Starbuck’s Ashland, 9:45 a.m.
I didn’t see her face. She was in line, fidgeting a bit—unzipping her green leather purse which hung suspended from her elbow by two short straps, and zipping it again. I could see a curved cheek, pale and a little yellow in tone as though someone were holding a buttercup, always, to shine weirdly golden in her skin. A pert, round chin like a stubborn Persian cat, a few curls of a medium brown color; all of these things spilled out of the bottom of a turquoise crocheted hat, like luscious, untouched fruit from a net cornucopia.
Her hands, I noticed, were long and slender, the fingers bony. Someone looking with a critical eye would call the hands strange—longer than the measure of her narrow palm, the fingers seemed to move almost independently, each one sensing, seeking. From where I sat, I could see some blue veins on her hands, along the long bones extending down each finger and into the wrist. I decided then that she probably hated those veins. I felt the corners of my lips pull in a smile. What an unfamiliar feeling! So long had it been, I had to stifle the laugh that bubbled in my chest.
From where I sat, I could watch—hungrily and minutely. She lifted the arm that held the bag, and scratched her opposite wrist, toying with the shirt cuff that extended below her navy pea coat. As the bag shifted, I saw it—just the spine of a book, but clear from where I sat: Orlando.
A rage, that familiar rage, unexpected this time, flew through me so wildly that my scalp tingled and I sat, panting, waiting for it to subside. A heat on my hand told me I had crushed my cup—a glance down, and the pool of coffee sliding quickly toward the edge of the table and my blue-jeaned lap (one must keep up with the times, you know, I tell myself when I don those ridiculous garments) made the anger subside as quickly as it had come. I stood up and walked the small distance to get a handful of rough brown napkins.
Before going back to my seat, I studied her from another angle. She had good legs, from what I could see: brown knit stockings, a bit too thick for my taste, but it was icy cold out there this morning, and so she showed good sense, I allowed. Scuffed brown boots, rising to a bit above her rounded calves, and a tweedy brown and blue skirt hanging in full folds completed her choice of clothing. I nodded. Modest, and yet stylish; clearly not affluent, she had the good taste to purchase serviceable clothing that still avoided “dowdy.” She was the correct choice for this morning. I have never been wrong in my first impulse, that slight pulling I feel toward a person, that glow of intuition...but I do like to watch for a moment to make sure.
She moved forward to the cash register, and I inhaled as the air stirred around her. Peach, I thought. A ripe summer peach that has been forgotten, lying and becoming bruised as the first frost hits.
I was nearly too late. It’s a good thing I have developed a taste for this new thing: “Pumpkin Spice Latte.” There are many things I loathe about these modern times, but a few things I think are vast improvements. Pumpkin Spice Lattes are definitely one of the improvements.
She turned around to wait at the other side of the counter, where they had set up a small, semicircular wooden countertop simply for the purpose of coffee cups being pushed from one person’s hand to the other person’s hand. It always fascinated me, this little wooden counter. Without communicating, people knew. They’d stand on their designated side and wait, and the person on the other side would eventually push their coffee across. No words necessary, and the change completed—the change from one state to another, newly-made to consumed, coffee maker to coffee drinker.
So it is with my job. “Job” isn’t really the right word—I AM my job. It is me, and has been since I have existed. No words are necessary; when it is time for me to take people, they usually understand. Some protest, some greet me with a tired welcome; some even seek me early, before their proper time: those, I can tell you, I have quite a long talk with.
This one, though—this one would be tricky. “All the most difficult ones crop up around Halloween,” I thought, then realized I must have spoken aloud, as her head whipped around, and two green eyes, too bright for comfort, pinned me where I stood.
She studied me, almost as closely as I had examined her just a few minutes earlier. I did not like the look in her eyes—I found myself reaching for the middle button of my black coat, plucking at it, and starting to slide it out of the buttonhole. I forced myself to still my hand. How could this girl, this...overripe fruit, this flower out of place, meant to be plucked at the end of Summer, but here it was, nearly Winter—how could she look at me so? I purposely relaxed my neck, and felt myself grow taller. I remembered who I was.
I saw something shift, then, in those green eyes. There was a slight flinch, and she looked away quickly; now she was the shabby little student in the brave, bright hat—what a stupid flower there was, too, a crocheted flower on the side of that hat! I hadn’t noticed. It curled and drooped, something an old lady would fix to the top of a baby’s shoe. It hung over one of her ears, making her look like an escapee from the 1920s.
She clutched her purse while I stared, distracted by that flower I hadn’t seen, and then she looked back,
she looked back
and I was clutching my coat then in one hand, bending my knees, bracing myself as though against a wind.
Orlando.
I have only known a few who have defied me: usually they are writers, artists, or, long long ago, they were warriors—though they don’t make those any more.
There was a Queen once, and her lover and her King, all best friends. They walk still under the stars, because I had lost my chance with them. I have to take them, you see, before their spirits, their hearts, their minds have discovered my secret.
Achilles nearly did, and he lives still, in a half-life when people deign to read his story...but he is fading. Soon, oh very soon, I will be able to take Achilles at last.
But this one!—Orlando. Always I encounter her or him, and always...always I walk away empty, my job undone.
She smiled at me then, a slow smile, which brought a very annoying dimple out on her soft gold and pink cheek.
“Happy Halloween, Mr. Death,” she said, and then the bell of the door tinkled, and I watched that bright, brave, shabby turquoise hat with the flower—it seemed an altogether lovely flower now—bob away jauntily down the street. I moved to the door. I watched it past the movie theater, on its way to Bloomsbury Books.
I heard a dripping sound behind me. My pumpkin latte gleamed in a brown pool on the table, and in spots on the floor. It reminded me of another who had defied me: he painted mostly in a shade of red—with that shade he made his name, and forever saved himself from my grasp.
“People won’t read you forever, Orlando, and then I’ll have you for my own,” I thought, attempting to retain my dignity as I mopped up the floor under the stern gaze of the Starbuck’s Girl.
