She smiled but it never reached her eyes, fading somewhere between her lips and the bridge of her nose.
He watched the portal in his mug begin to die down, his chance of leaping into another world disappearing fast along with the steam that escaped the liquid. Yes, it had been one hell of a morning. Not much of a morning for smiles. Or maybe it was. A morning for half-smiles, perhaps. He couldn’t decide.
Raphie handed Jessica a mug of steaming coffee – black with no sugar, just as she liked – and they both leaned against the countertop, facing one another, their lips blowing on their coffee, their feet touching the ground, their minds in the clouds.
He studied Jessica, hands wrapped around the mug and staring intently into her coffee as though it were a crystal ball. How he wished it was; how he wished they had the gift of foresight to stop so many of the things they witnessed. Her cheeks were pale, a light red rim around her eyes the only give-away to the morning they’d had.
‘Some morning, eh, kiddo?’
Those almond-shaped eyes glistened but she stopped herself and hardened. She nodded and swallowed the coffee in response. He could tell by her attempt to hide the grimace that it burned, but she took another sip as if in defiance. Standing up even against the coffee.
‘My first Christmas Day on duty, I played chess with the sergeant for the entire shift.’
She finally spoke. ‘Lucky you.’
‘Yeah,’ he nodded, remembering back. ‘Didn’t see it that way at the time, though. Was hoping for plenty of action.’
Forty years later he’d gotten what he’d hoped for and now he wanted to give it back. Return the gift. Get his time refunded.
‘You win?’
He snapped out of his trance. ‘Win what?’
‘The chess game.’
‘No,’ he chuckled. ‘Let the sergeant win.’
She ruffled her nose. ‘You wouldn’t see me letting you win.’
‘I wouldn’t doubt it for a second.’
Guessing the hot drink had reached the right temperature, Raphie finally took a sip of coffee. He immediately clutched at his throat, coughing and spluttering, feigning death and knowing immediately that despite his best efforts to lift the mood, it was in poor taste.
Jessica merely raised an eyebrow and continued sipping.
He laughed and then the silence continued.
‘You’ll be okay,’ he assured her.
She nodded again and responded curtly as though she already knew. ‘Yep. You call Mary?’
He nodded. ‘Straight away. She’s with her sister.’ A seasonal lie; a white lie for a white Christmas. ‘You call anyone?’
She nodded but averted her gaze, not offering more, never offering more. ‘Did you, em … did you tell her?’
‘No. No.’
‘Will you?’
He gazed into the distance again. ‘I don’t know. Will you tell anyone?’
She shrugged, her look as unreadable as always. She nodded down the hall at the holding room. ‘The Turkey Boy is still waiting in there.’
Raphie sighed. ‘What a waste.’ Of a life or of his own time, he didn’t make clear. ‘He’s one that could do with knowing.’
Jessica paused just before taking a sip, and fixed those near-black almond-shaped eyes on him from above the rim of the mug. Her voice was as solid as faith in a nunnery, so firm and devoid of all doubt that he didn’t have to question her certainty.
‘Tell him,’ she said firmly. ‘If we never tell anybody else in our lives, at least let’s tell him.’
Raphie entered the interrogation room as though he was entering his living room and was about to settle himself on his couch with his feet up for the day. There was nothing threatening about his demeanour whatsoever. Despite his height of six foot two, he fell short of filling the space his physical body took up. His head was, as usual, bent over in contemplation, his eyebrows mirroring the angle by dropping to cover his pea-sized eyes. The top of his back was slightly hunched, as though he carried a small shell as shelter. On his belly was an even bigger shell. In one hand was a Styrofoam cup, in the other his half-drunk NYPD mug of coffee.
The Turkey Boy glanced at the mug in Raphie’s hand. ‘Cool. Not.’
‘So is throwing a turkey through a window.’
The boy smirked at the sentence and started chewing on the end of the string on his hooded top.
‘What made you do that?’
‘My dad’s a prick.’
‘I gathered it wasn’t a Christmas gift for being father of the year. What made you think of the turkey?’
He shrugged. ‘My mam told me to take it out of the freezer,’ he offered, as if by way of explanation.
‘So how did it get from the freezer to the floor of your dad’s house?’
‘I carried it most of the way, then it flew the rest.’ He smirked again.
‘When were you planning on having dinner?’
‘At three.’
‘I meant what day. It takes a minimum of twenty-four hours of defrosting time for every five pounds of turkey. Your turkey was fifteen pounds. You should have taken the turkey out of the freezer three days ago if you intended on eating it today.’
‘Whatever, Ratatouille.’ He looked at Raphie like he was crazy. ‘If I’d stuffed it with bananas too would I be in less trouble?’
‘The reason I mention it, is because if you had taken it out when you should have, it wouldn’t have been hard enough to go through a window. That may sound like planning to a jury, and no, bananas and turkey isn’t a clever recipe.’
‘I didn’t plan it!’ he squealed, and his age showed.
Raphie drank his coffee and watched the young teenager.
The boy looked at the cup before him and ruffled his nose. ‘I don’t drink coffee.’
‘Okay.’
