It was the red car again. John watched his frog get nailed -- just a bit shy of a high score, too, dammit! -- swore viciously, and reached in his pocket for another quarter to feed into the Frogger machine. He came up empty.
"Hey, Tessa, change me another dollar?" he called toward the teenager working the counter at Coffee Arcade. The retro video arcade/coffee "emporium" was one of the Hillglen Chamber of Commerce's attempts to up property values and the town's image by scattering trendy urban elements throughout Hillglen's small-town environs. Like topping a hamburger with sushi, the attempt rarely worked well.
"Sorry, John, you've just about cleaned out my change drawer. If you wait till Mike shows up in an hour or so, he can open the cabinet and empty the quarters. Meantime, want a latte?"
"What the hell goes into a latte? And when did you hire a Mike? I thought you and Tim could barely keep this place in business on your own."
"It's got espresso -- that's a really concentrated coffee, but we don't have a machine so I just brew it extra strong -- and then milk, steamed and foamed. I tried foaming the milk with this swirly-whisk thing, but it takes forever so I just started using whipped cream. You should try it." Tessa pulled out a mug at shook it at him in what seemed intended to be an enticing fashion.
"And Mike -- yeah, well, we can't afford him, but you know how Tim is about helping out the family. It's Mike Mendell, his sister's kid. He got laid off at the supermarket, so Tim hired him to come do some odds and ends around here until he can find something else. I don't know how we can afford to keep him on the payroll, unless the chamber comes through with another grant like --"
"Mike Mendell?" John unconsciously took a step back away from the counter. "He's Tim's nephew? He's coming here?"
"Yeah, should be in about noon. So, how about that latte?"
Mike Mendell, a six-foot-six specimen of chiseled male humanity and fewer brain cells than God gave sea salt. Which had worked out well for John -- it never occurred to Mike to ask the obvious questions like, "So what does that wedding ring you wear mean?"
Hands shaped by hours of manual labor, heavy-lifting, and other mentally unchallenging jobs can still be remarkably tender, John had discovered. "I moisturize," Mike explained, beaming beatifically. It turned out he moisturized everywhere.
Yes, Mike had made for an entertaining interlude for a few months. Until the unpleasantness. Which, John maintained, really wasn't his fault. It wasn't like he'd indicated to Mike any interest in exclusivity...
Still. Since then, staying out of Mike's path had seemed the better part of valor. He should have paid more attention that first week, when Mike showed off his prized gun collection. John was pretty sure Mike just collected the things and wasn't clever enough to figure out intricacies such as how to load them, but he also wasn't eager to be proved wrong.
"Here ya go!" Tessa had apparently taken John's silence as asset, and prepared for him a gigantic mug of her latte. John glanced at his watch, then at the drink, wondering which was a more worrying possibility: that he might run into Mike, or that he might have to try Tessa's concoction.
"Um, Tess, how about you make this to go? I gotta go meet Sue soon. I said I'd drop off a stack of tests she left at home during her free period."
"Well, if I put it in a to-go cup, all the foam will get smooshed to the bottom. I guess I can just add more on top." Tessa sloshed the drink into one of Coffee Arcade's largest takeaway cups, then topped it with a basketball-sized squirt of Reddi-wip.
"Oh, you want a drink for Sue, too?" she asked, her eyes lighting at the prospect.
"No! I mean, she's avoiding caffeine. Because of her condition," John hastily appended.
"I think we have some herbal tea around, with special leaves and stuff. The expectant-mother blend ..." Tessa ducked down under the counter, but resurfaced a moment later without any teabags. "Or maybe it was coming in our next order. All still going well with Sue? She's due pretty soon, isn't she?"
"About another month. Doctor says all seems normal. And he assured me that her obsessive nursery decorating is also normal. Dr. Spock doesn't warn us fathers-to-be about that part." John picked up the drink, tossed a few dollars on the counter, and headed for the door. "Anyway, I'll let her know about the tea."
"Hey, thanks. See ya soon. And GO RUBBER DUCKS!"
"Yeah, Go Ducks," John echoed as he backed out. Once he hit the parking lot, he hurried his pace. Best to flee the scene before Mike's scheduled arrival, he figured.
A sudden shrill blast startled him into nearly dropping the drink. Instead, the latte merely sloshed across his shoes.
"Dammit!" John yelped as grappled for control of the cup. The trilling rang out again. It took him a moment to identify the source: his cell phone. The one Sue had insisted he start carrying, in case of baby-related emergency.
Giving up on the drink and tossing it in a nearby trash can, John fished the phone out of his pocket.
"Hello?"
From the other end of the line, he could hear only muffled sobbing.
"What? Hello? Who's there?"
"John ..." The voice trailed off again. A man's voice, not Sue's.
"What the hell? Who is this?"
Through the next fit of tears, he caught the phrase "it's Joe." John nearly dropped the phone.
"Joe! Why the hell are you calling me on this line? Sue could find out. Why the hell are you calling me at all? This is a bad time, I can't talk."
"John, there's, there's --" After a gasp for air, Joe seemed to surface long enough to choke out a few coherent words.
"John, I need you to come over here. It's urgent. There's something terrible I haven't told you!"
What will Joe tell John?
Wait, isn't John married to, you know, a woman??
Who or what are the Rubber Ducks???
These questions, and several more we thought up on the subway last night, will be answered in tomorrow's spine tingling second chapter of... CLIFFHANGER.
Posted by Stacy at November 2, 2003 11:11 AM