Darkest Fear Page 10

  “This is the portafilter,” she said. “Where the coffee goes in. You use this little tamper and pack it firmly but not too tightly. Then you lock it into place on the group head. This is the group head.” She pointed.

  “Okay,” I said, trying to remember everything.

  “So, Rafael is the grandson of the woman who owns this place—Carlotta Fontenot,” Hayley said, lowering her voice as she clamped the espresso arm into place. “He manages it for her. She is nuts, I’m telling you, hates everything in here. When she comes in, we hunker down and weather the storm. So don’t let her get to you.”

  I gave Hayley an alarmed look, but she just smiled and shrugged, leading me through a doorway behind the counter to a large room. “This is the old kitchen, from when it was a restaurant. No one uses anything except this back fridge. At night we wrap everything up and put it in here.”

  “Where do y’all get the food from?”

  “We get everything from a wholesale bakery,” said Hayley. “Sometimes someone wants their croissant heated up, so you just zap it in the microwave for fifteen seconds, okay?”

  “Yep.” A regular oven would be so much better and wouldn’t make the croissant soggy. Even a little toaster oven would do. But people probably wouldn’t want to wait while it warmed up properly.

  A few minutes before five, Talia, my evening coworker, came in, and Hayley introduced us. Talia was a very short, very round black woman, maybe in her late fifties. She seemed nice and no-nonsense at the same time.

  “Okay, I’ll let you guys get to it,” Hayley said, taking off her apron.

  “Thanks for everything,” I told her, and she smiled again. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” After Hayley left, I asked Talia, “How long have you worked here?”

  “Here, three years, just part-time,” Talia said, bustling around behind the counter, arranging things just so. “Mostly I work downtown at a law firm as a personal assistant.”  Talia moved more quickly than I would have thought, organizing supplies for the after-work rush: ice, syrups, plenty of ground coffee beans; whole milk, two percent, skim milk in the fridge on the right; soy milk on the left. “Personal assistant,” Talia repeated dismissively. “That means secretary, honey. I been working there thirty-five years for the old man. I know what a secretary is. They wanted to make me office manager and whatnot, and I said, ‘No, sir! I don’t want to be managing this and that. I want to do my job and go home!’ ”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know what you mean.”

  Besides showing me a million things I couldn’t possibly remember, Talia was happy to dish on our coworkers. While it was still a bit quiet, we walked around, straightening tables, lining them up properly, moving chairs to be evenly distributed.

  “Hayley’s a sweet girl, but she keeps going for the wrong kind of guy,” said Talia, grabbing a chair. “She deserves better, but she doesn’t listen to me, no. Her current beau is too old for her, and rides a motorcycle!”

  “Gosh,” I said, clearing off tables and putting everything in the busing bin Talia had given me.

  “I don’t know what Hayley’s mother is thinking, letting her go with him,” Talia went on. “Hayley lives with her mother and sister in a double on Camp Street.”

  I wondered what a double was.

  “You still live with your parents, honey?”

  “Ah, no. I’m living with my cousin right now.”

  Thankfully, Talia didn’t pursue that. She headed toward the back kitchen, and I followed her, lugging the busing bin. “This here is the fancy dishwasher Rafael put in,” Talia said, showing me a big metal square up on a counter. A stack of heavy plastic trays sat next to it, and Talia picked up one filled with plastic tines. “Stack the dishes in this.”

  She showed me how to arrange the special tray, and then I did one by myself while Talia popped her head out front to make sure no one needed anything. She was back in a minute and said, “I also don’t know why Hayley keeps punching holes in herself, why she keeps getting the tattoos. That doesn’t improve any girl’s looks, in my opinion.” She squinted at me. “You got any of them tattoos?”

  “Oh, no,” I said, and she nodded in approval.

  “And Rafael,” she went on, and my ears pricked up. “Rafael is one good-looking boy.”

  He sure is, I thought, but I said, “Oh?”

  “But he isn’t dating anyone that I know about,” Talia said, lowering her voice. “He doesn’t seem to have much free time, with his art and his school and whatnot. Did you see his drawings over there?”

  “I did. They’re amazing.”

  “Well, he lives in the carriage house behind old Mrs. Fontenot’s mansion, a few blocks away from here.”

  Did she really mean an actual carriage house, like for carriages?

  “His parents live in Mexico,” Talia said. “But he’s lived with the old woman as long as I’ve worked here, and the old woman is bats for sure. And mean as a snake.”

  “Gosh.” I didn’t need to add much to the conversation; Talia seemed happy to have someone new to talk to.

  “I feel sorry for him, but he seems to deal with the old lady okay.”

  “Oh, good,” I said, watching as she showed me where all the clean plates and cups went on shelves under the front counter.

  “But he ain’t gay, I’ll tell you that,” Talia whispered. “I’d be able to tell for sure. A person’s business is a person’s business, but I would know. And he is not.”

  I bit back the word “gaydar.”

  Throughout the evening Talia showed me the things Hayley hadn’t had time to, like how to mix up the chocolate syrup from a package, and how to make cute foam hearts on top of cappuccinos. Following her example, I learned how to wait on people, but I had to keep asking her how to make certain drinks. There was a printed guide, but there were so many different kinds. I had to take the guide home and try to memorize it.

  Whenever there was downtime, Talia chatted. And chatted. I wondered if Rafael was in the office, but decided Talia wouldn’t be talking about him so openly if he were.

  He was too serious for a young guy, in Talia’s opinion. He was only twenty-one, and would graduate college next summer. He’d worked here longer than Talia had, though he’d just become manager last year. All the workers liked him, but he wasn’t a glad-hander and he didn’t suffer fools. He needed to lighten up, Talia thought. He was too old for a young man.

  “Glad-hander”? All these new words I would have to look up.

  My biggest fear about being a waitress was that as soon as some stranger was mean to me, I would cry, in addition to my normal crying jags. But I managed to get through my shift without making any huge mistakes and without any customers making shark chum out of me. Besides the drink making, I sometimes needed Talia’s help with the cash register, but on the whole I didn’t do too badly. Maybe people could tell it was my first day and gave me a break. Maybe I had just gotten lucky. At any rate, by the time Talia locked the door at midnight and we did the cleanup, I was wiped out and felt like I could sleep for sixteen hours all over again.

  After Talia set the alarm and relocked the front doors, we walked together to the parking lot, Talia with a mace sprayer in one hand. “They say mace is illegal; you gotta use that pepper spray nowadays,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t think so. Some fool be coming at me, I want to stop them dead, you know?”

  “Yeah, definitely,” I agreed. “Thank you so much for showing me everything today. You were really patient.”

  Talia’s wide smile seemed to glow in the night. “It was my pleasure, honey. You’re a sweet girl. I’ll see you tomorrow, you hear?”

  “Yes, thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  As I headed back to Matéo’s house, I thought of the times I’d driven home late in Sugar Beach. I had loved it because I had the roads to myself and felt like I was the only person awake. Here there were cars, lights, action, even at this hour. Lots of people going places. The city was alive around the clock. I pictur
ed New York being like that, and hoped Jennifer could enjoy it.

  It was silly, but driving this late made me feel older. It was almost one a.m., I had done a full day’s work without disgracing myself, and somehow I felt like I’d turned a page in a horrible book. I was living in a new place, doing new things, being with new people. My old life had been destroyed, but my new life was not all that bad.

  CHAPTER NINE

  WHEN I GOT TO MATÉO’S house, there wasn’t a single car in the back parking area. I knew most of my roommates had gone across the lake, but surely someone had to be home. A few lights were on, but it was creepy that there were no cars. I wished Matéo had bright outdoor lights—where I parked on the crushed shells under the trees, it was dark and felt oddly removed from the other houses and the life of the city.

  “Don’t be such a big baby,” I told myself sternly. “Get out, lock the car, and go inside.”

  Peering through my windshield, I thought about how prevalent crime was in New Orleans. I told myself I was a big bad cat with big bad claws. Top of the food chain. But I didn’t know how to change on purpose—that was something that came with practice and experience. Experience that I had steadfastly refused to get. And I still didn’t want to.

  Breathing shallowly, I got out of the car and forced myself to walk, not run, across the yard to the side door. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, and I felt like the tall dark bushes held hundreds of eyes staring at me. It took several seconds to turn the key in the lock and jiggle it just so. Then I quickly stepped inside and locked the door again. When a big form came in from the hall, I almost screamed, but let out my breath in relief as I saw it was Tink.

  “Hey, Vivi,” he said, surprised. “Where is everyone? I got home a couple hours ago and the place was dark.”

  “I think just about everyone went to a concert over in Covington,” I told him. “Where’s your truck?”

  “Shop. I’ll pick it up tomorrow morning.”

  “Ah.” Setting down my purse, I went and stood in front of the fridge, wondering what I felt like eating. I should have gotten a muffin at work. Every bit of energy had drained out of me, but I also felt weirdly hyped up, like I wouldn’t be able to sleep for a while.

  “There’s some ribs in there,” said Tink, putting his glass in the sink.

  “Hmm. Maybe I’ll just fix some cereal or something.”

  Tink and I both made ourselves bowls of cereal and decided to eat upstairs on the balcony. I was so, so glad someone was home and I wasn’t here by myself, and glad it was Tink, who was friendly and funny, instead of, say, Suzanne. It wasn’t that Suzanne was mean or anything, but apparently it took her a while to warm up to new people.

  Tink and I went through my room and I raised one of the tall French windows that led out to the wide balcony across the front of the house.

  “You want the porch light on?” I asked.

  “Nah,” said Tink. “It’ll just draw bugs to us.”

  “ ’Kay.” I lowered the window gently into place, and we sat in beat-up wicker chairs, eating our cereal in the warm, jasmine-scented darkness. It was comfortable, cozy. Gradually I started to unwind. Maybe I would even be able to sleep.

  Sitting together on the dark balcony made it easy to talk, and I found myself telling him about Jennifer, and how I had planned to go to college. Wryly Tink told me how his parents still hoped he would meet a nice girl and get over the whole gay thing, and I said that my parents had wanted me to be different too.

  “Different how?” he said.

  I shrugged, tipping my bowl up and drinking the milk. “More like them. I . . . wasn’t really happy about being haguari.”

  Tink’s eyes widened. “What do you mean, not happy?”

  “I was shocked,” I mumbled, putting down my bowl. “I felt like a freak. I thought it was horrible. And then they changed in front of me, and I was terrified. It was a nightmare.” I’d never told anyone that, not Tia Juliana, not Matéo or Aly, no one. Somehow, sitting here in the darkness with the heavy night air all around us, it was easier to spill my guts.

  In the distance a sudden flash caught my eye: a crisp, forking bolt of lightning. A few seconds later thunder rumbled toward us, sounding like giants bowling in the heavens. The verdant, electric scent of rain came to me, and a moment later drops began to pelt the leaves of the trees. Another burst of lightning, sharply angled and branched like arteries, lit our faces, and the following thunder was so loud I felt it vibrate in my chest.

  “Wow,” Tink said at last. “That must have been so hard, for all of you.”

  “Yeah.” I laughed drily. “Understatement.”

  The rain pattered down, bouncing on the lacy iron railing, hitting the balcony floor. A fine mist brushed my face in a sibilant, cooling kiss. It was past one thirty, according to the glow-in-the-dark hands on my watch. Why weren’t Matéo and the others home yet?

  “When my parents told me—me and my twin brother—we thought we’d won the lottery,” Tink said, sounding dreamy. “It was like finding out we were superheroes. To this day, it’s the one purely beautiful thing in my life.” He looked out at the rain, perhaps looking back far enough in his memory to where he wasn’t a disappointment to his parents. Maybe we could let him into the Heartbreaking Disappointment club. I thought back to my last conversation with Jennifer and felt bad about how it had ended. I would have to call her tomorrow. Or rather, later today.

  “So what did your parents think about your reaction?” Tink asked, pulling me back to the present.

  “They were stunned,” I said. “They couldn’t believe I wasn’t happy about it. But to me it felt like they were asking me to be happy I was Frankenstein or some—” Lightning whitened the porch like a mortar exploding; a simultaneous boom! of thunder drowned out my voice. And the power went off.

  For a second we sat there, staring at each other. We’d already been sitting in the dark, but now my room lights were out, and the streetlights. Tink smiled, and I smiled back. “This happens,” he said.

  I nodded. “It happens at home, too.”

  Standing up, I went to the balcony railing and looked down the street. Everything was as dark as the inside of a cave. A huge, sheeting wave of rain made me step back. It sounded like someone was standing in the yard spraying a fire hose against the house.

  Struck by a sudden thought, I turned back to Tink. “Did your parents ever tell you about the Talofomé?”

  He nodded and grinned. “My mom said that her grandmother used it to scare the daylights out of her. She was afraid to go outside at night, scared that the Talofomé would sneak up on her and rip out her—” He stopped, looking at me.

  I made my voice light. “But we all know it isn’t real, right?”

  “No, of course not. It’s a dumb legend. I have friends at work, and their grandparents told them about the loup-garou, the local werewolf. The Talofomé is just our version of that. I guess every culture has its own evil creature.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I said, feeling unsettled. “Maybe we should go in.”

  Tink shrugged. “With no power, there’s no AC. It’s going to be pretty stuffy inside soon.”

  “Oh. Right.” More mist blew across my skin as I watched the rain come down with such force that it was almost sideways. With no streetlights, no house lights, no moon or stars, the only thing glowing in the night was the French Quarter in the distance. It was so important for the tourism industry that it had its own dedicated power grid.

  Something—some movement—caught the corner of my eye. Moving closer to the balcony railing, I looked down into the side yard. All I saw was rain, the trees blowing in the strong wind, the long grass getting whipped and flattened.

  And . . . a big shadow. Blinking, I wiped the mist out of my eyes and peered down. Saw nothing.

  Then—

  The shadow moved along the fence inside the yard. A big dark shape. A jaguar shape. My eyes wide, I turned and looked at Tink. He was on his feet in a moment, movin
g silently and gracefully for such a big guy. Slowly I pointed down into the yard. When Tink spotted the shadow, his brows furrowed as if he was trying to figure out who it was.

  Despite the comfort of having Tink next to me, I felt like I’d swallowed a hard plastic ball, and my heart thudded heavily in my chest. Down in the yard, the shadow stopped, and even through the intense darkness it seemed like it was looking up at us.

  “Do you recognize him?” I whispered, assuming it was a him.

  Tink’s blue eyes narrowed. “Don’t think so. Not sure. The rain. But no one I know would be doing this without identifying themselves.”

  There was an enormous magnolia tree in the yard—the one I’d fallen asleep under when I’d first arrived. The one Matéo had jumped down at me from. Tink and I now saw the big jaguar coil and spring, disappearing up into the thick branches.

  One of the tree’s limbs ended about twelve feet from the corner of the porch. We couldn’t see the haguaro, but the shaking of various leaves told us he was climbing. He reached the branch closest to this porch. He was coming to get us.

  Like with my parents. Like the person who had tried to break into my house. Like the person who had killed Matéo’s parents.

  Get inside, I told myself, just as I had earlier in my car. Get inside and lock the window. Grabbing the hem of Tink’s shirt, I edged sideways toward my room. Tink didn’t budge, forcing me to let him go. Then I heard it: the low, rumbling, blood-chilling growl of a predator. The closest branch shook and bent under the big jaguar’s weight.

  “Tink! Get inside!” I hissed, quickly raising my window.

  He didn’t respond, just stood at the edge of the balcony staring at the tree. What should I do now? My knees were about to give out from fear. I had to get inside and slam the wooden shutters closed and lock the window, but I couldn’t leave Tink out here alone.

  The next deep-throated growl was much closer, and I realized that it was Tink, and he was changing. His wide shoulders hunched, arms bent at the elbows. Standing in the window frame of my dark room I felt frozen. My legs were trembling and I could hardly breathe. What should I do? What?