Blackteeth Page 3

  Catching Hesper would be most of the battle, and she wouldn’t be easy to catch.

  Chapter Two

  The good calligrapher is not choosy

  about his writing brush. – Japanese proverb

  That night Hesper finished reading a very thick book about legends and mythology. Then she started on The Art of War by Sun Tzu. She managed to fall asleep just after 1 a.m. Her cellphone alarm woke her at 8 a.m. She showered, put on her least-worn jeans, and a City of Roses hoodie. She drank a cup of tea and ate a granola bar. She systematically locked all the doors and collected her bicycle from the downstairs foyer. A twenty-minute bike ride put her in front of a 1920s three-story brick building in the Pearl District. She locked her bicycle in an art deco-appointed bike rack and went inside to have a session with Dr. Kisho Shimada, M.D., Ph.D., licensed therapist, et cetera. His bottom-floor suite had walls painted with soothing mild colors. Minimalist artwork dotted various sections at eye level.

  Kisho, as he had asked Hesper to call him, was a man in his forties, about five foot eight inches, and of Asian descent. He preferred wearing pastel colors and enjoyed his relaxed fit Skechers. He was also all about delving into her inner secrets. She liked him well enough, mainly because he wasn’t yet seeing the big picture.

  Wonderful, Hesper said to herself as she sat down in his office and accurately gauged Kisho’s intent expression. She’d had a stellar day so far with an emphasis on the sarcasm. Even on her best days she felt like a square cog being jammed into a circular hole, and thus far, this day wasn’t different. She’d managed to put Kisho off about what she’d told the original shrink, but he was all over the unrelenting part. She’d been seeing the doctor for the better part of a year, and he was cleverer than the last psychiatrist she’d had. What that truly meant was that she would have to change doctors or move or both.

  But not quite yet. Not until she was done learning a few more things.

  Hesper liked to talk about her dog just to get Kisho distracted. She could see the tear welling up in the man’s eye when she talked about Charlie. Charlie had been the chihuahua/terrier mix she’d been walking on that fateful day. She’d asked about Charlie when her mother had appeared in her hospital room ten years later. That specific part of the story was the moment of greatest emotionality. A young woman gone missing for ten years asks her mother about her beloved dog. Boo hoo. Waterworks! Let the rainfall begin!

  Unfortunately, Charlie had gone to that great fire hydrant in the sky a mere six months after Hesper’s disappearance. A neighbor had accidentally backed over him when he’d gotten out of the backyard. She hadn’t cried then because she had long since learned the hard way that crying didn’t accomplish anything. She’d hoped once she’d escaped that Charlie would be waiting for her, a loyal friend who wouldn’t judge her actions or the fact that she didn’t want to talk about her time in hell. It was one of the few hopes she’d maintained over that long period of time. It was also another hope that had been dashed. People always wanted to know about the ten years, and Kisho was no exception.

  Kisho had asked her how she felt about Charlie’s death. “I miss that damn dog,” Hesper told him. That was a fact. She missed the dog, and when people asked why she didn’t get another pet, it was easier to simply shrug. Another dog would have been like trying to replace Charlie. Another dog would have made her cry, and Hesper really didn’t want to cry ever again.

  Hesper spent about ten minutes that morning trying to explain to Kisho why she didn’t want to get another dog. She wasn’t certain that Kisho understood; he was obviously a dog person. He had pictures of his family which included three canines in the framed photo. There was Kisho, a lovely woman who was likely his wife, two children under the age of five who were likely his offspring, and the dogs. One was a golden retriever, one looked like a poodle, and one a beagle mix that wanted to hog the picture, and these were likely his pets because they sat closer to him in the photos.

  “What else are you doing to get past this?” Kisho asked later in the session. Oh, those lovely open-ended questions. “What”, “how”, and “would” were favorites in the doctor’s repertoire. Never “why” probably because it sounded invasive. Hesper could usually count on five “what” questions per session followed by an average of three “how” questions.

  “I get out of bed every day,” Hesper answered. That was also true because there were times she didn’t want to get out of bed, much less take the pillow off of her head.

  Kisho clearly didn’t like that answer. He tended to fiddle with the cuffs of his shirt when she said something he didn’t like, and he was actively playing with his right cuff at the moment. She also suspected he wouldn’t like that she was analyzing him in turn.

  “Having goals is a way of working one’s way through issues,” Kisho said.

  That had sounded like a pithy saying one would have embroidered onto a pillowcase. Have goals; win friends and be popular. It’s all win-win, kids. Hesper would have stopped to write that one down in her list app if Kisho wouldn’t have frowned when she did it.

  Kisho as a therapist was beneficial in several ways. He wrote out scrips without hesitation because she wasn’t asking for narcotics, and he still believed that she was working her way back to wholesome mental health. He was invested in getting Hesper to move on from her experiences, and regularly taking her medications was one way she proved that she was willing to work on her issues. One of these days he was going to ask for some bloodwork for her medication levels. She would be forced to skirt the tests, but that was some other time.

  After discussing Charlie, today’s topic of choice had been goals. They worked through several realistic, obtainable, achievable goals. Hesper even mentioned June’s get-together as a goal which made Kisho smile approvingly. There was also a goal to get Hesper walking along the riverfront with its infinite paths and stately views. And if Hesper had to start thinking about that, then she would have shuddered visibly. The Willamette River lay to the west, and the Columbia River was due north. In a very real way, she was surrounded.

  Kisho could rot in hell before Hesper took a stroll down by the river, any river. Fuck rivers.

  If Hesper could see water, then it was all too close. Sure, she rode her bicycle over bridges because she couldn’t avoid that, but the metal structures were well above the lapping edge of the liquid, and the lights were bright both in the daytime and at night. Walking or biking right beside the water would be like sticking her head through a noose and not expecting someone to yank it tight.

  Kisho ended the session by handing Hesper a list of the goals they’d made. “Let’s make some progress on those goals, Hesper,” he said amicably. She mentally translated that into “You need to make some progress on those goals, Hesper. Get your ass into gear, dumbass.”

  Hesper bared her teeth, taking the list in her hands. She folded it carefully and put it in her hoodie’s front pocket. That little piece of trashy mctrashness trashorama was going in the nearest recycling bin tout de suite. She had goals that couldn’t be written down, but they were the kind of goals Kisho wouldn’t appreciate hearing about.

  At the end of the session, Kisho escorted her to the back door of the suite. Hesper assumed that was so patients didn’t get tangled up with each other. In one way, out another made for efficient psychiatry.

  Hesper couldn’t help her sigh of relief upon exiting. The only reason she was seeing a psychiatrist was to appease her mother. On some level she thought her mother might do something awful if Hesper didn’t pretend to make all the right moves. There was a legal precedence that made her nervous. If she didn’t play ball, then she was going to be taken out of the game.

  She supposed she didn’t have to see a psychiatrist. The next time she moved she could simply not get a new doctor. She’d let the medications lapse, and only her mother would ask about them. Since years had passed and all was relatively normal, then Lucy couldn’t really scream at a doctor to commit her oldest child. What is norm
al, anyway? As long as she wasn’t running down the street screaming about black sharpened teeth clamping down on her flesh then no one would care if she received therapy or not.

  But are you sure? asked that little nasty voice inside her. Are you sure you don’t need a psychiatrist? Are you sure it wasn’t all just a dream that was only slightly better than the reality that the police had created? Are you really, really, really sure?

  The truth was that Kisho, like all of the therapists, pushed her. Hesper didn’t want to be pushed. No one wanted to be pushed. Hesper had an inkling that sooner or later she would push back, and no one would be happy about that, either.

  Hesper strolled into Abracajava’s just in time for the afternoon caffeine rush. June left her alone and didn’t bug her about Sunday’s get-together.

  Once the afternoon’s crowd finally died away, Dove finished cleaning the counter and turned to ask if Hesper liked her new tattoo. It was a white-ink feather tattoo on the inside of her left wrist.

  “It means that I’m like a bird,” Dove said guilelessly. “I’m free, and I can float away if I want. I think I’m going to move to the beach and live in an off-grid yurt.”

  Off-grid. Yurt. Oh, Google is getting a workout today. Hesper got to work cleaning the espresso machine. All the cups were thick with coffee bean residue and constant cleaning was essential. God forbid that people’s Jamaica Blue Mountain got mixed in with their Columbian Supremo. Chicken Little would come screaming about the sky falling. These people didn’t have a clue what the worst that could happen really was.

  “Hey, look at that hottie,” Dove said because she was as easily distracted as a dog when a squirrel scampers past. “His ass is tope, bruh. Totally dope, yo.”

  Hesper didn’t look. She had enough issues on her own without adding a relationship to the mix. Dove and June had earlier endeavored that sortie with thinly veiled attempts to see if she liked boys, girls, or possibly both so that they could set her up. Oh, she liked boys, but boys didn’t like her or her baggage. Even if she had liked girls, she didn’t think girls would like her baggage, either.

  “Oh, well crap, look at the time,” Dove said. “I’ve got to buzz like a little bee if I’m going to make it to the Armory. Ben and I are seeing Macbeth. You’ve got the hottie because he’s on a direct course for Abracajava’s.”

  I don’t want the hottie, Hesper thought. Mostly, I don’t know what I want. It was in the last half year or so that something else was itching at her. Life was life. She was alive. She was free. Most people encountered her without knowing who she was nor caring if they did. She suspected that June knew, but there was something more than that.

  Goals. Rotten stinking goals. Hesper knew the shrinks had gotten her mind moving in directions she’d never gone before. In the darkness goals were simple. Stay alive. Find food. Don’t get caught. In the living world, it was more complicated. Stay alive. Don’t hit customers with the cappuccino machine weighing over 200 pounds. Don’t go by the river’s edge. Follow the plan.

  That was Kisho’s fault. The doctor wanted her to reach higher and faster. He urged her to test for a GED. He praised her reading selection when he saw her with books in the waiting room. He thought that she could do what she wanted to do. Hesper wasn’t so certain about that. I do have goals. I have fantastic goals, and I do need to get my ass into gear.

  “Latte, whole milk, an extra shot of espresso,” someone said.

  Hesper glanced over her shoulder and saw the man Dove had referenced. She couldn’t see his butt, but the front wasn’t bad. It was also familiar. He’d been the man staring at her the day before as he’d exited a sports store.

  Hesper shouldn’t have questioned his presence, but she did all the same. It was entirely reasonable that he lived or worked in the area. He might have been a customer before, and she wouldn’t have necessarily noticed him. Two times in two days when she’d never seen him before didn’t make her have a warm fuzzy feeling.

  “Latte with whole milk, and an extra shot of espresso,” she repeated. “How much foam do you like?”

  The man smiled, and he had a very nice smile. “Must be hard when someone gives you a complicated order. My memory sucks. I’d probably be asking what their order was five times.” He added, “Very little foam, please.”

  Hesper bared her teeth as she told him the price and took his payment.

  She got to work on the espresso first. He hadn’t specified a particular bean, so she went with the house brand instead of asking. She didn’t really want to engage more than she had to. While the espresso machine was chugging along, she got to work on the milk. Steaming the milk properly was most of the work. A latte was much less frothy than a cappuccino, and there was a delicate art to making the microfoam just the correct consistency. It needed to be swirled with the steam, and a good tap of the pitcher popped the extra air bubbles. Once the espresso was done, she made certain that an extra shot was added to the cup, and began to pour the steamed milk into the espresso. That was another form of art as she poured the pitcher into the cup while she twirled the cup at the same time. She left just enough of the steamed milk to produce a design on the top layer of the latte. She presented the cup to the man with a flourish.

  He looked down at the cup, and what was that? Hesper was pleased that he winced as he saw the foam art. “Is that a skull?” he asked.

  “Latte art is like a Rorschach blot,” Hesper said. “You see what you want to see.”

  The man looked at her. Brown eyes. Brown eyes with a hint of green in them. If someone asked for purposes of identification, he would have to say they were brown. Just like his hair was brown. Like his skin was tanned from being outside. Like he was young and healthy. Like he’d never been forced to hide in the darkness and fight for scraps to eat.

  “So what do you see?” he asked. His eyes dipped down to her nametag. “Hesper?”

  “A kitten,” she said because once he read out loud the name on the tag something passed over his face. The something was like combined relief and triumph and the something made her a little confused. “Enjoy your latte.”

  Hesper turned away and worked on the espresso machine until other customers wandered in for their caffeine sin of choice. She was painfully aware that the man chose a corner table where he could easily watch her. She dutifully ignored him, although his stare felt like needles piercing her neck. By the time Hesper was finished with the latest round of cappuccinos, mochas, and Americanos, the man was gone, but his empty cup remained at the table at which he’d sat. She went out with a rag and cleaned up after customers, quickly picking up the odd plate and disposing of used napkins. When she reached his table, she picked up the cup and looked at the bill he’d left under the cup.

  Three words were written on the ten-dollar bill, and she wanted to scream. Hesper took a breath and wondered why people could be so cruel.

  Two years wasn’t really enough because inevitably someone always recognized her. Hesper was well aware of the risks of working as a barista, but she also knew that if she went and hid in a closet, she wouldn’t come back out. Once someone noticed that she wasn’t coming out, she’d be forcibly escorted back to the treatment facility she’d been in for six months after she’d come out of the river.

  Hesper picked the bill up by the corner and held it in the air as if it was contaminated with a disease.

  June wandered out and looked at the empty coffee house. Then she glanced at the large clock on the wall that announced any time was coffee time. “Only the diehards will be in after four,” she said idly and looked at Hesper. “Hey, a ten spot. Not bad. Is that a phone number on there? That’s cute. You going to call him back?”

  “It’s not a phone number,” Hesper said as she let the bill down on the counter. She put up the cleaning supplies and put cups in the dishwasher while June checked some supplies. “Do we still have some of those big Sharpies, June?”

  “In the drawer on the bottom,” June said as she stuck her head in a cabinet. “We
’re going to need to order some more of that Brazilian roast. I’d like to order some really exotic coffee beans and use them as a weekly special. I’m curious how much someone would pay for something out of this world. There’s this one that the company feeds to elephants and waits for them to poop it out. No, I guess I can’t buy that one, right? The woke customers would slay me. Oh, the Yelp reviews I would get.” She didn’t wait for Hesper to answer. “Maybe some Hawaiian Kona, yes? We could put little miniature leis on the cups. God, that would be adorable.”

  Hesper found a broad-tipped Sharpie and made short work of it on the ten-dollar bill on the opposite side of where the man had written his three words. The letters were fully an inch large, and she had to write creatively in order to fill in the space.

  June popped up, sending her pink streak askew. She brushed off her hands on the bottom of her polo shirt. “There’s this one place in El Salvador that uses caramel somehow. Also brown sugar and tangerine. I think it’s, like, $40 a pound. We could sell a $10 cup. Really dress it up. Whipped cream and gold sprinkles on top. $15 maybe. You think if we got really froufrou, we could slap $19.99 on it?”

  “Maybe,” Hesper said agreeably. “I can do a poll on what kinds of things customers would go for.”

  June smiled happily. “I love it when you take initiative, Hesper. You are coming to the thing on Sunday, right?”

  “Yes,” Hesper said. “Cheese platter?”

  “Cheese? Maybe a bottle of wine or two.”

  “The stores never want to sell me wine,” Hesper said, “even when I show them my ID.”

  “It’s because you look like you’re fourteen,” June complained. “You might not like that now, but when you’re my age, you’ll be very happy about it.”