She shrugged. 'Let the machine get it. People don't bother anymore even to bestir themselves.'
Bestir themselves?
'They call from home in their pajamas or underwear and expect you to drop everything. Deborah O'Neil,' she said, taking away her hand. 'What can I do for you?'
She smiled, instinctively turning her head a few degrees to the side and lifting her chin. Incredible profile.
I asked her about the donut shop.
'Didn't think you looked like a flowerman,' she said.
She told me they'd been teetering at the edge (yes, she actually said teetering) for months over there. Some days they'd just put out on the shelves whatever was left over from the day before. Even the coffee got undrinkable. Not much for cleaning up, either, near the end. Counters so sticky you put your arm on one you have to shrug off your shirt and leave it there. Glued down for good. Only way they managed to stay afloat at all, long as they did, was by hiring new people when they couldn't pay old ones and let them go.
I said she seemed to know a lot about the situation over there, an amazing amount really, and she shrugged.
'I watch people, notice what happens around me. Always have. Things get slow here off and on during the day, you understand; it all comes in waves. And our office in the back has a window onto the alley. Employees take, took, their smoke breaks out there. I'd be doing the books, shuffling through piles of sales slips and invoices, and I'd hear them talking.'
Did they know what was going on?
'They knew something was. The shop had recently been sold. Previous owner'd lost interest a long time back, and the shop just went on running itself, heading down theroadthe way it was pointed. New owner bought it as an investment, you see how it's all building up around here. He could care less about donuts. But the shop still went lurching along.'
Any idea whatfinally shut the doors?
'Well, I don't know, of course. But I think it may have been what happened last night.'
The phone rang again. Low voices from the back of the shop as the answering machine took the call.
'End of the month. Extra loads of paperwork to catch up on-even more, now that my partner never seems to be around for these things anymore. I've gotten used to being here late. Store closes at six, I'll get dinner and a glass of wine up the street at Sweet Basil's then come back and have two or three uninterrupted hours. So it must have been close to ten, maybe a little past. I was getting ready to leave.'
This is last night.
'Right. I hear voices in the alley, someone saying 'Motherfuck,' someone else saying 'Be still, girl, don't you move or talk no more.' So I look out. This huge black car, Lincoln, something like that, 's pulled up out front. Four guys in it, all of them in black, too. And black. Driver stays in the car. The three that get out have automatic weapons. One stands by the car, watching up and down the street. Other two go inside. They're in there four, five minutes, come back out and get in the car. When the car pulls onto Jackson, people start running out of the donut shop. Lights are still on inside, but no one's there. This morning when I come in, I see the sign.'
Robbery, you think?
'Who'd bother? Best day it ever had, that shop never netted two hundred dollars.'
This town, it could happen. A few weeks back, an eleven-year-old knocked off a motel over on Claiborne. Walked in with a. 38, pistol-whipped the desk clerk (though he had to get up on a chair to do it), and walked out with eighteen dollars. Still, she had a point.
You never saw anything like that before?
She shook her head.
They were looking for someone.
'That's the only thing that makes sense, yes. Way they went about it, the weapons, car.'
Who was it in the alley?
'I don't know names. Just voices.'
But you looked out, through the window?
'Yes.'
You saw them?
'Not the woman. She was at the back, in the shadows. I remember the man sounded black but wasn't-that surprised me, when I saw him. Average height, fairly thin. Hair shaved to above his ears, then really long. Kind of a topknot. Like Woody Woodpecker?'
I asked her if by any chance she knew who owned the shop.
'Oddly enough, I do. He came by and asked if I'd mind keeping an eye on the property, maybe pass along any inquiries from prospective buyers. I have his name and phone number back in the office, if you want it.'
I did.
'Assuming I can find it.'
Which she did, finally: thumbtacked to the wall above the phone in a slurry of torn theater tickets, scribbled- over business cards, Post-it Notes, postcard announcements of gallery openings, panel discussions and seminars, posters and playbills for productions of Endgame, King Lear and something titled Jimmy Baldwin Disembarks for Heaven.
'You're in luck,' she said.
I guess we both are.
'How so?'
Well, I see you got your play staged, for one thing, gesturing towards the Jimmy Baldwin playbill. What, a couple of months ago?
'No. That was last year.'
It do okay?
'If you consider a week's run and half the house empty the whole time, it did. Actually I guess attendance was fairly good the firstnight or two. It gave a false impression. Because of family and friends.'
You have a lot of friends?
The phone rang. Watching one another, we listened to her voice.
Heard the beep, heaitl a mumbled message, heard a dial tone as the caller hung up.
'Not so many that I can't use another one. But what's the second thing?'
What?
'You said we were both lucky because I got my play staged-for one thing.'
You're right. Other thing was, I really do need to get some flowers.
'I see. What kind?'
Well, I was thinking roses. Pink if you have them.
'Of course. A dozen?'
Why not.
'I'll even pick them out myself.'
She disappeared into the back room and emerged minutes later cradling thirteen baby-pink roses and sprays of baby's breath in green wrapping paper.
'And how would you like to pay for this, sir?'
Cash okay?
She punched it in on the computer (I heard a printer start up in back) and told me that would be $9.98.1 pushed a ten across the breast-high table. She went back and got a copy of the printout for me.
'You'd like these delivered to what address, sir?'
Oh, you don't have to deliver them, I said.
She looked up. 'I'm sorry?'
They're for you.
9
