It seemed so easy for her to keep her eyes set on the future. But I could barely see to the end of the day. I worked six shifts a week at the Golden Nugget, gone by six and back by four, then I had the whole evening to fill. Half the time I was alone—our place was too small to bring anyone home to, and Fee was never single for long. On the nights she was out I’d make coffee and play records from my dad’s collection and feel a treacherous relief when the sun went down. I liked to sit in the dark and watch the jazz club’s sequined sign glitter and blink, like a hard-luck woman in a balding green dress.
* * *
I got fired from the diner on a Sunday, ten months after graduation, for knocking a full cup of coffee into an alderman’s lap.
The guy was a regular, a showy tipper with a carnival barker’s voice and cheeks like red taffy. He wasn’t seated in my section, but he’d touched my waist when I walked by, given it a hard pinch. “Filler upper?”
His fingers burned through my polyester work shirt. I was riding on a few hours’ sleep, my head still swimming with slow, rose-colored dreams. I got the pot, filled his cup, and knocked it smartly over with the spout. It wasn’t until he shouted, stumbling out of the booth, that I realized what I’d done.
“You did that on purpose.” He sounded stunned. “She did that on purpose!”
My boss, Sergio, rushed over with a wad of napkins. One of the waitresses trailed behind, carrying a little dish of pink ice cream.
“Get outta here,” Sergio muttered. I was already untying my apron.
I grabbed my stuff and was hustling toward the door when someone stopped me—physically, she sprang from her booth and got in my way.
“Hey. Nowak.”
I blinked at her: a face from another life. “Linh.”
Linh who worked at the Metro; Linh who could talk to the dead. I hadn’t seen her since I’d gone begging for help with Astrid a few years ago.
“That was awesome,” she said. “You could not have chosen a better asshole to pour hot coffee on.”
Linh was in her mid-twenties, bangs grazing her brows and eyeliner so hard-edged it could’ve been sprayed through a stencil. She wore a scissored-off sweatshirt that read GO TO HELL KITTY and her hair was black to the tops of her ears, fading at its ends to watered apricot.
I looked over my shoulder to see if Sergio was coming. “Thanks. I just got fired, though. I think I’m supposed to leave.”
“You should get promoted. That guy’s the neighborhood scumbag. He tried me at a bar once, asked if I dated white guys. I said sure, maybe, but I don’t date bright red guys.”
“Hah.” I was still bracing for Sergio’s meaty hand on my shoulder. “So I’m gonna go.”
“Wait.” She bit her lip, almost wistful. “Can I buy you breakfast? Not at this shithole, obviously. Boycott. I haven’t ordered yet, we could walk somewhere.”
I wondered what Linh was doing in this deeply uncool family restaurant, alone, instead of at some hip dirty-spoon diner with her actual friends. I let myself consider the possibility that she was lonely, too.
We walked to a Swedish pancake place a few blocks away. Linh put so much sugar in her coffee it seemed like a joke, then sipped and gave a nod of satisfaction.
“Coffee’s good here.”
“You can still taste coffee?”
She gave me a lofty look. “The dead love sugar. They’re more likely to talk to me when I’ve got it on my breath.”
“Really? That’s cool.” For the first time in ages, the thought of something supernatural didn’t wring my heart. “So, do ghosts—do they just come up and start talking to you? Or, how does it work?”
Linh put down her cup. “It’s never a good thing when a spirit comes looking for me. It’s way, way better when I’m the one doing the courting. And when one does find me, I’m never the point, you know? It’s always somebody else’s haunting. Most of the time the dead are doing their own thing, and it’s the living who are desperate to reach them.” She smiled at me faintly. “Here’s the part where you ask about your dead. If any ghosts are still hanging around you.”
An image hit me with the force of a sucker punch: Marion at my shoulder, running phantom fingers through my hair. I gripped the table so hard I rattled the dishes.
“Hey. No.” Linh put her elbow in a coffee spill, reaching across to grab my hand. “I didn’t mean to freak you out, that’s just the question everyone asks. Like people wanting free rash advice from a doctor. You’re clean, I promise you. No ghosts.”