Blackteeth Read online

  “Not Starbucks,” Hesper said in her best polite voice. Polite was something she didn’t like to do, either. Growling and snarling usually got her what she wanted, but apparently that wasn’t appropriate in a coffee shop. Her two days at a barista training workshop had been a trial of fire that she did not wish to repeat, although she had done just that. She’d needed to learn how to make a living, and even she knew she hadn’t gotten it the first time. Human beings expected courtesy all too much. Customer service required courtesy even when one did not feel courteous, and Hesper didn’t feel courteous most of the time.

  The young man with the complicated order giggled at his two friends. He finally turned back to her and said quickly, “Cap then. Extra shot of espresso. Extra sweet.”

  “Ess-press-oh,” Hesper said helpfully, painfully aware that the young man had been planning to order that all along. He’d also mispronounced the word, though ostensibly that wasn’t on purpose.

  “What?” the young man said.

  “It’s pronounced ess-press-oh.”

  “Ooo,” the young man said to his friends. “She’s, like, an English Nazi.”

  Hesper bared her teeth harder. If she went any further, her lips would likely split. “Cap. Extra shot of espresso. Extra sweet, right?”

  “Don’t you want to correct my English some more?” He winked at Hesper and it occurred to her he might have been attempting to flirt with her. It was like a third-grade boy hitting a similarly aged girl in the arm because he liked her.

  What I really want is to take the biggest cup we have and smack it over your head, Hesper thought. I want the porcelain to crack and slice open your scalp. She kept her lips peeled back and went to work. About five minutes later the young man and his friends had paid for their drinks, received their orders, and left Abracajava’s, still sneering and giggling.

  “If you don’t like customer service, why don’t you find a job in a cubicle?” Hesper’s boss, a woman named June, asked from behind her.

  Because I didn’t graduate from high school, she thought. Because I didn’t graduate from junior high, either. In fact, I didn’t finish the fourth grade. That’s why I don’t work in a cubicle. And some other things I don’t like to think about.

  June peered into Hesper’s face. “Bet your cheeks hurt. Do you ever laugh?”

  “No.” Hesper allowed her cheeks to relax. That was much better than leaving the teeth bared. Baring her teeth meant that her lips dried out quickly, and there didn’t seem to be enough Burt’s Bees lip balm in the world to make it better. She had to remind herself there were a lot of things that were better than the way they had been. She often made lists when she wanted to remind herself that things could be much worse. Things had been much worse.

  I have a bed. I have blankets. I’m not hungry. I’m not thirsty. I don’t hear screams by the hour. I’m alive. She touched the chain at her neck. The pendant was hidden under her shirt, but she knew it was there. The last item on her list was I have a plan.

  “You’re a dark horse,” June said. “Fits in this area. Lots of dark horses about.”

  Hesper glanced out the glass windows as if she was looking for dark horses. It was a cloudy day and rain was threatening. Rain threatened Portland on a regular basis.

  “I have an appointment tomorrow,” Hesper said because it seemed like a good time to fill in the silence. “Won’t be in until after lunch.”

  June stared at her. June actually stared down at her, reminding her of a man who had once looked down at her and asked, “Do you need help?” He’d had gray hair like June and a kindly face like June.

  Hesper snapped back to the present. “A doctor’s appointment,” she specified.

  “Okay,” June said kindly. “Whatever you need to do.”

  Hesper took a moment to catalog her employer. Maybe six feet tall with four-inch heels. Gray hair with a pink streak down one side. Crow’s feet framed her watery blue eyes and wrinkles encircled her mouth. Her skin was as pale as if she never went out in the sun. She’d offered Hesper the job five minutes into the interview, and Hesper had an idea June hadn’t regretted it, even though Hesper could be, for lack of a better word, awkward.

  “Sorry about the short notice,” Hesper added clumsily.

  June shrugged.

  Hesper also had an idea that she should say something else, but she wasn’t sure what she should say. The psychiatrist had offered a list of rote sayings for the average everyday conversation gambit. “How about that weather?” “What about those Trail Blazers/Winterhawks/Beavers?” “I like cats; what about you?”

  Before the silence pushed them into a mortifying abyss of discomfort, June started to say, “Do you…” and then trailed off uncertainly. She sighed heavily before she finished. “Do you have friends, Hesper?”

  “No,” Hesper said before she thought about whether or not she should answer no. The better answer would have been yes, but telling the truth just seemed simpler. “I’m not a friend person,” she added quickly. “What do they call that? An introvert? That’s me.”

  “Sunday afternoon,” June said, “I’m having a thing at my house. Just neighbors, friends, a few relatives. You should come. Have a drink. Eat some chips. Talk to a stranger just for the hell of it.”

  “I talk to strangers all day long,” Hesper said. That had been the biggest reason for becoming a barista. She wanted constant exposure to strangers. She wanted to desensitize herself. When a tall skinny person with dark hair came in for a mocha Americano with extra froth, she wouldn’t cringe into the back counter out of fear. For that matter, attacking them with the nearest chair wasn’t ideal, either.

  Another reason for becoming a barista was that her mother had sprung for the barista school, although the money had come from a settlement related to Hesper’s disappearance. Two days in Dallas got her a nice certificate and some hands-on training that helped enormously. Of course, Hesper had repeated the course at her own expense because she knew that she needed the practice. Her first job had been in Arlington, Texas, and was due in part to the owner of the barista school referring her. Coupled with that, was that living in Texas had added benefits of which she had taken full advantage. The people in Texas had a marvelous leniency when it came to observing the intricacies of the Second Amendment.

  Working in a coffee shop didn’t produce the most tremendous money, but there were advantages. One was that most employers didn’t mind an odd schedule. Also, employers at such places didn’t usually need Hesper to present a high school diploma nor did they mind if she had a complicated history, although there had been one in Santa Fe who had let her go as soon as the owner figured out who she was.

  Hesper supposed she could have cast some heavy shade about that on Facebook or Twitter. Victimized again because of her notoriety. Oh, the unfairness of it all. However, she didn’t have a Facebook account nor a Twitter one, and there wasn’t one on Instagram or Reddit or Tumblr or Pinterest or Snapchat. Yep, that’s me. A real honest to God luddite.

  Hesper had left Santa Fe for Portland with nary a how d’ya do. That was another important advantage to being a barista. She could go where she needed to go in order to learn things she wanted to learn, and although she’d been let go at the coffee shop in Santa Fe, she’d also learned almost everything she’d wanted to there.

  For the moment the location du jour was Portland, Oregon. Finding a job wasn’t hard, either. She had gone to three coffee shops before June had picked her up. It was nice because June even had health insurance.

  “Please?” June asked pleadingly. “I hate to see you all alone. All you do is read books and ride your bike to the library and karate school.”

  Alone was better. One didn’t need to count on someone else who, in all likelihood, was going to trip you so they could get away. To be clear, it wasn’t just the library or the dojang. There were the lessons from a man on 3rd street about things she’d never dreamt of learning, and those lessons were among the many things of which she didn’t
speak about to anyone. There was also a guy in Vancouver who knew more about weapons than anyone she’d ever met, and he didn’t mind sharing the knowledge with her for a few bucks.

  “Sure,” Hesper said. “I’ll come.” She bared her teeth again. She thought that maybe even June was marginally fooled.

  June had a captive audience because she knew Hesper lived three doors down from her 1909 bungalow with the big porch and oversized pillars. June’s neighbor rented out her rooms to make ends meet, and Hesper was just the kind of tenant she liked—quiet, clean, and prompt with the rent. Once June had discovered that Hesper was new in town and without a permanent address, she’d settled the living arrangements like the good person she was.

  I’ll show up. I’ll drink a microbrew. I’ll bring a cheese platter. I’ll disappear thirty minutes into it. Hesper nodded at June. “I need to clean the cappuccino machine,” she said, and she could almost hear the desperation in her voice to get away from that particular chat.

  “Uh, huh,” June said. “You have to stay at least an hour and talk to three separate people.” She held up her right hand and displayed three fingers.

  Hesper nodded again. “Sure,” she said through her teeth. She was saved from further conversation because a group of twenty-somethings came through the door, loudly chatting about presidential elections and 401(k)s.

  By the time Hesper finished with them, June was occupied with paperwork in her miniscule office. Then Dove, the twenty-something girl who worked other shifts, had appeared to take over for Hesper. Hesper clocked out as quickly as she could. Outside, she had her helmet on and was on her bicycle before June could figure out she was sneaking away.

  All Hesper could hope was that June didn’t meander down to her house later that evening to make certain that Hesper was really going to show up on Sunday. Thirty minutes would turn into ten minutes if everyone’s back was turned.

  Hesper heard her phone go off. The ringtone was something from The Black Eyed Peas, and she couldn’t figure out how to change it. Dove had fiddled with the phone once she’d heard it ring with the standard old-fashioned phone call sound. And by the way, what had happened to Fergie while I was gone?

  Pulling her ten-speed up to a bench, Hesper put her feet on the cement so that she could pull the Samsung from her jeans pocket. The screen said it was her mother. The name Lucy Blake was clearly displayed with an Arizona area code as plain as could be.

  Phones are great, Hesper decided not for the first time. They could be used like a computer. There were games. And it showed the name and phone number of the person calling you so that you had the option of disregarding it.

  Hesper hadn’t had a cellphone when she was ten. She had been too young according to her parents at the time. When she went to middle school, she could have one, but that milestone had never happened. Once Hesper had finally gotten one, it had taken her about three weeks of playing with it to understand all the basics. The people at the Verizon store were asked so many questions that they cringed when she walked through the front door. When Hesper had figured out how to use the Google page, she didn’t have to ask people so much questions. Why ask a human when you could just look it up on your phone? Furthermore, there was almost always an explanatory video on YouTube on how to do this, that, or the other.

  All Hesper needed was a phone plan and minutes to stream. Her landlord was nice in that she shared her wireless router’s password for the tenants, and June had a Wi-Fi spot at Abracajava’s. Thus, Hesper was introduced to the decade in which she had suddenly appeared.

  Her mother lived in Apache Junction, which was part of the greater Phoenix area metroplex. Hesper didn’t know much about it because she’d never been there. Her mother had begged her to come there to live, but her mother was also married to her second husband, Todd, and together they had a six-year-old boy named Jacob. Todd didn’t alarm Hesper as much as Jacob did. Six years old. Jesus, that’s right on the smack dab middle range of what…

  The thought trailed away as Hesper stared at the screen. She didn’t want to speak to her mother. Lucy called once a week whether she wanted to or not. It was probably part of her mother’s therapist’s larger plan for familial recovery. After all, if they all worked together, then Hesper could move on. Lucy could move on. Everyone would be blissfully happy. Joy and contentment would abound.

  Finally, Hesper punched a button and put the cellphone to her ear. “Ma,” she said.

  Lucy said, “Oh, thank God,” with her soft Alabama drawl. Born and raised in the Huntsville area, she’d never lost the accent. She’d divorced Hesper’s father, John, and taken their remaining daughter to a place as opposite as it could be to Alabama. Purportedly Hesper’s sister, Hannah, was doing well and was enrolled in Arizona State University, studying computer engineering. Hesper didn’t speak to Hannah, either. She wouldn’t have known what to say to her if she did.

  “Something wrong?” Hesper asked.

  “Um,” Lucy said, and there was a wealth of information in that simple syllable. “Okay, I won’t mess around. It’s about Thomas Madrid.”

  Hesper didn’t say anything. She didn’t want to talk about Thomas Madrid. She didn’t even want to think about the Alabama man who’d been convicted of kidnapping as well as a multitude of other sins.

  “What about him?” she asked because her mother wasn’t going to fill in the blanks.

  “One of his lawyer’s appeals is headed to the Supreme Court of Alabama today. There’s a lot of news about it. I’ve had phone calls from press. It looks bad for us.”

  Hesper had changed her last name. She didn’t do social media. She didn’t tell people anything. In fact, other than her therapist, she didn’t talk to anyone except maybe the clerk at the Safeway or the corner market. And what she did talk about was all listed under the phrases that the therapist had given her. “How about those oranges?” “What’s fresh this week with fish?” or a tried and true favorite, “Oh, that Portland weather is crazy, isn’t it?”

  “I haven’t heard about it,” she said truthfully.

  Her mother was silent.

  “No one’s called me except you,” Hesper added.

  “Well, I thought you should know.”

  “Okay.”

  “And you’re eating your vegetables?” her mother persisted.

  “Yes. This week it’s green. Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and arugula. I don’t like the sprouts any more than when I was a kid.”

  That was the wrong thing to say because it reminded Lucy of all the years that Hesper hadn’t had any vegetables. The doctors told her she would always be petite because of it, and did she have to mention all the work the dentist had done on her? She hadn’t brushed her teeth for ten years, but now she brushed religiously twice a day and used floss, too. Every cavity had been repaired so that she had a mouthful of silver and one gold-plated molar that had had a root canal.

  “I’m good, Ma,” she said quickly before her mother started to cry.

  “I saw Hannah last weekend,” Lucy said hurriedly in an anxious manner. “She’s doing well in college. You know you could catch up. Get a GED and apply for university. We could get grants. I think your infamy could help out. I could even do a GoFundMe to help you out.”

  GoFundMe, Hesper repeated in her head. That was another thing she would have to look up on Google to see if it was a good or bad thing. “I’m good,” she repeated. “I’ve got to go. I’m on my way home, and it looks like it’s going to rain. I need to run an errand or two on the way.”

  “Wait. Do you need money? Are you taking your medicine?”

  No. And no, hell to the no-ooo. The five amber-colored bottles sat on her nightstand, and she hadn’t even once cracked the child resistant lids. Being prescribed the drugs was a result of what she’d told the first psychiatrist she’d seen.

  In the hospital on day one of Hesper’s return, she’d known she shouldn’t say what had really happened. It was easier to pretend not to speak, and it was simpler to pretend
she didn’t remember. After all, there was a catalog of injuries to support a diagnosis of dissociative amnesia with a subtype of selective or localized to boot. There had been evidence of head trauma and physical trauma, and the doctor didn’t even need to throw in the assumption that Hesper had been sexually abused on a long-term basis.

  Anyone would understand why Hesper didn’t talk about it or didn’t remember most of it.

  But Hesper was all too human. When a psychiatrist spoke to her and offered to keep everything to himself, Hesper had been tempted. Too tempted. She told the truth for the first and last time. That was when all the other diagnoses popped up. According to the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it was straight up schizophrenia, but the doctor tiptoed into the tulip patches of paranoid and borderline personality disorder. Hence, the five bottles of antipsychotics and whatnot. She filled them, so everyone understood she was serious about her therapy, but she didn’t actually take them.

  “I’m good, Ma,” Hesper repeated. There was an itch on the back of her neck, and she slowly turned to look behind her. The shadows were growing long due to the impending storms blocking out the sun, and a tall skinny individual concealed within one could have been staring at her. She would have never known it.

  Hesper’s eyes scanned the area, and she could feel her heart begin to thunder in her chest. They don’t forget. They will never forget. And if she made the mistake of assuming they did, she would be dead.

  “Got to go,” she said quickly and disconnected the line. She stuffed the phone in her pocket even while she looked around her anxiously.

  A man came out of a nearby sports shop, and his gaze settled on her. Large and tall, he looked like he was only a few years older than she. His brown eyes regarded her almost thoughtfully.

  Hesper didn’t like feeling that he had been watching her all along from behind the shop’s windows, as if he had been looking for her. She mounted the bicycle and rushed off so quickly that a car almost hit her. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that the tall man was still watching her. She looked away as she pedaled around a corner and really got her pace going.