Unfinished Business

The coffeeshop moved the same way it did every morning when Carine arrived. Keyboards clicked and glasses clinked amid the scent of freshly ground beans. She’d done the same routine every morning for the last eleven weeks with the same goal in mind. Show up with writing utensils to get the story out. All she ever wanted was to be a writer; one who finished a story. After forty-seven days, Carine had yet to find completion. Summer’s end neared, and she’d have to return to her teaching position without having accomplished the last item on her bucket list.

Finishing a story.

Carine approached the counter, where her favorite mustached barista, Luca, waited. “I’ll have a hot pistachio latte.”

He accepted her payment and offered a sanguine smile. “I have high hopes that today is your lucky day. What do you think?”

“There’s an idea percolating, but I’m still not sure where it’s going.”

“Maybe you’re putting too much pressure on yourself. How about I put a little extra cinnamon in your drink for luck?”

Carine winked and found an empty table next to the window. The only thing Carine liked more than a steaming latte was starting a new story. Ensconced in the warmth of her favorite coffee shop, with its walls decorated with sepia pictures of famous authors, Carine’s pen hovered over a blank sheet of paper. Though she had a laptop and means to write electronically, there was something that couldn’t compare to the feel of pencil graphite scratching paper.

During previous writing sessions, Carine had toyed with a story of a man whose nightmares affected his waking days, but she’d grown weary, instead wanting to create a romance. Two characters had been dancing in her head: a bubbly woman with dark curly hair and an accident-prone man. Though she wasn’t entirely sure where their meet-cute would take place, Carine had already visualised a situation where the man, Colin, literally fell for the sweet Miranda. Despite having a boyfriend, Miranda would spark a friendship with Colin that would carry them through the breakup from her rotten scoundrel of a boss.

If Carine closed her eyes, she could clearly see all the shenanigans the couple would get into. They would have their first kiss in the rain after chasing Colin’s escaped dog. Carine knew Miranda and Colin would end up together; after all, love always wins, but she had no idea how. All she had to do was start. Then keep going. And finish. Three simple steps fueled by caffeine.

By the time her drink was ready, Carine had scribbled the first five hundred words. The first sip of her rich drink combined with the promising start had Carine’s fingers tingling. This love story was different. It would be the first of many. She wrote about how Miranda was browsing through a bookstore on a bright summer day when Colin fell over a stack of books, knocking over the shelf. When Carine wasn’t sure where to take the story next, she stopped and stared out the window.

Dog-walking couples and happy families crowded the streets, but she couldn’t find any motivation, so she flipped to the front of her notebook, where she’d started a mafia thriller. The story of that story was more of the same. Her hero, a brooding, muscular man, was stuck in the back of a diner, waiting for a phone call from the story’s villain who had kidnapped his daughter and demanded ransom.

Carine flipped between the two stories, wondering which to force her attention on, when a knock on the table pulled her attention away. A woman waited at the other end of the table.

“Is this seat taken? Do you mind if I sit with you?” The woman flipped dark curly tendrils over her shoulder and set her bag down on the empty chair. A long line snaked through the narrow cafe, and seating had become limited.

Carine nodded, pulling her sprawled notebook and pencils from across the table. “Please. Make yourself comfortable.”

“I don’t need much space. Don’t let me interrupt your work. I plan to keep myself occupied.” The woman pulled a ball of yarn and a long pair of knitting needles from her bag.

Carine marveled at the similarities between the woman sitting before her and the character on the page. “I’ve always wanted to learn to knit, just never took the time. I’m Carine, by the way.”

“It’s the perfect activity if you have a lot of stress in your life. I’m Miranda. Nice to meet you.”

The hair on Carine’s arms stood up, tickling her skin. Before Carine could ask any follow-up questions, Miranda’s cell phone rang. She rolled her eyes, then answered, giving Carine access to the yelling man on the other end of the line.

Carine wanted to focus on her story, she did, but her ears perked at the sudden conversation. Miranda stuttered, trying to offer a resolution, but the man on the other end wouldn’t let her speak.

Sad that she wasn’t enjoying the six-dollar drink, Carine finished the last of her latte and stuffed her notebook into her backpack. There wouldn’t be getting any work done with the distractions abounding. Despite the guilt blanketing her shoulders, Carine mentally praised herself for at least showing up. The cafe was too loud. Laughter abounded. She’d been too prideful, thinking the little idea dancing around in her brain was going to congeal into something worth reading. There was always tomorrow.

Carine stood, wanting to take the ceramic mug back to the counter, when a man tripped over her outstretched foot. His arms flailed, sending his iced matcha splattering across Carine’s white sweater. The plastic cup his drink had been in sailed across the table and hit Miranda square in the face. She squealed at the shock, her eyes bulging in surprise as gravity took the man tumbling toward her. In seconds, everyone in the shop inhaled, watching as the man fell into the woman’s lap.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry,” Carine said, straightening to stand. “I didn’t mean to trip you.”

The man, however, only had eyes for Miranda. His face nestled into her breast, a situation that colored them both. He righted himself, pushing down on the table, making it wobble from his struggle.

“Are you okay?” He looked Miranda over, then bent to pick up her cell phone, with a fresh crack running down the middle. “I’m sorry about your phone. I’ll pay to have it fixed.”

“No, it’s fine, it’s my work phone. I’ve been hoping for a break from it anyway; my boss won’t stop calling,” Miranda said.

Carine stood there, green beads of tea running down her front, while the strangers cooed over each other.

“I guess I’ll go clean myself up.” She left the two fussing over the phone to weave her way through the cafe to the back. The bathrooms were down a poorly lit hallway, where a man dressed in all black paced nervously. He stopped in front of the women’s room, blocking Carine’s entry.

“Excuse me,” she said, a little too loudly, hoping to get the man to move.

“Did the Garozzo family send you?” he asked.

Carine froze, processing the question. “Huh? I just need to clean my sweater.” She held the front out toward him as if proving her purpose.

“You don’t have the message. They said the woman was going to bring me their requests. At least tell me that my daughter is okay.” Lines bracketed his eyes and mouth.

“I don’t know anything about your daughter or the Garozzo family. I just need to get into the bathroom.”

The man stepped to the side when someone walked up behind her. Luca, the barista, crossed his arms.

“Sal. Leave her alone. Don’t mess with the patrons. She’s not in the mafia,” Luca said.

Sal’s face opened. “Yeah, okay. Hey, how are the nightmares?”

“Same. Just wish I could get a good night’s sleep.”

Carine squeezed into the women’s room, relieved to be away from the man’s attention. She dabbed the green stains with a rough paper towel until her shirt was soaking wet, yet still covered in green splotches. After sneaking a peek outside the door to find Sal staring at his cell phone, Carine dashed out into the cafe, snatched her items from the table where the guy and the girl still whispered to each other, and dashed out the door.

Three hours later, after Carine lay across the couch with her eyes closed, she realized she didn’t have her cell phone. She had to have left it at the cafe. There hadn’t been any other stops, and she’d left in such a tizzy that it was quite possible she’d overlooked grabbing it. Carine wiggled her feet back into her boots, grabbed her bag, then started the trek back to the coffeeshop.

The cafe looked different in the late afternoon. Carine hadn’t ventured there outside of the morning jaunts to feed her writing habit. The room was quieter, and the pastry case empty and clean.

Carine stepped inside, helping the heavy door close without slamming. She made eye contact with Luca, who was still at the counter wearing his apron and thick mustache.

“Did I leave my phone here?” Carine asked.

Luca shrugged. “No one has turned anything in. Did you check your table?” He pointed to the place where Carine had been working earlier. The same table where the same woman and man still sat. The man sat in Carine’s chair and Miranda in hers, with empty cups between them.

Carine gasped. “They’re still here. I can’t believe it.”

“They can’t leave,” Luca said. “Their story isn’t finished. They can’t go until it is.”

“What do you mean?” Carine asked.

He raised an eyebrow, his face a slate of surprise. “Have you not noticed? Look at the woman. Curly hair. Terrible boss. Sweet countenance?”

Air caught in Carine’s chest, heaving up and down. Surely the woman couldn’t be her Miranda. It was a coincidence. Just because the man literally fell into her and they appeared to be hitting it off, didn’t mean they were the characters from her story. Did it?

Carine’s knees wobbled as she rushed toward the bathroom, needing a private moment to collect her thoughts, but the same man from earlier still stalked the hallway.

“Have you heard anything about your girl?” she asked.

Sal’s shoulders fell as he knocked his face on the wall. “Nothing.”

Carine rushed to a free table and snatched her notebook out of her bag. Whether Luca intended it, he’d opened the expanse of her vision. For months, Carine had been patronizing the coffee shop, thinking she modeled the world around her, when in reality, she created it.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Carine muttered to herself.

Luca arrived at the same moment, carrying a mug. “You do. Just write.” Luca gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder and left.

Carine took a long sip of the pistachio latte and pressed her pencil so hard that the lead broke. After fishing out another pencil, Carine settled in.

In a stroke of inspiration, she wrote how Miranda’s boss at his accounting firm had a secret role in the local mafia. He’d been funneling money until he upset one of his former clients, Sal, who’d threatened to turn his shady business practices into the FBI. She wrote how Luca, the local bartender, had witnessed the kidnapping, unsure how he could help without getting killed himself.

What she thought had been three short stories flowed into a massive tome of intertwined lives, pockets of romance and pages of nervous anticipation. The pen flew across the page as Carine knitted together the lives of random people who all lived in the same neighborhood.

Hours passed as she handwrote page after page of furious dialogue and flowered descriptions of everywhere her characters went. Miranda and Colin made love in the backseat of a car, while Sal and Luca parked down the block to stake out the boss’ house. Everything built up to when the lovers confessed their love for each other. Colin took Miranda’s face in his and nothing…

Carine’s mind blanked. She lifted her head to take a deep breath and re-acclimate herself to the room. Colin had moved to Miranda’s side of the table. Their faces pressed close together, hands waving with excitement. Colin pointed somewhere behind him, knocking a glass off the table. Sal had emerged from the back hallway, but still paced with his cell phone in his hand. In the harsh fluorescent light, the bald spots shone through his thinning hair. Luca stacked clean glasses, and the dark circles around his eyes stood out.

They were all there, ready to go out into the world, but Carine couldn’t finish. She couldn’t leave them hanging, and honestly, disappoint herself again, but she’d run out of words. Carine inhaled and screamed, “I’m not sure how this ends!”

All eyes turned to Carine, slicing silence throughout the room. Colin stood, tripped over the table’s leg, knocking over his chair. “We stop the bad guy. That’s it.”

Of course that was the answer she’d been searching for: the good guys always won, but there were too many possibilities. Having the mob boss die of an unexpected heart attack reeked of desperation. Making the chase too easy would ruin the entire story, but complicating things would only bring confusion.

Carine’s thoughts circled, yet none landed. She took a round of rushed, heavy breaths that left her loopy and forced herself into the hard, flat seat with the pen at the ready, but nothing.

Gracefully, Carine accepted defeat. She couldn’t write another word if she wanted to. Carine returned the mug to Luca at the counter. “Thank you for the latte. Can I pay you for it?”

He declined. “It’s on the house.”

“See you in the morning?” she asked.

“I’ll be here.”

She stepped out into the breezy evening, where the sun began to set. Most everyone on the sidewalk avoided the coffeeshop in search of nourishing meals and the end to the workday. A married couple passed in front of her, with the wife pushing a baby stroller and the husband doing his best to corral a struggling toddler. The child wiggled out of her father’s grasp, set her feet to the sidewalk, and took off running.

“Don’t let her get away,” the mom screamed.

Carine froze at the girl’s happy screams as she tried to get away from her father, enjoying her freedom. Carine turned on her heels and reentered the shop.

“I’ve got it,” she announced to the room at large. The chair she’d just vacated still held the warmth from where she’d sat all day. Her bottom protested, but she planted in it and re-pulled out her items.

“The daughter gets away and they all chase her,” she muttered to herself. Through an over-caffeinated hand, Carine scratched the rest of the story on paper.

She set the pen down, and the scrape of wood chairs on wood floor called her attention. Miranda and Colin stood up, gathered their items, and left together. Seconds later, Sal’s cell phone rang, the shrill beeping uncomfortably loud. He answered, trailing heavy footsteps out the same way the couple had gone. Satisfied, Carine gathered her items, bid goodnight to Luca, promising to see him in the morning.

After a good night’s sleep, Carine returned to the coffee shop in the morning. She marched to the counter, where a young woman with purple bangs and a nose ring waited.

“Is Luca working today?” Carine asked.

“I’m not sure who Luca is,” the woman answered. “Did you want to order something?”

Carine ordered her usual, then asked. “Did anyone turn in a cell phone?”

The barista reached under the counter and pulled out Carine’s phone. Carine packed it away safely and left, ready to start the day anew.