Through The Grinder

The door burst open and Bruce and Matteo rushed in.

Matt took one look at me and burst out laughing while Bruce hurried to my side.

“Are you okay?”

I nodded more worried about the water that was gushing everywhere.

“Where’s the cutoff valve?” Bruce cried over the noise of the water.

I looked at him blankly. In the months that I’d lived here, I never needed to know about the plumbing. I shrugged. Bruce turned to Matteo, who stopped laughing and came up blank, too.

“Never mind,” said Bruce, scanning the kitchen. “It’s probably behind this plate.” He pointed to the embossed tin plate under the sink.

I’d seen it before but figured it was ornamental. Bruce knew differently. He immediately sat down in the growing flood of water, drew out his keys, and opened a tiny screwdriver attached to the chain.

In a flash he unscrewed the plate. When he yanked it off, the powerful smell of natural gas flooded the kitchen.

“Open the window!” Bruce called. Matteo complied and cold autumn air dissipated the odor.

Behind the plate, I saw a hole filled with pipes. Bruce reached in and twisted a valve. The flow of water slowed, then stopped.

After the noise and chaos came a moment of eerie calm. Finally, Matteo spoke.

“So, Bruce. I take it you’re a plumber.”

Clad now in dry clothes — I had hastily thrown on jeans and an oversized T-shirt — I escorted Bruce Bowman to the door. Matteo casually followed us, hovering in the foyer.

“I can’t believe what happened,” I said for about the tenth time.

“I’m just glad I was here,” Bruce replied. “Those gaslight pipes should never have been left behind the wall. They were filling with gas for half a century or more. Luckily the leak behind the faucet rusted the gas pipe enough to let out the pressure. Otherwise, there could have been an explosion.”

“I don’t know what I would have done if I’d been here alone,” I said.

“You weren’t alone,” Matt snapped from behind me. “I was here.”

“Matt, you didn’t even know where the cutoff valve was,” I reminded him.

“I’ll get the pipes taken care of first thing in the morning,” I told Bruce.

“Good-night, Matt,” said Bruce, extending his hand.

Matt hesitated but shook. “Yeah. ’Night.”

“Some privacy?” I whispered over my shoulder to my ex-husband.

Matt frowned but didn’t argue. He drifted off, back into the dining room.

“Bruce, I — ”

“Don’t say ‘I’m sorry.’ Not again. It’s not your fault.”

“I should have listened to those phone messages. We could have gone to a restaurant.”

“It’s okay. Now the ice is broken, right?”

I couldn’t believe it. Our romantic first date was completely ruined, and Bruce was trying to see the bright side.

“Hey, look at it this way,” he added. “Joy gets to go home early. I’ll even offer to walk her, okay with you?”

I nodded, grateful. “Can I make it up to you?” I asked.

“Oh…let me count the ways.” He smiled and touched my cheek. Then he leaned in for a long, sweet, good- night kiss.

“I’ll call you,” he promised, then turned to descend the back service staircase, the one that would lead him out by way of the Village Blend.

When I closed the door, I turned to find Matt leaning against the dining room door frame, nut-brown forearms folded across his chest.

He shook his head. “When did you start dating plumbers?”

Eleven

Like a desert wind, Sahara McNeil burst out of her apartment building and moved quickly toward the SoHo gallery where she plied her trade. Her flaming red hair caught an icy gust as she ate up the sidewalk on red leather boots with four-inch heels.

Best of all, the woman was fiddling with her portable CD player, totally oblivious to her all too familiar surroundings. She was so oblivious, in fact, that the Genius matched her quick steps directly behind without the woman even noticing.

This morning’s mission was supposed to have been a dry run for the real event, which would occur when every aspect of the planning had been thought out. But the weather was getting unpredictable, and this moment felt too perfect.

All the planning in the world added up to nothing without the boldness required to carry it out, and the Genius believed any set goals could never be achieved without a certain amount of risk. Even Napoleon said he would rather have a lucky general than a smart one.

As if on cue, a dirty white New York City Sanitation Department truck came rumbling down West Tenth Street. Two men sat in the cab, talking, not looking at the road even as the vehicle rolled forward toward the empty intersection.

No one else was walking on this part of the block, which was predominantly residential — the only place of business was a retro bar called the Blue Lounge, and it was dark at this early hour.

No witnesses, thought the Genius.

Absent mindedly, Sahara halted at the end of the block to wait for the truck to pass before she crossed. She did not look up. Instead she popped open the CD player and fumbled in her bag for a new disk.

The truck continued forward. The workers continued chatting distractedly.

A push. Timed just right. One simple push.

Then Sahara would never again bother him.

“God, what is it about this place and death?!”

Esther Best had made her typical existential outburst earlier than usual, and loud enough for everyone in the Blend to hear. It was just after noon on Friday, a busy time for us. Customers’ noses lifted out of books, their eyes peered over laptops and newspapers. Esther stood in the Blend’s open doorway, her gloved hand on the old brass handle, a blast of icy November drizzle sweeping in behind her black overcoat.

“Close the door, Esther,” I said. “You’re letting in the cold.”

She did. Then she trudged over to the coffee bar.

Most of the customers returned to their business. All except Kira Kirk, who was sitting close to the counter, still looking up from her crossword puzzle.

“And where exactly is ‘this place’?” she asked Esther, peering over the tops of her horn-rimmed reading glasses. “I mean as it pertains to death? This coffeehouse? The West Village? New York City? Or are we talking the universe itself? You must be more specific.”

Esther gave Kira a sidelong glance through her own black-rimmed glasses. Then she pulled off her gloves. I was working behind the pastry case, refilling the empty muffin baskets with blueberry, apple spice, pumpkin carrot, and banana walnut. She sidled over to speak to me.

“Sorry I’m late,” she snapped, her tone not exactly apologetic. “A woman got killed across the street from my new apartment. Hit by a garbage truck. Police everywhere.”

Tucker made a face, not unlike the one my superstitious grandmother used to make after she’d heard someone speak ill of the dead and before a hasty sign of the cross.

At a table near Kira’s, Winnie, the tall, raven-haired Shearling Lady lawyer, who’d arrived an hour before,