Through The Grinder

looked back up from her book, interested. Martha, a young editor from nearby Berk and Lee publishers, glanced up from a manuscript, too.

Esther carted her coat to the back pantry, then came out again, looped a blue apron over her neck, and tied it.

“I’ll work late to make up the time,” she said, still averting her eyes. Then Esther tied back her wild dark hair, grabbed a cloth, and began dusting the shelf of our one-pound House Blend bags until the labels threatened to peel away.

Obviously, the accident had upset her. Not that I blamed her. Expiring under the wheels of a New York City Sanitation truck was just a wrong way to die. Not that there was a right way.

“Did the victim live in your building?” Tucker asked.

In New York City, a question like that was akin to “did the victim live in your neighborhood,” because in New York, most apartment buildings had the population equivalent of a small town street, if not an entire block, which often made your co-op board (if you had one) the equivalent of your neighborhood block association, the repository for rules about such things as the proper disposal of garbage, leashing of pets, and hours to have a party.

Esther stopped dusting.

“I didn’t see her face. Just her legs. They were sticking out from under the truck, you know?” She shuddered. “A couple of cops went over to the big co-op building on the corner. One of them was carrying her bag. Expensive one, too. Coach.”

“How do you fall in front of a garbage truck?” Tucker asked.

“When your number’s up, it’s up,” said Winnie.

“Probably she slipped,” said Kira. “People slip and fall all the time. Some even die in their own homes.”

Myself, I was thinking “pushed,” but maybe that’s because the last slip and fall I encountered (my late assistant manager Anabelle) turned out to be premeditated murder. Or maybe it was Quinn’s influence. That man’s dark vision of the universe sometimes rivaled Schopenhauer’s.

“She probably just killed herself,” stated Esther.

Or Esther Best’s, I amended.

Esther was facing us now, her eyes brightening at the reaction her words elicited.

Now that was the Esther I knew. I was fond of the girl, don’t get me wrong — and I felt bad for what she’d had to witness this morning — but most of the time, Esther wasn’t exactly Sister Mary Sunshine. As Tucker put it, while some folks saw the silver lining in a dark cloud, Esther would search compulsively for the lightening strike. And then endlessly wallow in the painful disappointment of this discovery via free-form verse at a St. Mark’s Street poetry reading.

“Now, Esther, why would you think it was suicide?” Kira asked.

“I guess I was thinking of that Valerie girl in the subway, and Inga Berg, too. It’s like there’s some epidemic of suicides in the New York air or something. It’s like these girls got up one morning and went out and just killed themselves for no reason — on a whim, even though they had everything to live for.”

“Suicide is not an act of whim. Nor is it contagious,” said Tucker.

“It can be a fad, though, Tucker,” Kira noted brightly as she drained the last of her cappuccino.

Kira had been in exceptionally good moods since the last Cappuccino Connection night. I’d noticed she’d started to wear makeup regularly again, and I assumed Mr. Moviefone/Crossword Puzzle Man was the reason. Still, I couldn’t let a morbid remark like that go unchallenged.

“What do you mean suicide can be a fad?” I blurted. “Like the hulahoop or skinny neckties?”

“Or maybe mass Macarena-style masochism?” quipped Winnie, sharing a glance with me.

I shook my head.

“A literary fad,” Kira clarified. “The Werther epidemic is a case in point.”

“Don’t know that one,” said Esther.

“Rings a bell,” said Winnie.

“When the German poet Goethe published his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, it became an overnight sensation. Napoleon told Goethe he’d read it seven times. But Goethe’s biggest influence was on middle-and upper-class youths. Some were so influenced by the tragic love story of Werther and Lotte that a number of them actually emulated the hero and committed suicide. It became the fashion in Germany, France, Holland, and Scandinavia for unrequited lovers to kill themselves dressed like Werther, with a copy of the novel lying open nearby, marking a favorite page or passage. It got so bad that clergymen denounced the novel from their pulpits.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.” I gave Kira a doubtful look.

“Where did you learn that?” asked Tucker. “And for heaven’s sake, why?”

Kira laughed. “I told you before, I’m a genius.”

Tucker and I exchanged a look that said, join the club. In our experience, a formidable fraction of people sitting in New York City coffeehouses thought they were prodigies — primarily because their mothers told them so.

“Actually, I read the Penguin edition of Goethe’s novel,” admitted Kira. “As for why…A few years ago a Times crossword question was ‘before Faust was damned, this protagonist committed suicide.’ The right answer was ‘Werther’ but I didn’t get it. When that happens, I learn all I can about the subject so it never happens again.”

“See what I mean?” said Esther. “Tragedy and death are under the surface of everything. It’s part of our entertainment, our popular culture. I mean, violent movies, violent music, suicide in a crossword puzzle? And look at us! Everyone here is obsessed with suicide. Somebody mentions the subject and that’s all anyone can talk about.”

Tucker’s face pruned up. “But, Esther, you’re the one who mentioned — ”

I laid my hand on Tucker’s arm, silencing him. “Nobody who really has it all commits suicide,” I told Esther. “And I doubt — the Werther epidemic notwithstanding — that one human being can influence others enough to drive them to suicide.”

“You forget Jim Jones and his Kool-Aid-drinking followers,” pointed out Winnie.

“And suicide bombers,” Tucker added. “Someone’s putting the idea in their heads to strap on explosives and visit the Middle Eastern version of mini-malls.”

“Okay, those are exceptions. But most people have deeply personal reasons for ending their lives. Reasons that have nothing to do with fanaticism, religious or otherwise.”

“There has to be a screw loose,” said Winnie. “Healthy, self-actualized people turn their aggressions outward, not inward.”

“You’d think a healthy person wouldn’t have any aggressions,” said Kira.

Winnie gave her a look that said, don’t be so naive.

“It’s just really hard for me to believe that Inga Berg actually committed suicide,” said Esther. “Life was her oyster. Especially in this town. At least, she gave us all the impression it was.”

“It was all those damned decafs,” said Tucker. “A couple of weeks ago Inga Berg started ordering decaffeinated coffee in the evenings. Said she was having trouble sleeping. I think she should have stuck to regular. Might have saved her life.”

“Maybe that was it — lack of sleep. Maybe she wasn’t in her right mind because she was so tired,” said Esther.

“No. You’re not getting my point. People who drink caffeinated coffee are actually less likely to kill themselves. I saw a news story on it a few years ago.”

Esther rolled her eyes with skepticism, but I spoke up.

“Tucker’s right. I wrote a piece on it for a trade magazine. A Harvard study concluded that women who drank more than three cups of coffee a day were at one-third the risk of suicide compared to those who didn’t imbibe.”

“What about us men?” said Tucker.

“The study wasn’t done on men. It was done over a ten-year period with female nurses. I think because they roughly paralleled the general population in rates of depression, smoking, obesity, drug abuse, and other bad habits. Sorry.”

“Good for the goose, good for the gander,” said Tucker, refilling his empty cup with our freshly made