She loved the Coffee House. She’d gone there as a customer for six months before she talked Jeff, the manager, into giving her a job. It was a long, winding series of rooms filled with armchairs and sofas and low tables, on a street lined with second-hand bookstores.
She covered the leftover slices of cheesecake and put them into the large refrigerator for the night, then she took a cloth and wiped the last of the crumbs away. She enjoyed being alone.
As she worked she would sing along with the Indigo Girls. Sometimes she would break into a dance for a step or two, before catching herself, and stopping, smiling wryly at herself.
A tapping on the window jerked her attention from her chores back to the real world. She went to the door, opened it, to admit a woman of about Sam’s age, with pigtailed magenta hair. Her name was Natalie.
“Hello,” said Natalie. She went up on tiptoes and kissed Sam, depositing the kiss snugly between Sam’s cheek and the corner of her mouth. You can say a lot of things with a kiss like that. “You done?”
“Nearly.”
“You want to see a movie?”
“Sure. Love to. I’ve got a good five minutes left here, though. Why don’t you sit and read the Onion?”
“I saw this week’s already.” She sat on a chair near the door, ruffled through the pile of newspapers put aside for recycling until she found something, and she read it, while Sam bagged up the last of the money in the till and put it in the safe.
They had been sleeping together for a week now. Sam wondered if this was it, the relationship she’d been waiting for all her life. She told herself that it was just brain chemicals and pheromones that made her happy when she saw Natalie, and perhaps that was what it was; still, all she knew for sure was that she smiled when she saw Natalie, and that when they were together she felt comfortable and comforted.
“This paper,” said Natalie, “has another one of those articles in it. ‘Is America Changing?’”
“Well, is it?”
“They don’t say. They say that maybe it is, but they don’t know how and they don’t know why, and maybe it isn’t happening at all.”
Sam smiled broadly. “Well,” she said, “that covers every option, doesn’t it?”
“I guess.” Natalie’s brow creased and she went back to her newspaper.
Sam washed the dishcloth and folded it. “I think it’s just that, despite the government and whatever, everything just feels suddenly good right now. Maybe it’s just spring coming a little early. It was a long winter, and I’m glad it’s over.”
“Me, too.” A pause. “It says in the article that lots of people have been reporting weird dreams. I haven’t really had any weird dreams. Nothing weirder than normal.”
Sam looked around to see if there was anything she had missed. Nope. It was a good job well done. She took off her apron, hung it back in the kitchen. Then she came back and started to turn off the lights. “I’ve had some weird dreams recently,” she said. “They got weird enough that I actually started keeping a dream journal. They seem to mean so much while I’m dreaming them. I write them down when I wake up. And then when I read them, they don’t mean anything at all.”
She put on her street coat, and her one-size-fits-all gloves.
“I did some dream work,” said Natalie. Natalie had done a little of everything, from arcane self-defense disciplines and sweat lodges to feng shui and jazz dancing. “Tell me. I’ll tell you what they mean.”
“Okay.” Sam unlocked the door and turned the last of the lights off. She let Natalie out, and she walked out onto the street and locked the door to the Coffee House firmly behind her. “Sometimes I have been dreaming of people who fell from the sky. Sometimes I’m underground, talking to a woman with a buffalo head. And sometimes I dream about this guy I kissed once in a bar.”
Natalie made a noise. “Something you should have told me about?”
“Maybe. But not like that. It was a Fuck-Off Kiss.”
“You were telling him to fuck off?”
“No, I was telling everyone else they could fuck off. You had to be there, I guess.”
Natalie’s shoes clicked down the sidewalk. Sam padded on next to her. “He owns my car,” said Sam.
“That purple thing you got at your sister’s?”
“Yup.”
“What happened to him? Why doesn’t he want his car?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s in prison. Maybe he’s dead.”
“Dead?”
“I guess.” Sam hesitated. “A few weeks back, I was certain he was dead. ESP. Or whatever. Like, I knew. But then, I started to think maybe he wasn’t. I don’t know. I guess my ESP isn’t that hot.”
“How long are you going to keep his car?”
“Until someone comes for it. I think it’s what he would have wanted.”
Natalie looked at Sam, then she looked again. Then she said, “Where did you get those from?”
“What?”
“The flowers. The ones you’re holding, Sam. Where did they come from? Did you have them when we left the Coffee House? I would have seen them.”
Sam looked down. Then she grinned. “You are so sweet. I should have said something when you gave them to me, shouldn’t I?” she said. “They are lovely. Thank you so much. But wouldn’t red have been more appropriate?”
They were roses, their stems wrapped in paper. Six of them, and white.
“I didn’t give them to you,” said Natalie, her lips firming.
And neither of them said another word until they reached the movie theater.
When she got home that night Sam put the roses in an improvised vase. Later, she cast them in bronze, and she kept to herself the tale of how she got them, although she told Caroline, who came after Natalie, the story of the ghost-roses one night when they were both very drunk, and Caroline agreed with Sam that it was a really, really strange and a spooky story, and, deep down, did not actually believe a word of it, so that was all right.
Shadow had parked near the capitol building, and walked slowly around the square, stretching his legs after the long drive. His clothes were uncomfortable, although they had dried on his body, and the new boots were still tight. He passed a payphone. He called information, and they gave him the number.
No, he was told. She isn’t here. She’s not back yet. She’s probably still at the Coffee House.
He stopped on the way to the Coffee House to buy flowers.
He found the Coffee House, then he crossed the road and stood in the doorway of a used bookstore, and waited, and watched.
The place closed at eight, and at ten past eight Shadow saw Sam Black Crow walk out of the Coffee House in the company of a smaller woman whose pigtailed hair was a peculiar shade of red. They were holding hands tightly, as if simply holding hands could keep the world at bay, and they were talking—or rather, Sam was doing most of the talking while her friend listened. Shadow wondered what Sam was saying. She smiled as she talked.
The two women crossed the road, and they walked past the place where Shadow was standing. The pigtailed girl passed within a foot of him; he could have reached out and touched her, and they didn’t see him at all.