my reasons were purely selfish. I’m calling in that debt — the dinner date you promised me, remember? Now you can’t say no. Or pretend you didn’t hear me.’
‘Dinner?’ I repeat, disconcerted. ‘When?’
I hadn’t actually promised him anything concrete but it seems churlish to remind him of that now. I’d been on fire to get a message out to Ryan, would probably have promised Ranald the earth, the moon, the stars for his help if I’d had to.
‘How about this Friday?’ he replies. ‘Just something easy and casual. There’s a place I like that’s only a couple of blocks away.’
‘Uh, sure,’ I say uncertainly. ‘Friday sounds okay.’
By 5 pm on Friday, if it all goes to plan, Ryan and I will be as far away from here as it’s possible to get. I’ve just got to keep on lying like I mean it, until I can disappear Lela right out of her life.
I refocus on Ranald with difficulty.
‘Bring your prettiest dress in,’ he’s saying eagerly, ‘and we’ll head straight out after you knock off. I’ll run you home later in my car.’
‘Sure,’ I say again neutrally, ‘that would be great.’
‘Yeah, it will be,’ Ranald says, inserting some kind of square, portable device into his machine, his head bent over one of the small, rectangular slots in the side. ‘But you’re sure you don’t have anything else on?’
‘Nope, nothing that can’t wait,’ I reply without missing a beat.
I glance up as someone else comes in from the street. Franklin Murray — in the same business suit, shirt and tie as yesterday. He doesn’t look wild-eyed or edgy today. Just numb.
Cecilia takes one look at him and abandons the coffee she’s making for Ranald. She hurries into the kitchen, where I can see her peering through the serving hatch from behind one of Sulaiman’s muscular, black-clad shoulders.
‘What are you doing here?’ Mr Dymovsky roars. ‘I will call the police!’
‘I came to apologise,’ Franklin mumbles, eyes downcast, mouth trembling slightly. ‘And to get a coffee and a chicken salad sandwich. My wife thinks I left early for the office. I’ve been walking around for hours. I’ve got nowhere else to go. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what came over me.’
I do, but I don’t say a thing, because who’d believe me?
Beside me, Ranald is curiously still, watching the interplay between the two older men.
Mr Dymovsky is red in the face. ‘No one shoots up my place and my people and gets away with it!’ he shouts.
But Cecilia, Sulaiman and I act instinctively. Cecilia comes out of the kitchen and begins brewing Franklin a coffee, while I seat him at a table near the door. Sulaiman abandons lunch prep for a moment and brings out a small bowl of freshly shredded iceberg for the man’s sandwich.
‘You’re all mad!’ Mr Dymovsky blusters. ‘Get him out!’
‘Lightly toasted?’ I ask Franklin in a neutral voice.
He doesn’t look at me, just stares straight ahead and says softly, ‘Yes, thank you.’
His suit jacket is hanging a little awkwardly, and as I move around the table I spy the grip of the handgun jammed into its inside breast pocket like it was yesterday. The guy’s still a walking situation. But that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be treated like a human being. We’ve all been there. It’s just that most of us haven’t resorted to firearms.
As I pass Ranald’s table, he whispers to me conspiratorially, ‘Is he still packing a gun?’
I nod almost imperceptibly.
I fetch Franklin his sandwich and coffee. ‘There won’t be any charge today,’ I murmur, placing them down in front of him.
There are tears in his eyes as he answers with dignity, still not meeting my gaze, ‘I can pay.’
I shrug. ‘You decide.’
Mr Dymovsky gives an audible snort and heads into his cramped little office off the corridor that leads to the poorly ventilated toilets at the back of the Green Lantern. From the stubborn angle of his head and shoulders, the way he’s muttering to himself in Russian, he’s probably planning to give the police a heads-up anyway.
Cecilia looks at me uneasily as Franklin openly cries between bites of his sandwich and sips of his coffee. He’s got his back to us, but we can all see his shoulders shaking, hear the small animal noises he makes as he mops at his face with the backs of his hairy hands.
Ranald frowns at his computer, like an irritable turtle. ‘People are trying to work here,’ he growls at Franklin’s back, stabbing at his keyboard ill-temperedly.
I can tell he hasn’t forgotten Franklin’s jibe about him being a low-level functionary.
Franklin doesn’t respond. He just keeps sobbing and eating, sobbing and drinking, making those awful wounded noises that he thinks we can’t hear.
A few coffee orders blow in and out, looking at him curiously as they go by. When I tidy up some loose newspapers sitting on top of the counter by the front window I see that the guy’s face is a mess. I slide a paper napkin dispenser across the table at him on my way back to the kitchen. He ignores it.
Mr Dymovsky comes back, mouth in a stern line. He gestures at me.
‘Move him on!’ he says fiercely when I return to the front counter. ‘I don’t want any troubles with this guy. He is like the time bomb. No good for business, crying custr. Tell him to cry somewhere else, okay?’
I walk back towards Franklin’s table.
Ranald looks up as I pass him. ‘It’s about time you guys did something.’ His voice is sulky and he’s actually pouting. ‘I can’t work in these conditions.’
Standing just behind Franklin’s left shoulder, I can see that he’s finished his sandwich and there’s only a couple of mouthfuls of coffee left.
‘Franklin?’ I say quietly. ‘I’m going to have to clear the table now, because we’re about to get really busy.’ What I say next surprises even me; is the exact opposite of what I intended to say. ‘But you’re welcome to finish up your coffee and come again tomorrow. Do you hear me? What you did yesterday — nobody holds it against you.’
Behind me, Ranald gives a loud exhalation of disbelief.
I hesitate, then place a hand on one of Franklin’s pinstriped shoulders, hoping he won’t try and touch me like Ranald did. He doesn’t. But by his sudden silence, his stillness, I know that I have his full attention.
‘Just don’t do it again, okay? Mr Dymovsky doesn’t want to have to involve the police. Spare your family that, at least. Just tell them what happened with your job and maybe you can figure out together what the next course of action should be? I think they’ll surprise you. Give them that chance. There’s a reason you’re a family.’
I hear Ranald snort again and feel irritated. Doesn’t the guy possess a modicum of empathy? It’s almost as if he wants to push the other man into doing something desperate in a public place.
Franklin doesn’t say anything, and still doesn’t look at me as he scrapes back his chair and rises to his feet. I feel more than see everyone tense up when he shoves his right hand inside his jacket, feeling around in there. He holds onto the handgun’s grip for a long moment, as if debating something with himself. But after a minute or two, he lets it go and adjusts the front of his jacket with shaking fingers.
It was a gesture of self-reassurance more than anything else, I realise, a reflex action. Like he was telling himself that he still has options.
Without a backward glance, he pulls open the door and bats his way back out through the plastic curtain. ‘I thought he was going to shoot himself this time, I really did,’ Ranald says as I let out the pent-up breath I’d been unconsciously holding.
Mr Dymovsky — who hadn’t actually heard me invite Franklin to come back again tomorrow — gives me a thumbs up from behind the counter, but his face is pale and the shaken expression on it probably mirrors what’s on Lela’s face. Cecilia, standing close to Sulaiman near the kitchen door, looks equally stunned. Sulaiman, as usual, appears as impassive and immovable as stone.
It must be nice, I think, to have a faith so strong that a little scene like that doesn’t even cause you to break a sweat.
I don’t work that way. Fate is there to be meddled with, in my view. Anything else just makes you an observer in your own life.
‘It didn’t help, you making those stupid comments from the sidelines,’ I snap at Ranald as I pass him.
