The Edge of Madness Cafe (The Sea and the Wasteland Book 2) (34 page)

“Apparently, so did I. I
found it last night while cleaning up. Tea was spilled on it. The ink bled
straight out of the paper. I’m afraid it’s ruined; I had to throw it away. I’m
sorry.”

Ellen shook her head.
“Don’t be. I don’t want it.”

“Still, I feel I may have
interfered. If you had chosen to stay with this doctor, where would you be
then? I was meddling, and I shouldn’t have.”

“I asked you for advice.
It wasn’t your fault.”

“You’re kind. I imagine
that’s what he likes about you.” Instead of explaining her remark, she said, “I’d
like to make it up to you. Join me tomorrow for tea, just a quiet little
get-together. Is one-thirty all right?”

Ellen felt an objection
rise in her throat, an excuse about nothing of any consequence. She couldn’t
have tea tomorrow; she had to work.

But her objection went unvoiced, whisked away by Serena’s gaze,
her polite mannerisms disguising a woman who would not be deterred by anyone,
who had never heard the word no, and would not oblige if she did. Ellen
suddenly felt like she was moving, a passenger aboard a speeding train; too
late to jump off, all she could do was hang on for the ride, the doors locked,
the windows sealed, the engineer mad or missing, and the conductor some genteel
woman with enchanting eyes, a brewer of her own teas.

Serena turned to address
her concerns with Nicholas Dabble—concerns she herself had never voiced, her
tongue frozen to the bottom of her mouth. “Nicholas, would it be all right if I
stole Ellen away from you tomorrow? I would like to have her for tea at 1:30.
You won’t need her after that time, will you?”

Nicholas Dabble nodded
mildly, seemingly considering Serena’s request without actually considering it.
When he finally answered, it was only a matter of course. “She’s welcome to an
afternoon off if she would like.”

“Splendid. Ellen, I’ll
see you tomorrow, 1:30 sharp. Just come to the shop. I live right above it.”

Ellen nodded dumbly.

“Wonderful.”

There was a pounding on
the backdoor as if someone were beating upon the wood with his fist. Dabble
looked up, not altogether surprised.

After a moment, the
pounding repeated, this time more loudly. Ellen jerked at the noise, startled
by the intrusion upon the bookstore’s silence. She looked to her boss, but his
eyes seemed far away. She looked back at Serena.

“That would be the wolf
knocking at your door, Nicky,” Serena said mildly.

Nicholas Dabble gave her
nonsensical remark a sideways glare that came off petulant and empty.

And again, there was
pounding, the caller refusing to be ignored. He would simply pound and wait,
pound and wait, pound and wait. Eventually, Ellen thought, the bookstore would
collapse under the assault the way a mountain finally crumbles under the siege
of time and wind and the elements.

That, or Nicholas Dabble
would answer the door.

“Is
everything all right, Mr. Dabble?” Ellen asked, amazed at how her voice sounded
in the emptiness between poundings, a barely audible whisper, her voice
betraying concern and leaving her speaking empty breath like the pleas of a
church mouse.

Dabble turned on his way
to the door, caught only the edge of her eye, and looked quickly away. “Yes…
and no.”

“Should I… should I call
someone?”

A kind of half-smile
twisted at his mouth then tangled into a grimace. She thought the question
seemed to strike him as humorous, if she wasn’t mistaken. “No, this is a
personal matter, and time it was settled.”

*     *     *

Dabble found Arnold
Prosser standing in the alleyway still wearing the same denim coveralls from
this morning, the same coveralls he always wore. The Garbageman loathed change
like he loathed fair guises; he came at you straight.

Lies and deceit were
Dabble’s bailiwick.

He closed the door
tightly behind himself, a very careful and deliberate gesture not missed by
Arnold Prosser, and never once took his eyes off the Garbageman.
No, that
absolutely would not do. Not at this stage of the game.
“What can I do for
you, Arnold?”

“I was afraid I’d ‘ave to
bash your door down, Dabble. Whatsa matter, salt-licker? Wax in yer ears?
Didn’t ‘ear me knockin’?”

“I heard,” Dabble replied
coolly.

“No, you musta ‘ad wax in
your ears, Nicky, ‘cause otherwise you woulda ‘eard me earlier today when I
asked you if you were hidin’ anything from me. You woulda ‘eard me and you
woulda told me the truth instead o’ lyin’ ta me like ya did. So it musta been
wax, eh Nicky?”

“Quit playing,
Arnie
.
You’re no good at it. If you have something to say, stop strutting about my
back alley and spit it out.”

If Nicholas had slapped
him, Arnold Prosser could not have looked more furious. “Alright Dabble, if
that’s the way you want it. You wanna shoot straight; we shoot straight.”

Nicholas folded his arms
over his chest and nodded. “From the hip.”

Arnold Prosser took the
thick work gloves from his hands and threw them aside, then pointed sharply at
Dabble. “You got something o’ mine that you’re keeping from me.”

“Really, Arnold? And what would that be?”

“Don’t be fuckin’ sassy
with me, you two-bit used car salesman. You know damn well what it is, so don’t
you be pretendin’ you don’t.”

“Something of
yours
,
Arnold? I confess I’m a little confused. How could something of
yours
have found its way into
my
hands? Doesn’t that seem a little …
unusual
?”

“Unusual, my ass. It’s
impossible. Somethin’s fuckin’ with the order of the universe ‘ere, Dabble, and
you know what the fuck it is. You’ve known all along, and you’ve been trying to
hide it from me.”

“Stop bleating esoteric
notions about order and design, Arnold; you know I find your obsession
trifling. It’s an unattractive trait that keeps you home on Saturday nights
with nothing but your impure thoughts and your left hand.”

Dabble saw Prosser’s
attack; he was in no position to defend himself, but he saw it. It was more
than most could expect. One moment Prosser was standing there, face reddening,
neck scarlet and bulging with rage, and the next Dabble felt his face explode
with pain, his head snapping back suddenly, looking at the sky. Knees weakened,
he wobbled a step before regaining his balance, one hand already touching the
blaze of pain that set fire to his lips and cheek. There was a delicate red
stain upon his hand when he drew it away, tiny lines of crimson painted into the
swirls of his flesh.

Arnold Prosser
had hit him!

Now you know how much
this means to him, old man. How much does it mean to you?

“That was ta get your
attention, salt-licker,” the Garbageman snarled. “We said straight and that
means straight. No lies and no fancying about with things that aren’t part o’
what we’re doing ‘ere. Now I’m gonna give you just one more chance to come
clean with me. You know what’s going on, an’ ‘ave from the start. You got some
little strip of a girl working in your store that ain’t supposed to be there.
And when I say she ain’t supposed to be there, I mean she ain’t supposed to
exist at all. She don’t belong here. She wasn’t born which means she can’t die,
and that means she doesn’t belong.”

“Just a lost soul looking
for a home,” Dabble supplied, and spat a gobbet of blood upon the ground
between them.

Arnold
’s eyes sparkled
darkly. “That’s right. A lost soul
lookin’ for a home. See, you do know what I’m talkin’ about. More importantly,
who
I’m talking about.”

“This morning, you came
sniffing around for something that had to do with some unscheduled pickups. Why
should I assume that my assistant had—?”

The Garbageman’s response
lifted Dabble off his feet, and sent him crashing into the backdoor, the blow nearly
splintering the wood at his back. Nicholas tumbled upon the steps, facedown in
the alleyway and staring at Arnold Prosser’s hardened leather boots.

“That’s two, Nicky. If I
get to three and you’re still givin’ me shit, I’ll put you out. You get me, you
miserable little piece o’ snake shit. I’ll … put … you …
OUT!
No more
fucking’ around. No more games. I will end your sorry existence once and for
all. You may be prince o’ the nines here on this ball o’ dirt, but in my
sphere, you don’t count for crap. Damned or saved, it makes no difference to
me, you know. They’re all mine in the end. You get that? Do you comprehend what
that means for the likes o’ you?”

Nicholas Dabble climbed
slowly to his feet, eyes hardening. But the Garbageman wasn’t done yet.

“Your whole purpose, your
very existence, is of no consequence to me whatsoever. I win either way. So you
keep giving me guff, and I relieve myself of my problem right now, and put you
out of my way. Is that clear enough for you, Nick? Are you startin’ to see the
light?”

Dabble straightened,
fingers curling, muscles tightening. The next time the Garbageman crossed the
line, he would find Nicholas Dabble waiting on the other side. The time for
games was over!

“Now crawl back in that
hole of yours, and bring out that little girl,” Arnold Prosser said,
unimpressed. “She’s mine and you know it. She was always mine; she just never
realized it.”

“And neither did you, I
gather.”

Arnold Prosser looked at
the other with a measuring stare, mouth cocked in a half-grin. “Slippery,
Dabble. Very slippery. No, I didn’t realize she was missin’. Sometimes they
slip my notice for a while. But not forever. Not even for long. They give
themselves away. Five unscheduled pickups, and all of ‘em have her smell about
‘em.  I wouldn’t ‘ave found ‘er so quickly, but fer you and Serena chummin’
around with her, mixing your fucking karma up with hers. That was stupid,
Dabble. Real stupid.”

“Actually, she’s mine,”
Dabble said, knowing it would upset the Garbageman and no longer of a mind to
care. Serena had said she would fix this, and maybe she would yet. But if she
didn’t hurry, he might just fix it for both of them—for good! “I found her
first and I hold a legitimate claim upon her. If you want her, you’ll have to
buy out my share. But I won’t just walk away.”

Prosser simply looked at
him, eyes wide, mouth a small “O” of amusement. “I musta hit you harder than I
thought, Nicky. I’ve obviously scrambled your brains. Let me make this
perfectly plain so that there won’t be any misunderstanding. Walk your bony ass
back inside, take that little stripling by the shoulders, and usher her out the
backdoor to me, then walk the fuck away. I’m restoring the order of the
universe, dammit! She’s not meant to be here. She’s not meant to be
alive
.
Every second she spends on this side of the river is another moment closer to
complete and total annihilation. How long do you think the universe can hold up
under a paradox like ‘er?”

This time, it was Arnold
Prosser who was caught off-guard. The stocky little man was hurled backwards
into the side of his hauler, the metal echoing a loud clang as Arnold crashed against it. When the Garbageman looked back, shaking the dazed expression
from his face, Dabble was already positioned between him and the back entrance,
arms at his sides, palms open, fingers spread. “Ellen Monroe is not going with
you, Arnie. If you knew me half so well as you think, you’d know I thrive on
chaos and annihilation.”

Arnold
stared back at Nicholas with a
measure of respect, and no small amount of surprise. “Very well, Dabble. That’s
three. Get ready to meet the reaper.”

Serena stepped from the
backdoor of the bookstore, smiling pleasantly. “Good afternoon, Arnold. You are just the man I was looking for.”

She moved easily past
Nicholas Dabble, sidestepping him as she might a signpost or a poorly placed
coat rack, and walked up to Arnold Prosser. “I think it appropriate we should
get together.”

Seconds earlier, Arnold
Prosser was considering, with no small amount of relish, the prospect of
tearing Nicholas Dabble’s spine out and showing it to him—or feeding it to him;
which one, he wasn’t sure now. But the coffee shop owner had a presence that
arrested his attention. “I really don’t think this is the time or the place,
Serena,” Arnold said, finding it difficult not to look away from her gaze.

“I agree,” she said
playfully,
moving in an
air of lilacs and spring, of opium and sweet grass, of smoke and peppermint and
dead scarabs. “Join me tomorrow for tea. It will give us a chance to catch up,
to discuss matters that need to be settled.”

Arnold
’s gaze traded from Serena to the
sun-sweltered alley and back. He could never read her; never understand her
from one moment to the next. She was stability by way of change. Dabble’s polar
opposite, Arnold abhorred chaos. Serena, by contrast, used chaos to affect
order. Chaos was her clay, there for the taking to do with as she saw fit, her
motives perplexing, intriguing, infuriating,
arousing
. She unsettled and
interested him both, and he could not rectify the confusion.