The Hazel Wood (The Hazel Wood #1)(3)
The man my mother married, not four months after he asked her out at an event she was working as a cocktail waitress, lived on the second-to-top floor of a building off Fifth Avenue. His name was Harold, he was rich as Croesus, and he thought Lorrie Moore was a line of house paint. That was all you needed to know about Harold.
I was on my way to Salty Dog, home of the first job I’d ever lived anywhere long enough to keep. It was a café owned by a couple from Reykjavík who’d put me through a six-hour cupping seminar before I was even allowed to clean the coffee machine. It was a good job for me—I could put as much into it as I wanted. I could work hard and make perfect coffee and be friendly to everyone who came in. Or I could do it all on autopilot and talk to no one, and tips barely went down.
Today I lost myself in the comforting rhythms of the café, pulling shots and making pour-over coffees, picking up scones with silver tongs and breathing in the burnt-caramel scent of ground beans.
“Don’t look now, but Guy in the Hat is here.” My coworker, Lana, breathed hot in my ear. Lana was a ceramicist in her second year at Pratt who looked like David Bowie’s even hotter sister and wore hideous clothes that looked good on her anyway. Today she was in a baggy orange Rebel Alliance–style jumpsuit. She smelled like Michelangelo must have—plaster dust and sweat. Somehow that looked good on her, too.
Guy in the Hat was our least favorite customer. Lana pretended to be busy cleaning the milk steamer, so of course I had to deal with him.
“Hey, Alice,” he said, making a point of reading my name tag even though he came in every day. He bopped his head to the T. Rex playing from Lana’s phone. “Cool tunes. Is that the Stone Roses?”
“Oh, my god,” Lana said in a stage whisper.
He stared at the menu for a good two minutes, playing the counter like a drum. Anger gathered under my skin as I waited, making it prickle. Finally, he ordered what he always did. I stuffed his biscotti into a bag, handed over a bottle of Pellegrino, and moved behind the register so he couldn’t force me to do the complicated high five he’d been trying to teach me my last few shifts.
I watched him walk away, hating the short stump of his neck, the fine blond hairs on his arms, the jumpy way he snapped his fingers off the beat. My blood went high as he brushed past a seated woman, then pressed his hand to her shoulder in heavy apology.
“God, what an asshole,” Lana said at full volume, watching Guy in the Hat fumble with the door on his way out. She hip-checked me. “Alice, chill. You look like you wanna strangle him. It’s just Fedora Closet.”
The anger receded, leaving a hot embarrassment behind. “I wasn’t going to—” I began, but Lana cut me off. She was always good for that.
“Did I tell you I saw Christian naked?” She propped her chin in her hand.
Christian was our boss. He had a tiny, beautiful wife and a huge, red-faced baby that looked like a demon in a book of woodcuts. I tried but failed to think of an innocent reason for Lana to have seen him stripped.
“Are you … is it because you had sex with him?”
She laughed like I was far less worldly than she was, which I was but fuck you, Lana. “Can you imagine? Luisa would sic her terrifying baby on me. No, he commissioned me to do a sculpture of the family.”
“Naked?”
“Yeah,” she said, already losing interest in her story.
“Oh. Was he … was it gross?”
She shrugged, looking at something on her phone.
I had the idea, when Ella started going out with Harold, that I’d make Lana into my friend so I’d have someone of my own, but it hadn’t really worked that way. She was more into having an audience than a pal.
I grabbed a rag and went out to bus, just to force Lana to make some drinks for a change. As I moved between tables, I got the prickling, shoulder-bladey feeling of someone watching me. I’m not Lana—in most situations, I go unnoticed—so it made me clumsy. I knocked over a teacup, cursed aloud, and swiped up the mess. As I did so, I cased the customers.
There was a table of women in flashing engagement rings, clustered around green teas and a single coconut donut with four forks. Two identically bearded, plaid-shirted guys at separate tables, hunched over matching Macs and unaware of each other. A woman trying to read Jane Eyre, side-eyeing the checked-out mom and spoon-banging toddler one table over. And a man in a Carhartt jacket and sunglasses sitting near the door. He wore a stocking cap despite the mugginess, and was nursing a cup of water.
Then three things happened: Lana dropped the plate she was holding, which landed with a crack on the checkerboard tile; the Carhartt man looked up over the tops of his sunglasses; and a shock wave of recognition rolled through me, leaving me shaking in my shoes.
We stared at each other, the man and I, and he saw me remember. As we locked eyes, I recalled things I’d forgotten: ten years ago, his car had smelled like Christmas trees. He’d ordered pancakes and eggs when we’d stopped for breakfast. I’d been wearing a purple corduroy jumper over a striped T-shirt and tights, and white cowboy boots with silver studs I was extremely proud of. He’d told me stories, some I recognized and some I didn’t. I could never remember what they were about, after, but I remembered the feeling they gave me: the feeling you get from good poetry, real poetry, the kind that makes your neck tingle and your eyes tear up.