Holiday Grind

with the struggles and drudgery of workaday life. Whether they touched down or crash-landed, newlyweds have been traveling the same trajectory for centuries.

“Maybe you should call her?” I suggested.

“Forget it,” he said, then changed the subject. “You know, Clare, our Holiday Blend’s a winner this year because of you. You created the blend; you perfected the roast.”

“But you found the beans, Matt. Your beans are incredible.” I didn’t mind giving away the credit for this year’s exotically spiced blend. Usually, Matt was so cocky it wasn’t necessary. But because he’d gone humble on me, I stated the obvious: “That microlot of Sumatra you snagged on the last trip to Indonesia was superb. You made my job easy.”

Matt’s weary expression lightened at that, and I was glad to see him smile—until his gaze drifted over me. In anticipation of the evening’s festivities, I’d fastened a prim choker of green velvet ribbon around my neck. In hopes of seeing Quinn, however, I’d squeezed into a new pair of not-so-prim, form-fitting low- riders. The holly-berry-colored cashmere-blend sweater wasn’t exactly loose, either. It also flaunted a borderline audacious neckline. (What could I say? I liked Quinn’s eyes on me.) Unfortunately, at the moment, it wasn’t Mike Quinn doing the looking.

“Nice sweater,” Matt said with an arched eyebrow, and before I could stop him he reached out to brush the melting snow crystals from my hair. “Have I seen it before?”

“The sweater’s new,” I informed him while carefully stepping beyond his reach.

Married or not, Matteo Allegro liked women. And because I was one, there was no getting around his occasional flirtations. I could get around his touches, however, and I’d found that a subtle dodge worked a whole lot better than a snippy lecture—it proved a lot less embarrassing in public, too.

Obviously, Matt and I had a history: the kind where you live together for ten years as man and wife. For various reasons—most of them having to do with his addictions to cocaine and women, not necessarily in that order—a single decade legally wedded to the man had been more than enough for me. We did, however, still share a grown daughter as well as another kind of commitment: Matt’s elderly mother owned this century-old coffeehouse and she’d bequeathed its future to the both of us. So once again Matt was my partner in business. I tried to keep that in mind whenever Matt’s penchant for crossing lines sprang up.

Matt glanced around. “So where’s your guard dog?”

“If you mean Mike, he’s got police business in the outer boroughs. He might not make it.”

Matt’s dark eyebrows rose. “Too bad,” he said, but his tone didn’t sound disappointed. “Come on, I could use some warming up. The place looks great.”

His arm began snaking around my hip-hugging jeans. I slipped clear.

“Thanks,” I said. “You go ahead and hang up your wet coat in the back. I have to lock up again.”

“I’ll save you a seat,” he said with a wink, then moved toward the back of the shop. As I turned to secure the door, however, it flew open on me.

A runway-model-tall woman jarred me and our store’s new jingle bells without so much as a pardon me.

“I’m sorry,” I told her. “We’re closed.”

Even with half of her face mummified by a scarf the color of latte froth, I could tell the redhead was a knockout. In her midthirties, she had a stunning, statuesque figure. Peeking above the costly pashmina, her nose and cheekbones appeared daintily carved; her eyes adorably big and brilliantly blue. When I spoke to her, however, the woman’s wide, doll-like eyes collapsed into slits, squinting down at me as if she’d just noticed a bug under her boot.

“Like hell you’re closed!”

Okay, the woman’s tone was a tad nastier than the angelic face she showed to the world, but I forced a smile. For one thing, she was a new regular. I’d seen her in here several times over Thanksgiving weekend— wearing the same white fur-trimmed car coat and large sheepskin boots, both of which screamed designer label. Her hair was memorable, as well. From beneath her soft knit cap, her sleek curls tumbled down her shoulders in a silk stream of eye-catching scarlet, a striking contrast with the ivory car coat.

“Again, I’m sorry, ma’am,” I said with polite firmness, “but we are clo—”

“You are not,” she said, stamping her giant Ugg boot on my internationally festive welcome mat. “You have, like, a dozen people here!”

Anyone who’d spent five minutes in Manhattan realized that a percentage of its well-heeled population sashayed around the island with so much attitude that branding entitlement on their foreheads would have been redundant. In the presence of perceived “peers,” these people could be downright charming. When dealing with no one of “significance”—say, a lowly coffeehouse manager—their behavior turned less than affable. As New York retail went, however, appallingly bad customer behavior wasn’t anything out of the ordinary, so I simply stiffened my spine.

“I realize the snow’s really coming down. But I’m not lying to you. This is a private party, and we are closed as you can see from the sign on the door—”

“Excuse me? Who, in their right mind, would notice some stupid little sign on a night like this?!”

By now, the buzz of discussions near the fireplace had come to a dead stop. All eyes had turned to us, which wasn’t surprising. Everyone in the Big Apple loved a scene. Not that minding your own business wasn’t still a primary objective in this town, but there was an important distinction: Just because New Yorkers didn’t want to get involved in an unfolding drama didn’t mean they weren’t interested in gawking at it.

“I’ll tell you what,” I offered. “If you don’t mind meeting and mingling with some new people, you can join our—”

“Whatever!” she interrupted. “You’re closed!” Pirou etting like a girl who’d never missed a ballet recital, Red yanked open the door and stomped her big Ugg-booted feet out into the snowy night.

I locked up and turned to find everyone still watching me. “Sorry about that.”

“What do you have to be sorry about?!” Esther cried. “That woman was a total be-yotch!”

Although I agreed with Esther, I wasn’t happy about ejecting anyone back out into a snowstorm. “I was trying to invite her to the party.”

“Maybe if she hadn’t cut you off and pitched a fit,” Tucker said, “she would have heard the invitation! Talk about rude.”

“The woman’s agitation level was off the charts,” Gardner said. “Looked to me like she needed her meds adjusted.”

“O Valium, O Valium,” Tucker sang, “how lovely are your trances—”

“That little display was nothing,” Dante said, waving a tattooed arm. “Three out of the last five nights I closed, I had to physically eject some total A-holes. It’s like the holiday season’s pissing everyone off.”

“Yeah, me included,” Gardner confessed.

“You?” I couldn’t believe my most reliably mellow barista had lost his holiday spirit. “Why?”

“It’s these nonstop loops of mediocre Christmas tunes,” he said, gesturing to our shop’s speaker system. “At least three radio stations have been repeating these same lousy playlists twenty-four-seven for weeks now, and practically every store I walk into has one of them on speaker—”

“It’s like bad sonic wallpaper,” Esther said.

“Whatever you want to call it, it’s driving me sugarplum crazy.” Gardner shook his head. “Three weeks to December twenty-fifth and I’m already fed up with the sounds of the season.”

“Me, too,” Dante said. “The CIA should abandon gangsta rap as a torture technique and try playing ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ a few hundred times in a row.”

“Oh, man. One time’s enough for me,” said Theo, one of Gardner’s musician friends.

“Wait!” Dante froze and pointed to the speaker system. “There it is again.”

Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle bell rock...

“Can we please cut the power on this stuff?” Theo begged.