the seconds of the call time rise. Fifty-three, fifty-four...

She’s there. Somewhere.

“Hello?” I ask. “Anne?” I think I say it more than once. But it’s hard to hear. Around me there is noise, the diesel engine of the CTA bus, people talking inside, the honking of horns outside. It’s rush hour and there is traffic. Surprise, surprise.

“Esther was supposed to be here at three,” Anne says to me. “Do you know where she is?” she asks rather brusquely, as if I’ve pulled a fast one on her, lacking all the sincerity and effusion of my request.

I don’t bother to check my own watch, knowing good and well it’s after five o’clock. The evening commute is busy and loud. Bodies press into mine on the bus as I stand, holding on for dear life. It smells. The people smell of body odor and bad breath, evidence of a long day at work. An arm presses against me, leaving a trace of sweat on my skin.

This, of course, strikes me as odd, the fact that Esther didn’t show up at work. Esther always goes to work, even on those days she drags herself out of bed complaining that she doesn’t want to go. She still goes. She works hard; she goes out of her way to please everyone. She tries her hardest to make a good impression on her boss and her coworkers, even Anne, though I tell her that’s a waste of time. She’ll never please Anne. But still, it’s not like Esther to not show up to work, and no matter how angry I am with her over the roommate quandary—that betrayal still stings—I don’t want Esther to get in trouble or lose her job and so I decide to cover for her.

“She’s sick,” I say to Anne then. It’s the very best I can come up with on the spot. Esther would do this for me; I know that much is true. “Bronchitis,” I say, “maybe pneumonia.” And I describe in detail a croup-like cough. I tell her about the phlegm, a yellow-green, and how for over twenty-four hours now Esther has been unable to get out of bed. There is a fever. There are chills. “She was going to try and make it into work today,” I say, citing Esther’s conscientiousness and industrious nature; she was going to try to go to work despite the fever, despite the chills. “She must be feeling really lousy not to go.”

But despite all this Anne says that she should have called in sick, sure to tack on, “She seemed fine on Saturday,” as if maybe, just maybe, Esther isn’t sick at all.

“It came on very quickly,” I lie. “Knocked her out cold.”

“Well, I’ll be,” is what she says, but what she means is, You’re full of shit.

*

If the coffee shop has a name, I don’t know what it is. To me, it’s just the one on the corner of Clark and Berwyn. That’s what I call it. It’s a place Esther and I like to hang. To us, it doesn’t even need a name. Let’s meet at the coffee shop, we’ll say, and like magic, we both appear. That’s my boiled-down definition of best friend. You always know what the other is thinking.

Except for right now, when I have no idea what Esther is thinking.

I see her through the window of the shop before I go in, taking in her layered ginger hair, the alabaster skin. It’s evening, darker outside than it is on the inside, and so I can see right in, into the industrial designed space with its bold, unfinished look, the steel tables, the salvaged and recycled things that hang from the ceiling and walls. She sits, slouched on a bar stool at one of the wooden window counters, picking at the deckled edges of the coffee cup’s paper sleeve, staring out the window, waiting for me, and I think to myself: she’s got it all wrong. That’s not where Esther and I sit, but rather at one of the smaller, more intimate steel bistro tables near the back, beside a custom brick fireplace and the exposed brick walls. And we wait until we’ve both arrived and then we order together, the very same thing, some caffeinated concoction that we agree to while waiting in line for our turn. But this girl has gone up to the counter all on her own and ordered her drink without waiting to see what I’d have. She sat at the wrong table.