Quintic (55 page)

She was not
patient either, and by then, she was off the couch, working herself
into a state. “You know, Big guy, I’m not asking for your
permission here. I can do whatever the heck I want, and if you’re
not happy about it, well, tough!”

Damn
irresistible. “Come on, Pussycat, no need to get upset. You’re
right; you can do whatever the fuck you want. You just took me by
surprise. That’s all. You know I’m lousy with surprises. But I’m
OK. Really. If you’re happy, then I’m happy. And you’re happy,
right?”

“Yes.”

“
OK then, so
am I. Happy as a clam.” He pulled her back down on the couch next
to him. She was stiff at first, but she relaxed against him after a
while. “Does this mean I get free coffee?”

“
Only if
you’re polite
to the
waitress.”

Damn right
he was going to be nice to the waitress. Starting right now, he was
going to be so fucking pleasant to the waitress. He very nicely
fondled her breasts before letting one hand wander
south.

“
Stop
teasing, Christopher,” she whispered some time later.

“
I’ve only
just begun being nice, Angel of mine,” he teased back, his lips
against her folds.

Later still,
after
the waitress was so agreeable back,
they were nice together.

All that
politeness
and work at a coffee shop had
tired her out, and she fell asleep rapidly while he remained
wide-eyed next to her, listening to her soft breathing. Tomorrow,
he was going to cook her a huge breakfast before tying her to the
bed. Shit no. She was working tomorrow.

Her Old New
Job

S
he worked at the coffee shop for
exactly six days, one hour and twenty-two minutes. She liked
working in a coffee shop. She didn’t do any writing, but she
enjoyed preparing the cups, sprinkling coffee on the milk, folding
napkins, decorating saucers with chocolate syrup, adding a biscotti
when she liked the customer.

She
delighted in talking to the clientele about
their days, the weather, the news, their family, their work. She
daydreamed about where they were coming from, what their lives were
like, what they were up to next. Her worries that the job might
lessen her imagination proved unfounded; as it was, her imagination
went into overdrive (but was that really a good thing?).

The coffee
shop was in a questionable neighbourhood. She had known beforehand,
of course, it shared the gym around the corner’s clientele. For
every person that got a biscotti, ten were biscotti-denied, or
snapped at or worse. Every damn day, strangers put their hands on
her arms, shoulders or waist as she carried her tray of
coffees.

“
Hands off,
asshole.”

She had worn
a skirt
on her second day only. That
Saturday, everything had gone smoothly. Then again, Christopher had
spent the day with her, reading newspapers in front of the window,
taking in the sun, chatting up some of the customers and staring
down anyone who acted too friendly. On that day, she had found it
both annoying and funny but had missed it dearly on her following
shifts.

He picked
her up at the end of
each day (or sent
Reid or LeRoy when he couldn’t) but during the afternoon, she was
left to herself. The barista wasn’t helping as he didn’t notice (or
chose not to see) the harassing patrons. As long as the place
stayed busy, the jerk was happy.

She
had convinced herself the job was perfect for
her. And it was. Six days, one hour and twenty-two minutes of near
working bliss. And then some jerk had dared put his hand on her
bottom! Tired and preoccupied, she never saw him coming and
bam!
Hand
on her caboose.

She had
taken the job
as prevention, so she
wouldn’t feel compelled to haunt stripper clubs, damn it! She had
taken the job to stay away from lowlifes and ensure she wouldn’t
meet another asshole. But this was the corporate downtown office
nightmare all over again. She quit the job and the inappropriate
dirty paw on her bottom.

When some
jerk put a hand on her buttocks, or anywhere else, she didn’t want
to be polite and turn him down gently. She wanted to kick
his
butt
or have someone from the team around to do it properly for her.
Even better, she wished Christopher would do it. She was angry. At
men. At herself. Worse, she was right back to where she had been
upon her resignation. Had she thought tiring herself with work
would bring her peace? Well, it hadn’t!

She stomped
to the park and sat for a while. Soul searching. If she could do
anything, what would she do? Write. That was a given. What is
enough? In itself yes. But, as she had learned the hard way, if she
only wrote, her writing wasn’t as lively, and the process itself
became a laborious. Plus, she sometimes went insane. She already
had a universe all of her own, if she wanted to keep up with normal
people, she needed to do normal things, everyday things.

So
now what?
She was smart; she had plenty of opportunities.
And she was funny. And agreeable, at least when she wanted to be.
Surely any employer would be lucky to have her. Not full-time,
though, because she needed to write. So correction, any part-time
boss would be blessed to have her.

A job that
required a uniform was out of the question. She already wore plenty
of disguises. Night jobs were a no-go also. As were weekend jobs or
any occupations that were dirty or physical. She needed her sleep,
and Christopher worked weekdays but not weekends (most of the
time), and she was taking too many showers and baths as it
was.

Her new
position should not annoy her or require her to think or act
normally. Pretend normal she could do yet normal she was not, and
would get fire within the first day so no point in bothering with a
normal job, right? Besides, she didn’t like people looking at her
thinking she was weird. So she was, so what?

How about painting?
She was into
paintings. She used to sketch before Christopher, but sensing her
choice of subjects unsettled him, she was trying to adjust. No,
they had not discussed her art in depth, but the pulsing vein and
the clamped jaw gave him away.

The painting
itself wasn’t the problem
; that he liked.
As a first anniversary sort of gift (not that they were in a
committed relationship or anything, she unconvincingly claimed),
she had given him a self-portrait, a nude painted from behind. He
had loved it. The portrait now hung in his office of all places! At
least, no one beside him knew it was her. She had yet to complete a
painting of him; the man was so damn distracting, infuriating
really, she hadn’t even made a sketch of him.

What she
drew the most were portraits, body in preference to face, men in
preference to women. More often than not, when she needed a female
model, she’d set up mirrors and posed for herself. Unless she was
going for something particular, older, younger, heavier set, full
figure or pregnant, then she’d hire posers. The best and hardest to
find were pregnant women.

Her male
models were varied, athletes, construction worker
s, retirees, friends, and before Christopher, lovers. He
had not said he didn’t like her models per say, but on mornings
when she headed to her studio, he was slightly more tensed, as in
white knuckles gripping the coffee mug. She once caught him smoking
on the terrace, and she had not even told him who the subject
was.

These days,
she
preferred to paint in the afternoon;
the lighting was better. She rented a small studio over a coffee
shop (obviously) in the artsy borough. Maybe if she painted
full-time? Unfortunately, her painting followed a similar path as
her writing. She sketched profusely, people, places, lights, and
imagined her paintings before painting them. Backburner amalgam.
Hence, not painting.

Coffee shops
were wonderful! Lots of weirdos mixed in the normal crowd. Even if
the sleazy coffee shop had had more jerks than weirdos and normals,
it had not dampened her coffee shop liking. And as she had found
out, far from affecting her writing, it had enhanced it. Hence, a
coffee shop with more regular Joes than weirdos might make a
suitable workplace. Did such a place exist? She had visited so many
coffee shops, where could she work? Or rather, who would
let
her
work?

The French
place
and Vitto’s coffee shop topped her
picks. As did the one bistro next to her studio. Pros and cons. The
French place had plenty of normals, maybe too much. Ditto for the
one next to her atelier. But Vitto’s was full of cops, thus,
perhaps too many weirdos although, strangely, her kinds of freaks.
Vitto’s coffee shop then.

What else?
She had fit right in with Christopher’s guys.
Each, in their own peculiar ways, had ingrained weirdness,
yet they
functioned
. In her unique ways,
she too was functioning in society with barely a glitch (nothing
she couldn’t survive). She loved the team and revelled in making up
stories about people and places from her file. She already did that
half the time anyway, so why had she quit?

She loved
observing them,
him
at work; he was so dedicated. On the edge.
Somewhat ruthless. They had a single purpose, find the bad. Noble,
corny yet so true. Again, why had she resigned? Finding the girl
had been rough mentally, but she had gone through worse. The
interrogation? There again, been there, done that.
Lemieux.

Lemieux was,
ah, quite difficult. Memories of her life of not so long ago.
Memories of Joshua. Memories of Joshua
and
Lemieux. Lemieux had
saved her from Joshua,
cleansed
her of him. And to this
day, she was still running. Whenever she couldn’t control what she
let out, she bolted. She saw improvements, though, since this time
she had not run away from Christopher.

S
he wanted back. She had wanted
to return less than five seconds after quitting. She wanted to
finish her murdered waitress story. She wished to work with the
guys on other cases. Forget the investigations, she wanted to
know
them
. She wasn’t ready for Lemieux, though. His frequentation
had been too strange, even for her. And she wasn’t prepared to run
into Scarred-face, not again, not ever again, not without a gun in
her hand. So what the heck now, as Christopher would say? The
diners, the cold case that had started it all. As her first (baby)
step toward a normal life, she would concentrate on that file and
her new job.

She called
all the waitresses she knew from both diners
. “Hi, it’s Patricia. Remember me, I’m the writer? Anyway,
sorry to bother you, I was just reviewing my notes and wondering if
anything new came to you? Anything at all, however
small?”

She
strolled back to her place (a short trek through
the park) to get her camera, then returned to both diners for
pictures. Indoor and out, front and back. She spent more than an
outrageous amount of money on taxis that afternoon.

“
Hi, Reid,
it’s me. I’m sorry, something came up, and I can’t make it tonight
for our girls’ night out. How about tomorrow evening? Or this
weekend? Call me back when you have a minute.”

She spent
yet more money on taxis for pictures of the diners at night, indoor
and out, front and back.

She dropped
in
on the accounting
ex-waitress.

“
I made this
decadent cake last night, want to join me?” Beatrice offered. “We
can share a taxi. After our lunch, I went through my stuff and
found a box of pictures with Cindy. Want to see it?”

The picture
box contained not only pictures but hair pins, theatre tickets and
other trinkets young girls valued.

“
Oh look,
here’s a photo of the two of us we took at the restaurant.” The
picture showed the two college girls grinning. They sported
identical raincoats. “We bought them together on one of our
shopping expeditions some weeks before Cindy died.” Beatrice stared
at it hard before handing it over to her. “Here, you can have
it.”

“No, really, I couldn’t.”
Depersonalisation.

“
Yes, you
can. Take it; it’s a gift. A souvenir. Cindy liked books; she’d
want you to have it.

“
Ah.
Oh
. OK. Well, hum, thank you?” The image
showed two pretty girls, a blond and a brunette, innocent and
happy, their entire life ahead of them. “It’s a charming picture.
I’ll hang it on my wall at the office.”

The office
. She needed to speak
with Christopher (again) about that, didn’t she?

Her last
taxi ride was to Vitto’s. He
and his wife
Marina were about to close for the day.

“
Ah Bella
mia, come in, come in. Let me put up the sign, and we’ll have a
small coffee together.
Vitto,
caffè latte decaffeinato
for the
bambina
.”

They had a
last cup togethe
r, the three of
them.