Chapter Text
Thad took the job at Beanie’s because it was one of the few places that didn’t check his background (the free WiFi had been spotty on the day Nora had gone to do it and she’d never followed up) but did involve a mostly working air-conditioner.
Or, he’d assumed there to be one. He’d heard it chugging along during his interview. Distinctly felt air move from one place to another while being asked questions about his hours of availability and resumé by a pretty twenty-year-old who’d drawn Sharpie muppet eyes on the side of her pointer finger to make a face out of her closed fist.
She had done this, apparently, to practice the lip movements required to play Kate if she ever got an opportunity to audition for Avenue Q. Like, of all the shows in the world, that’d ever end up in Hatchetfield.
She’d clearly had to wash her hand a few times since, as the eyes had become kind of washed out. Kind of faded and patchy.
That didn’t do anything to stop her enthusiasm though.
She’d waggled her thumb up and down, opening the supposed mouth in time to her voice, when she’d explained this to him after he’d noticed it. She’d done so passably, but it hadn’t been anything to write home about.
He’d still paused in describing his six years of working his way up the corporate ladder, during his fourth job interview in two weeks in a shirt with a patch of dried soap from the coin laundromat on the sleeve that wouldn’t come off, to say that was really impressive. Committed, even.
When she’d twirled her hair around that same finger, laughing, he’d assumed that she was flirting with him but now he knew that was just how Zoey functioned.
For her, the whole world was an acting job. Whether it was the show she put on for her shitty cop boyfriend who was 100% already married but trying to hide it from the rest of them or the way she answered the phone differently each time. Like she was always workshopping a character. Never quite sure of who she should be.
Then again, she was in her twenties. That was par for the course.
It was a big part of the reason that she and Emma, who’d tell you the truth whether it was that you had spinach in your teeth or that she hated the way your shoes sounded on the linoleum of the floors, repelled each other like oil and water.
Other than the whole age difference thing, and how both of them thought the other was too judgy, and that screaming fight they’d once gotten into about whether or not Emma had stamped the little paper bags they put pastries in upside down, of course.
They were simply antithetical, and in working with them Thad had to see both their strengths and their weaknesses to make it through a shift without wanting to lock himself in the walk-in freezer.
Nora favored Zoey, since she always had some clue as to what the best thing to say in the moment was. She was the kind of suck-up that got things done and wasn’t ashamed of it.
To her credit, they got most of their tips when she was working because she’d noticed how many guys came in to flirt with her and milked them for all they were worth. But she was willing to split those tips, even when that made them hardly worth all her efforts.
Thad, having already gotten plenty of experience at being bossed around by someone younger than him who thought they understood the world in his last position, didn’t mind her all that much.
But Emma was the more tolerable of the two to him, personally, because they’d both weathered their twenties and neither of them were where they wanted to be in life. You could just sense that in a person, and it made certain conversations easier.
And she was the one to sic on the weirdos who wandered in with political flyers and the teens who’d take over a booth table without buying anything because, under the right circumstances, she could be a real pit bull of a person.
And him? He knew how to keep things running smoothly.
Someone had to keep the peace, since Nora was clearly not focusing on personnel relationships, and if he had to nod along and agree that Zoey was a nuisance while restocking the cups or offhandedly hum to confirm that Emma was a drag while refilling the paper towel dispenser to do that then he would.
He’d be dry enough for Emma to be willing to share her weed sometimes and genuine enough for Zoey to occasionally bring him little Tupperwares of overly seasoned vegan paella or whatever else she’d tried to make for dinner that week.
He’d drolly, on rainy days when nobody came out, quiz Emma with flashcards of plant classifications for some introductory level botany class or let Zoey try and walk him through the choreography from her favorite song from Hamilton that she’d learned from some bootleg.
Beanie’s, it always seemed, was thinly balanced on the precipice of financial ruin simply for how often their lines were short. How empty the place could get once the morning crowd had cleared out but before those with free afternoons meandered their ways in. It left a lot of time to him, Emma, and Zoey. The workplace comedy of it all.
And he wasn’t perfect, of course, and the two of them still fought like a cat and a dog locked together in too small a crate sometimes, but he made it work.
Reading people had been one of the few skills that had carried over wholesale from his last position. Smoothing over what he could.
Well, that and answering the phone on occasion. And that certain thing you had to learn to survive customer service. A separation of sorts.
That affable way of turning off your brain, softening your spine, and just being who people needed you to be. Someone simple. A smile. A cardboard cutout that hit buttons on a register and got your macchiato’s temperature right. He had that down pat. Probably always would.
The rest of it had been entirely new, though, and he still sometimes tried to froth milk too quickly and spattered himself and the counter with it, but that hadn’t stopped him.
And to think, it had all started with the air-conditioner.
He’d been more than grateful for the air because his last three interviews before that one had been smothering. Heat you had to push through, physically, like weaving your way inside a cornfield.
Cramped kitchens stuffed with fryers and pounds of frozen, precut, potatoes. Sizzling oil and clamoring lines and a sweat sheen that had stuck to him just from the twenty minutes he’d waited at a sticky table for a manager to get free. A smell, cloying, that had followed him out to his car and stayed on his fingertips, in his hair, all day.
Portable offices outside of construction sites at the edge of town with chugging generators and rough carpeting. The shrill whine of an electric pencil sharpener and the too close sound of a jackhammer clambering over each other to see who could shove a headache under his eye first.
Beanie’s, in comparison, had seemed a paradise.
Kitschy art on the walls that Nora had picked out for cheap at a Kohl’s. A cramped bookshelf of old paperbacks with hardly readable spines. As much water as he wanted throughout a shift. Just enough of a change in temperature to notice a difference when he walked outside. A veritable palace.
Technically, though, it was more of a three window units situation where you only really got to feel cool when standing directly in front of said units, especially in the cheap short-sleeved button up they’d made him wear. The one that didn’t breathe well, especially when stuffed under the green apron and tucked into the black pants.
All of it was mostly tolerable except for the stupid visor, which he’d suffered through wearing for the first two months before Emma had taken pity on him and explained how she’d “lost” hers three days after her first shift and Nora hadn’t done much more than occasionally mutter that she’d order another one one of these days (without ever actually doing so). His had immediately vanished as well, and he’d been all the better for it.
Even with the visor, though, it would have been better than construction or burger flipping. He reminded himself of this almost weekly when he took home his whole five dollars in tips and hid it in an old, washed out peanut butter jar under his bed. When he split his skinny paycheck to cover the rest of his expenses like segmenting a pathetic apple with barely any flesh on it to try and cover a whole meal.
The jar wasn’t exactly close to being full (and it wasn’t exactly big). So, when it inevitably ran out of room, the purchasing of another jar would actually put a greater dent in the collection of mostly ones and quarters than he liked to think about. But he was glad to know it was there.
He didn’t fully trust banks anymore. Not after his accounts had been frozen just after he’d blown up his life. He didn’t trust a lot of things, and didn’t have much he could do about that. So, peanut butter jars and barely using his credit card were his capitulations to that paranoia.
He, in the brief stint of attempting guided meditations when his doctor had started mentioning his stress levels at the age of twenty-five, had been told to sit in dark rooms and list all the things he could think of that belonged to him. Like he was packing for a trip and deciding what he’d take along.
At the time, the list had been rather different. There had almost been too much to consider.
His shirts had been tailored, the drugs he’d had access to were as designer as you could get imported to Hatchetfield (which wasn’t saying much but his employer’s son was endlessly creative), and he’d just begun considering dabbling in the stock market to bolster his (what he’d considered humble at the time) salary as a personal assistant to a CEO.
He’d gotten silk ties for Christmas and worn his hair jelled all the way back (now it curled at the ends and fell in his face) and had a distinct brand of cologne that still made him wistful when he went down to the mall and could smell even a cheap approximation of it.
He’d worn a bluetooth earpiece and had even gotten his boating license to drive his boss’ son around in the Hatteras yacht he kept tied up in their private harbor. A whole summer of lazy circles, looking at Clivesdale glinting in the distance, while Prince had taken too many lovely well-to-dos to count below deck to the waterbed he’d had installed. He’d been told to go nowhere specific, drive slow, and done exactly that.
Thad, for his trouble, had gotten sunburns all along his shoulders, down the strip of his nose, because he’d always forgotten sunscreen and sometimes mused that he hated boats more than anything in the whole world; he’d been lying.
He’d eaten well (smoothies in a bullet blender and opinions about lean proteins in ahi tuna), slept little (noise machines and therapeutic pillows proved ineffective), and hated himself so much that it had sometimes felt like a hand gripping his throat and squeezing when he least expected it.
It’d pound in his brain, an incessant chant of I can’t– with no particular ending in sight. I can’t–I can’t–I can’t. He remembered it sometimes like a fever. Being awake at 2:43 AM, his head in his hands and the whole world still and silent outside, and feeling like the end was quickly approaching.
He’d started setting his alarm earlier and earlier to avoid the whole scenario entirely.
He’d properly wake up, imagining the ropey bruises from that grip around his neck, and consider changing his identity and running away to Mexico or Guatemala. Start farming avocados or something and leave political consulting, or assisting those who consulted, behind. He’d never actually been the one doing the consulting.
Once, when Emma had been in a good enough mood, she’d let him take a few hits off an overpriced joint in the back alley with the dumpster after work. He’d brought up that plan, avocados in Mexico, just to have something to say when she’d asked what he’d wanted to do with himself before all this and she’d only snorted darkly and said life didn’t work like that. Looked up at the washed out stars over their town, and been clearly thinking about somewhere else. A bigger sky. A freer one.
It wouldn’t matter how far you go, she’d said, some shit’s always following you. Waiting to drag you back.
She’d never mentioned what had made her run all the way to Guatemala, the only place which colored most of the stories she’d ever told him about herself and seemed to actually enjoy.
Nor had she ever specified what had brought her back here where people occasionally recognized her from high school, she’d fumed all day after serving her old guidance counselor, but he had a few hypotheses and certainly knew that asking would only piss her off.
Talking to Emma was a little like letting an alleycat have a bit of your lunch. You had to let her set the pace or she’d only pull farther away.
They distinctly weren’t friends. She’d remind him of that every time he seemed to smile a little too wide. Like she didn’t want him getting any ideas about inviting her to a game night or asking her out.
He could see that she wanted to go back to whatever it was that she’d had to leave, someday. Or some new version of it, maybe. It made her wistful and muzzy when she got high.
So, unlike him, she still had something to run towards. Some lofty dream to picture when she drifted off to sleep each night. Something to put scraps of her paychecks towards.
He hadn’t been able to afford a true getaway in the end. He’d had to stick around here and muddle through instead. Carry what he could with him as he’d scuttled under a rock and counted his blessings. Become so insignificant that nobody would remember he existed.
Thad now possessed the following things in life (under the heaviest rock he could find):
The cheapest membership tier at the worse of the two gyms in town because he’d been openly hired for his ability to haul one bag of coffee beans onto each shoulder when they unloaded the monthly delivery truck and he wasn’t getting any younger.
(He couldn’t shower there, though, so he jogged home to try and banish the thoughts of heated saunas and the massage therapist at his old gym).
A red fiat that, for how small a circle he kept between his crumbling apartment and the rest of his carefully cultivated life, wasn’t really worth what he paid to insure it or park it if he went downtown. To say nothing of what a tank of gas cost now.
But he couldn’t sell it, he couldn’t bring himself not to have a way out, so it mostly sat still and got shit on by nighthawks.
(The paint had long since started peeling off the hood, leaving rusty sores that grew with each rainstorm as more and more paint flecked off, but when he couldn’t afford to change the oil too frequently he certainly couldn’t get it repainted).
One free drink per shift, which he mostly used on flavored waters or aloe juices from the fridge. Technically not allowed, but he doubted Nora would ever call him on it.
(It was hard to keep track of which of the identical coffee pots had been spat in the most and too much caffeine actually made him jittery now after an election cycle spent living on Red Bulls).
A skeleton crew composed of his first apartment’s furniture unhappily stranded at his new address. It had all been chic and matching once, modern enough that he now thought it was ugly against his puke green walls, before he’d had to tie each piece to the roof of his car and haul it across town himself with knots that had only improved by the end of the process. The scratches and, in some cases, permanent stains from hitting asphalt had given them character.
(He’d whittled the set down to his bed, which took up too much of his bedroom to justify more than a skinny set of drawers that he could only reach while standing sideways between the two, and one leather armchair that didn’t recline anymore which had to be parted from its matching sofa. His kitchen was more the corner of his living room, so the chair was all that fit. The rest he’d had to leave on the curb so he could get his security deposit back).
A kind of scratched DVD box set of the entirety of Friends, which he’d put on after work with such frequency that he’d memorized the scenes where the screen would freeze and could skip past them.
(He hadn’t seen Rachel get off the plane in years).
Fifteen folded up scraps of napkins, and one coffee sleeve, which had been inscribed with various phone numbers and email addresses from numerous customers.
(Some single, some married, and all uncalled as he’d thought that he could just ignore his lack of love life and somehow starve it to death. Let it wither away. This would later be disproven, of course, for better or worse).
No last name except on the legal documents he couldn’t avoid to the point that both Emma and Zoey had called him Just Thad, or JT when they thought they were especially clever, for the first few months of their working together.
(Thad, just the nickname all on its own, could admit to having enough of a life to enjoy himself sometimes. When called out, in a crowd, he’d long since stopped flinching. He wrote it large, blocky but pristine letters, so it filled out his whole name tag.
Thaddeus Roth, meanwhile, might as well not have existed for how little good his name could do him in this or any town anymore. Something abandoned, blown through, and left to dissolve. A ghost town of a person. He hadn’t grown up in Hatchetfield, which made it easier. Nobody knew him. Nobody could. He’d only come here for work and stayed because a ship generally didn’t get to pick which section of the ocean floor it rotted on once it had been sunk.
Funnily enough, he’d hated when people called him Thad before. Hated it viscerally. Several other assistants who felt fraternal, even some of his boss’ clients who’d treated him like a well-trained dog, would shorten his name and he’d distinctly bristle.
The only pieces left of him were his old employee ID, which had never been confiscated, and a few business cards stashed in a drawer somewhere. He’d been so proud of them once. Carried them in their own stupid little shiny case like anyone would want to keep his number and company email; he’d run his finger over the card stock, his name embossed in deep blue ink, when drunk or feeling particularly sorry for himself).
And of course, there was the hideously embarrassing torch that he’d been carrying for the last two months or so that he’d once thought to be subtle but (based on the looks and kissy faces his coworkers had started sending him almost immediately) clearly never had been.
The thing he doesn’t have:
Much of a future at all.
He’d torched any chance at upward mobility, at finding a job that actually required the BA in business administration that he was still paying off, when he’d picked up the phone about a year ago. When he’d opened his mouth even when he should have known better and agreed to be on the record. When he’d opened the door to the subpoena and driven himself to the courthouse and almost crashed into a parking meter for how sick he’d felt.
Men had been buried deeper for less, when it came to The Castle.
A coffeeshop in Hatchetfield, Michigan, was about as good as it was gonna get and at this point he’d accepted it.
He’d locked up the most frequently because he was fine walking home alone at night and he’d let the others beg off of the deep cleans that would happen every week on Fridays because they were something that truly relaxed him.
Because he had a system to get the whole thing done in record time and sometimes, after two hours spent mopping and taking the espresso machine apart to clean the grounds out of every nook and cranny, he could fall asleep without much trouble. Without getting up, old habits dying hard as they ever did, to look out and see if anyone was lingering under a streetlamp to watch his window. Nobody had been in a while, but you never forgot that feeling. Being watched.
Something’s always following you. Waiting to drag you back.
He hadn’t had the heart, or the desire, to tell her that was something he already knew. He’d learned it the hard way and wouldn’t ever be able to forget it.
He’d deleted the occasional voicemail from dogged reporters who’d somehow dug up his new number and had questions about Castle on a Hill LLC, just to avoid the time it’d then take to delete the threats that would follow if anyone heard he was thinking of taking questions again.
He’d lived. Day in and day out.
He’d shrugged at the singing thing when Nora brought it in that weekend after a life changing trip to Cold Stone Creamery, clearly desperate for something to make them stand out amidst Starbucks popping up everywhere and the new Dunkin Donuts by the highway, but rolled his eyes to himself in the walk-in.
He’d been a fine enough singer. Able to carry a tune, definitely. He’d hummed to himself in the shower, sometimes, and sounded better there than he ever had in front of people. He’d credited the tile. The steam.
He’d remembered office karaoke parties at Christmas, where bonuses could have been enough to cover four months rent in his current building, but couldn’t remember much of his last performance of “I Wear My Sunglasses at Night.” The last time he’d sung in front of anybody before it became the bane of Emma’s existence.
It had been his last Christmas there, and a too wild one at that. They’d rented out a restaurant a few towns over and brought their own machine. He’d gone on the record already but hadn’t yet gone to print. He’d danced about like a body, dangling from a noose, that hadn’t yet realized it was dead.
Desperation and this feeling that he couldn’t take it anymore rustling the poinsettias and making him think that every waiter with a holly-dressed tray of canapés was staring at him.
This year, for comparison, he’d gotten everyone kitschy mugs from the deals section of Target and nobody had mentioned how most of them had beach themed puns. They’d had a ten dollar limit on each gift. Emma had gotten each of them a set of pencils. Nora had unfortunately chosen a group gift and purchased a tiny, fake Christmas tree to put on the counter. Zoey had gone all in and, even for Emma, selected them each a set of fuzzy socks (though hers were gray while Nora and Thad’s both had some kind of festive animal wearing sunglasses). He’d gone to bed early and taken a phone call from his mother in the morning.
When asked, his favorite musical was and always would be Moulin Rouge because he’d already known the words to most of the songs. And he wouldn’t be ashamed of telling people.
He’d asked the regulars that weekend, when they’d tipped, if they had requests. He’d half mumbled his way through “Singin’ in the Rain” for the blue hairs and tiptoed through what little he remembered of Michael Bublé’s discography but drawn the line at anything with a high note.
Sometimes, Zoey tried to rope him into harmonies and he got half of the notes right. Sometimes, when he did them with a high enough sardonic raise to his eyebrows, he could get Emma to join him in a bit of wry jazz hands.
It would have been a life with nothing really to report, if things had stayed that way. All the vital details having long since passed.
And then, one day about two months ago, he’d looked up after writing down specifications for a stack of four to-go carriers worth of drinks, which escalated in complexity, with a pen cap in his mouth and nearly bitten the thing in half.
He couldn’t say it was the first time he’d seen her, or the first time she’d come in, but it was certainly the first time he’d noticed.
He’d been in the middle of wondering exactly which god he’d pissed off to have Zoey and Emma off delivering one of their rare catering orders, cardboard totes of coffee and a platter of passable slices of various coffee cakes, and him left to complete this order by himself, when his mind had gone so suddenly and violently blank that he’d wondered if this was how it felt to be slapped without warning. To be struck by a bus you hadn’t seen coming.
He’d been grateful for the pen cap, at the time, as it kept him from staring open-mouthed.
Not just because the girl was beautiful, or because she’d made a point of letting him finish noting the syrups and milk types on each cup before starting the next one, but because he’d just finished a regretful joke about throwing some spit into the most complicated three orders and her response had been, “could you? I’ll pay extra if you take requests.” She’d meant it too.
And he’d laughed, genuinely, for the first time in weeks. Like his body had almost forgotten how. Had shaken off some kind of dust at being reminded.
It had been a quick sort of thing, after that. Sloppy. Mortifying in how hard he was working to salvage it with almost no results. Like falling off a bike. No time for delay or dithering. No grace in the descent.
She came by every day of the work week. It didn’t take long.
Her name, he’d learned from writing it sixteen times until it felt like he was casting some kind of spell on himself along with each individual cup, was Ella.
When he’d called it out the first time, it had felt like tripping over hallowed ground. His voice, too loud. She’d waited by the counter the whole time, after all, but he’d wanted to say it. To put the two of them together.
She was left-handed.
She only ordered the smallest size of chai, hot, for herself. With skim milk and the occasional pump of flavored syrup (and she’d only started adding that when he’d started asking if she wanted any).
He never charged her for the syrup because the first time she’d asked him if that was extra had been with a dismayed sort of want that felt personal, and so he’d lied that it was free and just counted the extra twenty-five cents out of his day’s tips.
She worked at CCRP and, when he'd once made a joke about the Starbucks she had to walk past daily to pick up her order for her whole office, she had laughed.
But only technically.
She’d done so in a way that was different from how she’d snorted at the happy faces he’d made sure to put on any cups that came with spit. Instead, this had clearly been rehearsed but never with much care. In a way that had him never make the joke again for how lifeless of a sound it was. How it didn’t reach her eyes at all. A perfunctory, polite, sort of thing that seemed familiar to him because he knew how to make the exact same sound.
She always payed with a company card except for her own drink, which she always made as a separate order.
For that, she always counted out exact change, finished it before carrying the rest out, and threw the cup away. Receipt too. No traces left behind that she’d gotten anything except the faint sugar, surely, on her tongue. Maybe a bit of foam on her top lip (which he’d wordlessly pointed out to her once before she’d left by tapping his own lip and refusing to think about its existence).
The first time, he’d left that order for last (thinking it should stay warm the longest) and proceeded to watch her down it in about forty seconds before hoisting up her precarious tower and shouldering her way out of the door.
After that, he’d started making her order first. Letting her enjoy it, cooling her heels for a whole ten minutes, while he muddled through the rest of the batch.
The basic green tea, iced.
The iced coffees with a pour of cream and dash of whip at the top. A handful of chocolate shavings.
The handful of lattes and Americanos, both left bitter but only one watery.
One cappuccino, in the tiniest to-go cup, even though the spooning of the milk foam into said cup and subsequent journey basically made it a latte with a few broken up globs of foam at its top.
One London Fog with the teabag’s tag trailing from under the lid.
One iced dark mocha, hold the espresso, which she’d only shrugged at the first time he’d said, “but that’s just–” and stopped himself.
Apparently, it was as much his job to make this person an overpriced chocolate milk as it was hers to deliver it. Neither of them could save that person from themselves.
And, worst of all, three nightmarish concoctions in in the biggest cups they had on hand. All made to nightmarish specifications which changed daily, as if randomly generated by a lunatic speaking in tongues.
Vanilla, green apple, peach.
Cherry, butter pecan, coconut.
An entire third of the cup taken up by pumpkin spice syrup.
A foul, saccharine mixture each day that might eat through the cup if he wasn’t quick about it.
Each then coated in enough syrups and swirls of chocolate or caramel to induce death in a horse. With room for whip that had to be calculated at the start and left in advance because they did want the lid but also would apparently be furious if whip was skimped on (she’d specified this as the last coffee shop to be entrusted with this herculean task received a scathing review online for making such a fatal error).
Ordered with specific enough milk proportions, what kind of person mixed almond and two percent milk but wanted him to steam only the almond milk, and finicky enough combinations of espresso and black coffee and once even lemonade, that he’d have sooner assumed himself to be on an episode of Undercover Boss before believing that a human stomach could actually stand for this torture daily.
All three of those, incidentally, got happy faces.
He’d been all but driven to do it by the end for the sake of his sanity. His pride. Emma and Zoey were certainly proud, after. It was the only thing they tended to agree on, the stick up his ass which usually had him simply smile and agree to whatever a customer wanted. The consensus that he could, probably, live a little.
Even he, it seemed, had his limits.
He’d told Ella, the first time, “I don’t generally do this sort of thing, I swear.” It had spilled out of his mouth unbidden. Suddenly embarrassed.
Not because he was feeling guilty, but because somehow her approximation of him had taken up a great deal of space in his own head. Like looking at your reflection in the rounded bowl of a spoon and trying to find the most normal angle. Trying to smile. He’d smiled at her and thought it was stupid while he did. What was he doing?
“Sure,” she’d said with her returned smile that could have meant anything. Could have said she’d believed him or not. Could have belonged to anyone.
She’d, instead, had her own wicked sort of gleam to her eye that reminded him of being a kid. Of doing something only because you wanted to and actually managing to get away with it because nobody thought to look down. Nobody thought you capable of it. Little mischiefs when it was all you could do in a world that you had no control over. Like a children’s book.
It felt like a secret between the two of them, this slight. This smallest of rebellions.
She’d never once ordered one of their dry cake pops that had been delivered pre-coated in fondant or a scone that had the same texture as couch cushion stuffing and exactly one dehydrated blueberry in its center. To say nothing about the crunchy danishes or the pathetically deflated croissants.
While he couldn’t exactly recommend one of those baked goods to her, he could at least wish they were better so he’d have the opportunity.
He’d offhandedly mentioned quality control in the pastry case to Nora once and she’d made him take a wire brush to the panini press that had about a week’s buildup of crusted on cheese instead.
But sometimes, Ella’s eyes lingered on their hideous pastries, pathetically slumped or rigidly perched on their doilies. An almost hungry look. An almost daring one.
At some point, without his noticing, her arrival had somehow become one of the brightest points in his day. Something he looked forward to. Something he noticed in its absence if a harried intern came in her place. A bit of relief to look to the doorway and see her standing there.
Not just because she tipped, unfailingly, but because the first time he’d finished the order and even done his best to group the cups in their carriers in a way that would make stacking them as easy as possible for travel, she’d thanked him and somehow it had reminded him how it felt to be a real person.
So, when she’d come back, he’d made her order again. And again. And so on.
By that point, Emma, Zoey, and even Nora let him know when she came in if he wasn’t at the counter and cleared the way by the time she got to the front.
Half to let him handle the tedium of the order (which always changed just enough that it couldn’t be made in advance and never saw her arriving at the same time) and half to roll their eyes at how he stumbled over himself to hold the door for her when she left now. At the jokes he tried to crack or the earnest compliments he couldn’t stuff back down his throat about her hair or what she’d worn that day or a joke she’d made.
At the way he might appear to be blushing when he turned around if their hands had touched as he’d handed each cup, individually, back to her while repeating its contents to be sure he’d gotten it right and she knew which part of the order was which.
The brief, bubble bursting, moments after she’d left were the only times in his life that someone earnestly called him adorable, but they each did so in a different way. Emerging from hiding like his own personal Greek chorus to waggle their eyebrows or fake kiss a French press. With tongue.
Emma said it the same way you might compliment a friend’s baby if you clearly didn’t like children, but it was the only socially acceptable thing to say. “Well…that was…adorable.” Dry as sand.
Nora said it as if the whole affair was an inside joke between the two of them, seeing as it wasn’t the most efficient way to tackle the drink line and she was probably humoring him. “Adorable, Thad, every time,” like she could use a joke after tallying up the day’s receipts.
Only Zoey said it like she really meant it. Like this was a project she could throw herself into, matching him up, and if they’d been at summer camp she would have found some way to have locked them in a closet by now. To have tripped someone and pushed them into someone else’s lap. “You’re adorable, Thad, really. It’s giving ‘Ten Minutes Ago.’” A genuine coo.
Sometimes, amidst the Hamilton choreography and the way she’d make flip books out of whole order pads, she’d idly searched for Ellas on Instagram or Facebook just to laugh at him when he tried to make her stop. She’d muse, I mean, I didn’t see a wedding ring and bloviate about sticking around to ask her about herself tomorrow. It’s a free country, Thad, I can hang out while you trip over yourself.
He’d never had a younger sister, but he could guess this was how it felt.
Once, based on proximity, she’d even pulled up Tinder and looked around. Seeing if proximity could solve what old fashioned sleuthing couldn’t.
It was kind of like a comedy routine. Her eyebrows waggling, his loud protesting. No names, as it was occasionally played out while ringing a customer up. Her phone, dancing in her hand.
Eventually, when he’d had enough, he’d threaten to spill to Nora about the last four times he’d been leaving as she’d stayed behind to lock up and he’d passed a familiar cop lingering conspicuously on the street. About the weird scuff marks found on the counter the next morning that would have been made by the sloppy press of leather in inappropriate places that Nora assumed were from someone not wiping it down.
And she’d stop there, of course, in her teasing. She’d set about any of the other hundreds of things she could seemingly do to entertain herself (which was all this sort of thing really was).
But nothing could deny him the way he always waited, half-turned, to look at her phone each time. The temptation to hope that, one of these days, he’d see her face looking back at him.
The profiles Zoey pulled up never were her, of course. It was like, outside of her trips to the shop, she didn’t exist. Though, undoubtedly, a last name might have helped.
Unless he’d suddenly become willing to say something unexpected, to do something unexpected, his only real hope had been chance.
He also couldn’t deny, for as self-contained as his day to day life was, that he kept an eye out. Couldn’t help it, really.
Hope burned pitifully, the last shard of a pack of ancient birthday candles that had been stretched out and reused for years, in his chest.
She could be on any street. Seated in any window. He’d never gotten up the nerve to head to the CCRP building, certain that would cross an unspoken and creepy line.
But he’d still looked and looked wherever he happened to be, hoping even when he told himself it was stupid. That life wasn’t a movie. That even if he did find her, she probably wouldn’t recognize him. Or, if she did, it would be like seeing your teacher at the grocery store. Your doctor in the gym. A chaotic jumble of roles, eerie in its own uncanny way.
Telling himself that, of course, didn’t stop anything from happening. Didn’t quell the quiet thrill at considering it.
In the produce section she could be putting apples in a plastic bag. In front of the library she could be returning a book. At the pharmacy she could be standing at the other end of the aisle, considering whether to get this kind of toothpaste or that kind for two dollars cheaper.
He couldn’t really explain it if he tried. And he had tried, because Emma thought he just wanted to get in her pants but didn’t know how and Zoey thought he was ready to propose marriage and Nora mostly stayed out of conversations about it but all of them were wrong.
Sometimes, he just wanted to have a conversation with her. He just wanted to know her. It was a certain kind of pining, sure, but if asked what had so thoroughly hit him he wouldn’t be able to articulate it easily. Maybe if he was drunk and everything didn’t have to make sense.
It wasn’t just that she was graceful in sensible shoes and tweed skirts with ink on her face. Or that she always looked up to meet his eye, even when in the middle of typing out an email, when she said she was, “fine, thanks, how are you?” And then stopped typing, like she actually would listen to his answer. In this way that sometimes made him want to be honest and say how he actually was.
It wasn’t just that she was lovely, because to simply be drawn to that would be like saying you were fascinated by the ocean because it was blue. To like stare, open-mouthed, at the recesses of space and be impressed because it was big.
It missed the point, the scope.
But it wasn’t that he was in love with her, either. No matter how many times Zoey burst into “A Wonderful Guy,” to call him as corny as Kansas in August after she left; he barely knew her. You couldn’t be in love with someone you barely knew.
Because he didn’t know her, not really, and that was the truth. He’d only picked up some things along the way.
The things she carried with her when she crossed into his life.
Her phone was cracked without a screen protector and her lock screen featured a closeup picture of some kind of mouse with nut brown fur and ludicrous pink ears, all big eyes staring down the front facing camera. A pink, little button nose.
She had some kind of automatic email signature that he’d never read, but it looked long. Some kind of quote.
She favored cinnamon syrup and amaretto to vanilla or hazelnut because those were the ones she complimented.
Sometimes, she painted her nails a deep forest green.
But the real stuff? The sort of questions he’d certainly started considering the more he saw her? Family? Friends? Dreams? Likes? Dislikes? If she was single or interested in dating men at all, let alone him specifically?
No clue. He didn’t even know what she did at CCRP besides coffee acquisition and emails (which was more of an educated guess).
And he had no way to ask without either wildly overstepping or showing his hand as to how much attention he’d been paying in their ten to twenty minute interactions over the course of the last few months.
They weren’t strangers, but they were closer to that than friends. She certainly, probably, had even less information about him. Hadn’t ever thought about him the moment he’d left her line of sight, a casualty of a full life and object permanence.
There wasn’t anything genuine. Or, at least, not anything she’d meant to tell him.
One day, she’d come in with the sort of dry-eyed, hollow look that spoke of finally getting over a rush of tears or of almost giving in to complete exhaustion. She’d shuffled to the front of the line and barely looked at him while rattling off the day’s requests. Her phone, ringing, had gone unanswered in her hand.
The first call had brought up a picture of her and two other girls, taken recently enough to be recognizable even as her hair had been done up in braids, twined with silver, instead of left naturally as it was now. All three of them were pulling goofy faces which clashed with the etherial makeup and spangled dresses they all wore beneath the familiar marquee of The Starlight Theater. In blocky letters, said marquee proclaimed the arrival of some traveling production of Swan Lake. This weekend only. Three tickets were fanned out in her hand. Her eyes, even through the photo, were dancing.
All of it sat under the name: JUSTINE G(reatest).
She didn’t take the call.
When he’d thought to look it up later, burning with curiosity that he’d never admit even under threat of torture, that production had been three years ago.
Another call, immediate, with a photo of three little girls who looked remarkably similar to the first trio (if fifteen years younger). This one, taken from afar, showing them all in tutus of silver and blue beneath bulky winter coats. They held each other, their free arms crushing bouquets, after some kind of recital (as proclaimed by the sign outside of a building he didn’t recognize).
This one, beneath: LUCY G(ross <3).
Also unanswered.
After she’d finished explaining her order, staring into the middle distance over her phone instead of at her Notes app, he’d asked if she was alright. She hadn’t ordered anything for herself. He’d wondered if it it was ever included in that official list, fastidiously kept, or if she tagged it on at the end as a whim each day.
If she’d forgotten on that particular day. Too many other things on her mind.
She’d only sighed as much as she could, emptied her lungs out, before saying, “I really miss my dad.” Her tone, of course, was dreadful. Brimming and wobbly.
Like she was admitting it to herself, hoping to be over something awful, but doing so had only caused fresh tears to spring in the corners of her eyes. At that she’d immediately clammed up. Immediately and clearly focused on not breaking down in a public space.
His stomach had dropped, a faulty elevator crashing to kill its occupants, under his feet and been crushed.
She’d looked so stricken that he’d immediately dropped the subject the same way you dropped a scorched tray just before your brain caught up to remind you that you should have been wearing an oven-mitt when you reached for it. Something in him had screamed, YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO KNOW ANY OF THAT.
He’d never been all that good at comforting people, even in the best of times.
He’d not spit in anything that day, suddenly feeling caught between the little parking space sized strip of room behind the counter and the knowledge that a relative stranger asking questions would probably made her feel worse somehow. Something in his heart foolishly demanding he do something to magically make it all better.
He’d, instead, tried his best to be normal and therefore looked as weird as possible. He’d made her a large chai, thinking that it might help, but it had taken him six tries to get her travel cup’s lid on. He’d dropped the first two lids, which skittered under the squat sink where they washed the milk pitchers and blenders so he had to get new ones. He’d fumbled the syrup bottle, smearing stickiness all up his forearm, and he was lucky he hadn’t been so flustered that he steamed the milk too quickly and caused it to fly everywhere.
She’d watched him the whole time and hadn’t said anything. But she hadn’t earnestly started to cry either. Maybe she’d found some entertainment in his clownish routine, like watching a pratfall, but he doubted it. Maybe it could be nice, every once in a while, just to watch someone do something menial.
He’d drawn a little mouse on her cup’s coffee sleeve, and given it a sword for good measure, because it felt right. Because it was the first thing he could think of, not a heart or a smiley face or a little note because what would he even say, and draw that looked marginally okay.
His source of inspiration, he’d hoped, was obvious.
And, needless to say, he’d refused to take any of her money, at least for the chai. “On the house,” he’d said before turning to focus on the rest of the caffeinated grotesquerie she had to carry back to her office.
Well, technically he’d done that before gingerly turning around again and saying, “sorry,” without knowing what he was apologizing for. His voice had been breathless, as if the word had been knocked out of him.
Again, she hadn’t said anything, but for that he was grateful.
This time, maybe because of the state she’d been in or just because of the size, she hadn’t finished her drink by the time he got the rest of it ready to go. So, instead of waiting or throwing it away, she’d had to balance her cup on top of the others and head out.
He’d regretted the picture she’d made, regretted how little he could think to do, but she’d at least let him hustle around to open the door. She’d still thanked him, even if it was said dully as dishwater. He’d wished her a good day and watched her back until she’d vanished from sight, in case someone had knocked into her or she’d stumbled. At that, he’d have run after her. He still wanted to, even when she was out of sight.
He’d held the door for four separate people in the meantime; they’d awkwardly sidestepped him.
He’d have offered to carry it all for her, a part of him desperately wanted to, but even Nora probably had her limits when it came to him just waltzing out of work.
And, he had a feeling, Ella probably wouldn’t want a guy she barely knew following her to work.
He didn’t know if she’d even noticed the doodle, but she’d taken a straw wrapper and folded it into the shape of a diamond ring without looking up or saying two words to him while she was waiting.
She’d left it on the counter and, feeling like taking it home would be another notch in the creep column, he’d put it in the drawer of the register instead. Thankfully, nobody else had commented on it. Or moved it.
That was one of the things he couldn’t stop thinking about. Couldn’t help but imagine. Sitting in front of her in mid-afternoon light. Under rain. Nothing else to do that would have him making drinks or wiping down the table with a damp washcloth and a bottle of sharply-scented cleaner.
Asking her to do it again. Getting to see all the clever little folds. The way her hands moved. Maybe following along, trying on his own, maybe not. Hearing her talk about anything at all while she did it. The weather. Her hobbies. She could list the alphabet, at this point, and he’d lean forward to catch every letter.
She was the only person in the world he’d ever met who could do that, and he knew that if he ever said how impressed he’d been it would have been monumentally weird. A too specific compliment. Too close of a question, like the brush of a fingertip against an eyelid. The back of a hand.
The same would be true if he asked about her father, or her friends, or offered her his phone number if she needed someone to talk to. To ask her would be like breathing on her neck and he did everything he could not to think about her neck.
Her wrists. Her eyes. Her lips. Her–.
So he’d certainly never be crossing the rubicon of the coffee counter to ask her out, or offer anything deeper than what can I get you, when she was a customer and he was at work.
And he probably never would.
But at this point, the honest answer to the question about what he was really doing here besides just scraping by was knowing that he’d done something to make someone’s day a little easier. That was what kept him going.
That he’d spoken to someone and made them laugh when they needed it. That he could make a drink a little sweeter, the floor a little cleaner. That he could reach the tall shelves and help reorganize the prep work schedule to make it more cost efficient and hear Nora’s voice quake with gratitude.
He could use his Official Assistant Voice, which Zoey and Emma said creeped them out, to wheedle a part in the sponsorship of a fun run out of the Hatchetfield city council when Nora was worried about how little community engagement they had.
He could let Zoey drag him to a matinee performance of Ragtime at the Starlight on a Sunday, because none of her friends were free and she’d already bought the tickets, and not hide the way he’d choked up when asked, “will justice be demanded by ten million righteous men?” The way Coalhouse’s voice shook the dark around them. The way he’d flinched at the gunshots.
He could give Emma’s car a jump when it had seemed to give up its last ghost in their parking lot, follow her to the mechanic’s shop, and drive her back to her apartment when it was finished to see the grim way her gratitude sat in her smile. The way she was, in spite of herself, maybe starting to like some part of him.
He could hold the door for Ella and somehow, someway, find it in himself to wish. To hope. To clumsily and vaguely ponder things like tomorrow.
It had to mean something.
He could, in the smallest of ways, do tangible good.
If he couldn’t…what was he really worth anymore? What had he ever been?
Because he’d certainly never done anything like that in his first line of work, and that still ate him up inside more than the fact that someone could easily find the pictures from the trial, when he’d taken the stand, on Google.
Than the stain on his shirt, from where a pen had burst and smeared a stab wound of blue on his chest, that he hadn’t noticed until after. He’d thrown the shirt away but the stain was the first thing he saw in the pictures.
Than the fact that one little scandal hadn’t done more than gotten him fired and, maybe, made them clean up after themselves better. Made them close more doors or stop having the assistants handle everything.
Than the unavoidable consequence that doing the right thing, when NDAs were involved, had in fact proven to be very expensive and left him stranded here with his prospects in shreds. With his credit score harpooned and left to bleed out, feasted upon by scavengers until it was nothing but bones. With nowhere to go for miles and miles unless he wanted to move to Clivesdale, which some considered a fate worse than death.
But dwelling on that wouldn’t do him any good. Not if he was going to keep waking up every day. If he was going to try and actually like the person he could become.
So a lot of the time, that was the easiest way to find worth in his going nowhere job with his shabby life. A helping hand. A smile.
And, sometimes, it looked like she needed that more than anyone else in Hatchetfield. She never, not once, seemed to be having a good day.
He could understand the feeling.
Sometimes, it felt like she was one of the only people to see him.
The first time she’d thanked him by name, without looking at his name tag, it had hit him like a bolt of lightning.
He’d wanted to say, my name’s actually–and nearly gagged on it.
When she’d started saying, “see you tomorrow,” it might as well have been tucked into his pocket like an offered stick of gum (which she’d actually given him once when he’d complained about running out).
Somehow, it made the idea of tomorrow more bearable.
When she’d left her place in line to grab napkins from the coffee station, with all its little creamers and sugar packets and individually-wrapped butter pats, after he hadn’t put a cup’s lid on tight enough and spilled it all over himself (even when he had access to the industrial packets of the exact same napkins). He’d slipped on the spill and fallen on his ass more from the shock of suddenly seeing her before him. Everyone else in line hadn’t really moved.
Sometimes, he’d talk and nothing would happen. He’d ask someone about their day or say they were out of a certain milk or ask someone to move at the grocery store and nobody would turn. Then an inevitable, strange doubt would creep in. Reminding him of the frenzied morning. I can’t–. A hesitancy to ask, did I say anything? If a tree falls in a public place and nobody moves, or says anything, did the tree really exist?
Sometimes, he felt like a ghost. Like someone who wasn’t all there. But when he’d reached out a hand for those cheap napkins, some part of his eyes had to have leaked the question: you see me? I’m real? An earnest, starved, sort of relief.
And she’d answered without words, too, somehow. She’d kept half of those napkins to start sopping up the other side of the counter.
Sometimes, and he could admit this to himself, it was nice to be reminded that he was more than just the name tag. The loopy little bowtie. The apron. The visor he’d hated wearing. The cardboard cutout. His voice. His hands on a mug. Someone doors got shut on and nobody remembered once they stopped looking at him.
It was nice to have proof.
That there had been a person here before, and he was still in there somewhere. He might just do something one of these days. He might just exist if he considered it a worthwhile enough venture.
The number of times he’d considered looking into therapy, only to ask himself what insurance he thought he’d be paying for that with, was not a small number. He knew how it sounded.
But he’d tried to go back to the meditation thing. He listed things. He counted backwards from one-thousand to sleep. He jogged. He tried and that had to count for something.
He read listicles, every few months, about how to find himself and sometimes thought about weekend trips or asking Emma about how much her classes at HC were costing. He limited himself to drinking on the weekends and stopped keeping liquor in his apartment after a too drastic New Year’s Eve that saw him not recall how he woke up on a park bench.
He always got dismal, mopey and furious, around considerations of how he’d spent a year. The first time Nora had asked him, in a tone that said she was looking forward to talking about her plans to run a marathon or read one book per month, about New Year’s resolutions he’d sullenly said that such affairs were pointless. Improvement was a waste of time. There would never be anything but this.
He’d, admittedly, still been a little hungover.
But at least Emma had snorted darkly.
So he had his low points. Who didn’t? He always picked himself back up.
He picked one thing at the grocery store to enjoy, and sometimes looked into getting a pet. He tried to get natural light into the slant of his apartment and took vitamins.
He wanted to like his life and that was close to the real thing. It had to be.
And sometimes, okay, he daydreamed about running into Ella at the grocery store. About seeing her on a park bench. About offering to help take her bags to her car or sauntering up with a, “don’t I know you from somewhere? Mind if I sit down?”
The line was still being workshopped, of course. It always was. Different introductions chased themselves around and around in his head. Sometimes, he thought about asking Zoey for advice (or, on his worse days, Emma) but never shook the humiliation that would follow.
He looked around, whenever he was out and about. He didn’t hold his breath, but looking was already something he was predisposed to. Checking over his shoulder, now, had a happier outcome.
It was all part of a system, okay? Sue him (as some already had).
He’d never be getting a raise, Nora had been transparent about her finances from the start.
He’d never move away, not when it had killed most of his savings to keep what little hold in town he had. When his paycheck covered living, day to day, and not much else. When peanut butter jars couldn’t magically overflow to cover how costly it was to be alive.
He’d never amount to much more than this but at least he was paid enough to cover bills and sometimes get to take himself out to dinner once a week if there was a special somewhere.
At least he had those bright spots, and coworkers who mostly seemed to tolerate him. Someone to notice if he disappeared one day. Something, no matter how silly or ephemeral, to look forward to each day. It was more than some people got, especially after trying to do the right thing and seeing that sometimes that wasn’t enough. Sometimes, it didn’t take.
His life, in a sleepy little town like Hatchetfield, was like elevator music. Always looping. Never changing. Never requiring too much thought. Not even meant to be paid attention to. One long song that never got too complicated. Nonsense words, a vague hum, as he transitioned from one place to another. One day to the next until days had become weeks, which pupated into months, which would eventually collect into a harvest of years.
And it’d be that way, seemingly, forever.
As if things would ever change in Hatchetfield of all places.
Nothing ever happened here, especially not to a nobody like him.
And nothing ever would.
At least, nothing ever would, until something decided to kickstart the end of the world on a Friday night.
Well, kickstart would be a bit derivative. Slightly disingenuous. It hadn’t started on a Friday night, especially one that opened a touring production as passable as that evening’s Mamma Mia!.
Technically, it was process thousands of years in the making, just as the first triumphant scream of some thing that breached a primordial soup to look up at the sky had technically been the first note of the first song that spoke of living and breathing and being a champion and fighting till the end.
A strange cluster of blue shit up in the sky, gasses and particles and dust and a strange feeling like humming while on novocaine, that eventually made a pitiful little tumor of rock that pulsed blue like a beating heart and spun gracefully enough because if one (and therefore many) was going to take physical form in so puny a dimension it wouldn’t be done through shoddy craftsmanship.
A singular voice did have standards, after all, especially when all shouting in unison to see some sort of manager.
Pirouetting through the black of space, the white of certain stars, and all the rest of it for eons. A passion project, pursued with singular focus, to end the world. A meteor, running right on schedule.
They’d gotten the idea from the death of the dinosaurs, who the director had always thought a little dull for how poorly they’d engaged in a kick line when they’d tried to arrange it. All the feathers had made for spectacular flourish, but most had lacked the real pizzazz. The complex narratives. There were only so many times they could study a motivation of unceasing hunger and a desperate will to survive; they got enough of that at home.
They’d noticed the foreshadowing from the beginning, the little light in the sky that had drawn closer and closer, and had rolled the vast net of their vocal chords (their brother became twitchy if anyone other than him grew eyes) in a droll moan while their siblings had been surprised and shrieking at the smash of the meteor into the strange little planet with its funny little atmosphere.
All five of them, already languishing behind the grayscale bars of their prison, already watching and waiting for something entertaining. Born that way, perhaps. With nothing to do but want to break things. A sort of arms race had been crafted from that boredom, though they’d hesitate to call it such as they didn’t technically have arms at all times.
They were, most often, a pile of ooze. But, of course, a pile of ooze with a dream. With passion and talent of the musical variety.
They’d never admit to plagiarism, when they put all their time and focus into crafting the meteor. Inspiration, maybe. Their own spin on it. They were, if nothing else, original.
They’d, after all, added the slime. Chosen the color. Lovingly layered each fragment, each flake, of craggy material until it was entirely unequaled. There wouldn’t be anything like it on earth.
A rock so strange and carefully sculpted, down to the microscopic level, that looking a sample of it would give one the same impressed fascination of watching a marching band fan out in unison. That joined together perfectly and sang of doom like the inescapable choruses of old.
Just the right density of rock that it would cause maximal structural damage and kill as many in the crash as they could manage. Just the right shade of toxic blue tinted its true contents that, if anyone survived the initial strike, it would inevitably draw someone in and have them salivating to reach a curious hand towards its contents.
There were, after all, many ways to skin a cat and even more ways to infect a bag of flesh with a mind altering parasite. So many orifices to slither through. Dead or alive, at the start, didn’t make much of a difference to them. The end result would be the same.
Their meteor. A magnum opus. They’d been singing its praises for millennia in a round until their brothers had tried to rip them to pieces. They’d succeeded, of course. They’d always been rather gelatinous.
The joke had been on the others though; they could manifest mouths on each piece and that only leant them more volume.
All five of them each had their own little passion projects. Their own bets for what would end the world. Boxes and dolls and theme park passion plays and horrible flesh pits that might open wide great jaws and swallow the sun. Little lures and traps to spring that flashed and glittered and begged for someone to open the box.
But they’d been saying meteor, outer space and all its glamor, the whole time. Space oddity, Earth all blue, nothing they could do.
Sure, it was slow, but humanity had a saying about who won most races in the end. You didn’t overcomplicate at the start. You only broke out the jazz squares when you had the numbers to make them impressive. You couldn’t start with spacemen or dream ballets, no matter how much you enjoyed the costumes.
So, you send them something. A little gift.
It couldn’t be a world for how little life it could support, and could not sing because it had no mouth, but all it took was a little bit of space rock that was nudged by something like fate or chance. A shot in a game of pool, the crack of one noxious blue ball, to ricochet through time and space with a singular pocket in mind.
Something that would arrive exactly on their cue. Foretold.
Humanity could not call them merciful, and would not know their name until they each answered to it in the end, but at least they waited until the weekend. At least they gave mankind most of one last Friday night.
Even if they didn’t let the curtain rise on Mamma Mia!. They couldn’t bring themselves to.
It felt kinder, somehow. To not let the show start rather than to smash them all, actors and audience and ushers alike, with a big rock in the middle of “Voulez-Vous.” Part of them had wanted to get through curtain call at least, but they’d have needed to start earlier for that.
Even for the endless, the eternal, and the enduring there would never be enough time to have everything you wanted.
They’d decided, in the end, that once it was all finished that would be the first show they’d put on when the whole wide world was theirs. When they opened the black and white with a perfect note and poured themselves forth, and got to take the rest of time for their own while their siblings gibbered and howled about how unfair it was.
Ballads and eleven o’clock numbers and dream ballets until there was nothing else.
A Sophie for every continent. Women wailing about winners taking it all on real cliff faces and throwing themselves into the sea at the end because the understudies were always waiting.
Though it would be a hassle to find bell bottom flares for every human to have ever existed, it would be worth it.
Everything would change and it would start on a Friday, and even the smallest characters would have their own stories to consider.