The Woman in the Window(63)

As I drift past him, entering the shop, my memory thaws. I used to drop in here a few times a week, on those mornings when I was too rushed to brew coffee at home. The store blend tasted pretty bitter—I assume it still does—but I liked the ambience of the place: the cracked mirror with the day’s specials scrawled on it in Magic Marker, the countertops with their Olympic-ring stains, the speaker system piping oldies. “Unpretentious mise-en-scène,” Ed remarked the first time I brought him there.

“You can’t say those words in the same sentence,” I told him.

“Just unpretentious, then.”

And unchanged. The hospital room crushed me, but this is different—this is terra cognita. My eyelashes flutter. I loft my gaze over the gaggle of customers, study the menu tacked above the cash register. A cup now costs $2.95. That’s a fifty-cent hike since I was last here. Inflation is a bitch.

The umbrella swings low, grazes my ankles.

So much I haven’t seen in so long. So much I haven’t felt, haven’t heard, haven’t smelled—the radiant warmth of human bodies, pop music from decades past, the punch of ground beans. The whole scene unreels in slow motion, in golden light. For a moment I shut my eyes, inhale, remember.

I remember moving through the world the way you move through air. I remember striding into this coffee shop, a winter coat wrapped tight around me or a sundress billowing at the knees; I remember brushing against people, smiling at them, talking to them.

When I open my eyes again, the gilt light fades. I’m in a dim room, next to windows rinsed with rain. My heart speeds.

A bolt of red flames by the pastry counter. It’s her, inspecting Danishes. She lifts her chin, catches sight of herself in the mirror. Tugs a hand through her hair.

I edge closer. I can feel eyes on me—not hers, but other customers’, sizing me up, this woman in a bathrobe with a mushroomed umbrella wagging before her. I clear a channel through the crowd, through the noise, as I chug toward the counter. Then the chatter resumes, like water closing over me while I sink.

She’s a few feet away from me. One more step and I could reach out and touch her. Catch her hair in my fingers. Pull.

At that moment, she turns slightly and drops a hand into her pocket, wiggles loose her oversize iPhone. In the mirror I watch her fingers dance across the screen, watch her face flicker. I imagine her writing to Alistair.

“Excuse me?” the barista asks.

The woman taps on her phone.

“Excuse me?”

And now—what am I doing?—I clear my throat. “You’re up,” I mutter.

She stops, nods in my direction. “Oh,” she says, then turns to the man behind the counter. “Skim latte, medium.”

She didn’t even look at me. I look at myself, in the mirror, see me standing in back of her like a specter, an avenging angel. I’ve come for her.

“Skim latte, medium. Did you want something to eat with that?”

I watch the mirror, watch her mouth—small, precision-cut, so unlike Jane’s. A little wave of anger wells within me, swells within me, crests against the base of my brain. “No,” she says after a second. Then, with a bright sickle smile: “No, I’d better not.”

Behind us, a chorus of chairs scrapes across the floor. I glance over my shoulder; a party of four is heading for the door. I turn back.

The barista, his voice ringing above the din: “Name?”

Then the woman and I lock eyes in the mirror. Her shoulders hop. Her smile melts.

For an instant, time freezes, that breathless moment when you’re sailing off the road, into the gorge.

And without turning around, without averting her gaze, she replies, in the same clear tone, “Jane.”



Jane.

The name bubbles to my lips before I can swallow it down. The woman pivots, spears me with a stare.

“I’m surprised to see you here.” Her tone as flat as her eyes. Shark eyes, I think, cold, hard. I want to point out that I’m surprised to be here myself, but the words skid on my tongue.

“I thought you were . . . impaired,” she continues. Withering.

I shake my head. She says nothing further.

I clear my throat again. Where is she and who are you? I want to ask. Who are you and where is she? Voices swirl around me, mingle with the words inside my head.

“What?”

“Who are you?” There.

“Jane.” It isn’t her voice, but the barista’s, floating across the counter, tapping Jane on the shoulder. “Skim latte for Jane.”

She keeps looking at me, watching me, as though I might strike. I’m a well-regarded psychologist, I could say to her, should say to her. And you’re a liar and a fraud.

“Jane?” The barista, trying a third time. “Your latte?”

She swivels, accepts the cup in its snug cardboard jacket. “You know who I am,” she tells me.

I shake my head once more. “I know Jane. I met her. I saw her in her house.” My voice is quaky but clear.

“It’s my house, and you didn’t see anyone.”

“I did.”

“You didn’t,” says the woman.

“I—”

“I hear you’re a drunk. I hear you’re on pills.” She’s moving now, circling me, the way a lioness does. Slowly I revolve with her, trying to keep up. I feel like a child. The conversations around us have stalled, stilled; there’s a brittle silence. In the corner of my eye, in a corner of the coffee shop, I can see the Takeda boy, still stationed by the door.