day is the same, unlike in the summer months when random tourists appear. Then it’s a crapshoot. We run out of bacon. Some egghead wants to know what’s really in the chocolate croissants, leaving Priddy to send one of us to drag the box out of the trash in back and see. Vacationers snap photos of the café name in the front window; they take pictures with the waitresses as if this is some kind of tourist attraction, a hot-spot destination, spouting on and on about how some Michigan travel guide claims ours is the best coffee in town. They ask if they can buy the cheap mugs that bear our name in an old-style font, and Priddy will up the price from the bulk fee she pays—a dollar fifty apiece—to $9.99. A rip-off.
But none of this happens in the off-season when every single day is a rehashing of the day before, the same of which can be said for today. And tomorrow. And yesterday. At least that’s the way the day sets out to be as Mr. Parker arrives with his two dogs and orders a coffee, black, to go, and Priddy asks him if he’d care for a croissant, which he says no to twice before he says okay.
But then at the end of the morning something happens, something abnormal, making this day different than all the days before.
My Dearest,
It’s one of the last memories I have of you, your arms clinging to her neckline, the gentle curve of her breast pressing into your skin through the thin cotton of a wispy white blouse. She was beautiful to say the least, and yet it was you I couldn’t take my eyes off of—the shimmer of your skin and the radiance of your eyes, the gradual curve of your lips as she traced over them with the pad of a forefinger and then placed her own to yours. A kiss.
It was through the window that I saw you. I stood there, in the middle of the street, not hiding in the shadows or behind trees. Smack-dab in the middle of the street, impervious to the flow of traffic. I’m surprised she didn’t see me, that she didn’t hear the blare of a car horn suggestion that I move. Recommending it. But I didn’t move. I couldn’t be bothered. I was too busy watching the two of you gathered together in a warm embrace. Too intrigued and too angry.
Maybe you did. Maybe you did see me, but only pretended not to see or hear.
It was nighttime, just after dusk as I pressed my face now to the glass to see inside. The curtains were open, every single light in the house on as if you wanted me to see. As if you were gloating, rubbing it in, exulting in your victory. Or maybe that was something she came up with all on her own: leaving the lights on so that I could see. It was, after all, her victory. Like a spotlight illuminating dancers onstage, the way you laughed, the way she smiled, no one noticing my absence because I’d already been replaced as if somehow I’d never even been there in the first place.
Except that you weren’t onstage at all, but rather in the living room of a home I was meant to share with you.
I have to know: Did you see me? Were you trying to make me mad?
All my love,
EV
Her hair is dark brown. Sort of. A dark brown that lightens steadily so that by the time your eyes reach the end of it, it’s nearly gone blond. Ombré. It’s got a subtle wave to it, an understated wave, so you’re not really sure if it’s a wave at all or if it’s just windblown, the hair that sits below the shoulders. Brown hair to accompany the brown eyes, which—like the hair—seem to change colors the longer I stare. She arrives alone, holding the door for a couple of old fogeys who follow on the heels of her overpriced Uggs. She steps back and waits while they’re seated, though it was clearly she who arrived first. She stands there in the entranceway, somehow looking sure and not so sure all at the same time. Her stance is that of aplomb: upright posture, nothing fidgety or twitchy, simply waiting her turn.
But her eyes are aimless.
I’ve never seen her around here before, but for years now I’ve been imagining she would come.
When it’s her turn, she’s seated at a table beside the window so she can watch the same predictable customers who come and go and come and go, though it goes without saying that they’re anything but predictable to her. I watch as she slips from a black-and-white checkered pea coat. There’s a marled black beanie on her head. She removes the hat and drops it on an empty brown banquette chair beside her canvas bag. Then she peels a knitted scarf from around her neck and drops that, too, on the chair. She’s petite, though not like those überskinny models you see on the fashion magazines in the grocery store lines. No, not like that. She’s not pin thin, but her build is slight. More short than tall, more skinny than not skinny. But still, not short and not skinny, either. Just average or normal, I guess, but she’s really not any of those things, either.
Beneath the pea coat and the beanie and the scarf, there’s a pair of jeans with the Uggs. And a hoodie. Blue. With pockets.
Outside, day has broken. It’s another sunless day. There are leaves on the sidewalk, brittle, crumbly leaves; what remain on the trees will lose their hold by the end of the afternoon, if the westerly wind has any say in it. It whips around the corners of the redbrick buildings, sneaking under a kaleidoscope of awnings where it lies in wait for the perfect opportunity to snatch someone’s hat or steal scraps of paper from their glove-laden hands.
There’s no threat of rain. Not yet, anyway. But the cold and the wind will keep plenty of people inside, forestalling the promise of winter.
She orders a coffee. She sits by the window, sipping out of the discount ceramic coffee mug, staring out the window at the view: the brick buildings, the colorful awnings, the fallen leaves. You can’t see Lake Michigan from here. But people like to sit at the window, anyway, and imagine. It’s there somewhere, the eastern shore of Lake Michigan. Harbor Country, we’re called, a string of small beachfront towns just seventy-some miles outside of Chicago, seventy-some miles that are somehow equivalent to three states and another world away. That’s where most of our clientele comes from, anyway. Chicago. Sometimes Detroit or Cleveland or Indianapolis. But most often Chicago. A weekend getaway because it’s not like there’s anything to do here that will keep you busy for more than two days.
But that’s in the summer mainly, when people actually come. Nobody comes now. Nobody but her.
Our café is far enough off the beaten path that where we sit at the far edge of town the shops and restaurants give way to homes. It’s an assorted mix, really—a souvenir shop to the north, a bed-and-breakfast to the south. On the opposite side of the sett street is a psychologist’s office, followed by a succession of single-family homes. Condos. A gas station. Another souvenir shop, closed until spring.
A waitress passes by, snaps her fingers before my eyes. “Table two,” she says, a waitress I call Red. They’re all just nicknames to me: Red, Braids, Braces. “Table two needs to be cleared.”
But I don’t move. I continue to stare. I give her a nickname, too, because it feels like the right thing to do. The woman staring out the window is building castles in the air. Daydreaming. It’s a big deal, really, something different happening around here when nothing different ever happens. If Nick or Adam were still around, and not away at college, I’d call them up and tell them about the girl that showed up today. About her eyes, about her hair. And they’d want to know the details: whether or not she really was different than the dime-a-dozen girls we see every day, the same girls we’ve known since first grade. And I’d tell them that she is.
My grandfather used to call my grandmother—also a brunette, though in my lifetime I’d never seen her as anything other than a mass of weblike gray—Cappuccetta. The nickname Cappuccetta purportedly
