The Fortunes of Indigo Skye

The Fortunes of Indigo
Skye

Deb
Caletti
 
 

To my sister, Sue Rath.

With my love and lifelong
admiration.
 
 

acknowledgements

As always my heartfelt thanks go to Ben
Camardi, my friend and agent, and Jennifer Klonsky, editor and pal. You are
essential. And you are deeply appreciated. Gratitude also goes to Jaime Feldman,
Michelle Fadlalla, Jodie Cohen, Kimberly Lauber, and the other fine members of
my Simon & Schuster family--each of you is a treasure.

My work gives me the pleasure and privilege of
being in the company of wonderful, funny, inspiring librarians. Your friendship
and support have meant a great deal to me. Special thanks in particular go to
Mike Denton, Dominique McCafferty, Rod Peckman, and the delightful queen of
librarians, Nancy Pearl. Boundless gratitude, too, to all my sales reps, but in
particular, to the tireless, book-loving gems I've come to know: Leah Hays,
Victor Iannone, and Katie McGarry.

Thank you, as always, dear friends and family.
You are loved and cherished a thousand fold--Mom, Dad, Jan, Mitch, Ty, Hunter,
and all our extended bunch. And finally, my Sam and Nick, with whom it always
begins and ends. There must be a word beyond
love.
 
 

1

You can tell a lot about people from what they
order for breakfast. Take Nick Harrison, for example. People talk about him
killing his wife after she fell down a flight of stairs two years ago, but I
know it's not true. Someone who killed his wife would order fried eggs, bacon,
sausage--something strong and meaty. I've never served anyone who's killed his
wife for sure, so I don't know this for a fact, but I can tell you they wouldn't
order oatmeal with raisins like Nick Harrison does. No way. I once heard someone
say you can destroy a man with a suspicious glance, and I'm sure they're right.
Nick Harrison was cleared of any charges, and still he's destroyed. Oatmeal with
raisins every day means you've lost hope.

And Leroy Richie. Just because he has so many
tattoos, you can't think you know everything about him. Up his T-shirt sleeve
snakes a dragon tail, and around his neck is a woman with her tongue that
reaches out toward one of his ears. But he orders Grape-Nuts and wheat toast.
He's not just about tattoos when he cares so much about fiber in his
diet.

We've got two regulars at Carrera's who do the
full breakfast--eggs, side meat, three dollar-size pancakes. That's Joe Awful
Coffee and Funny Coyote, and it's just a coincidence that they both have strange
names. Joe's name, I guess, was given to him years ago--he can't remember why,
because he says his coffee was just fine. A big breakfast makes sense for
him--he was a boxer about a thousand years ago, and he still feeds himself as
if

2

he's preparing to get in the ring wearing one
of those silky superhero capes (why they make tough guys wear silky Halloween
costumes is another question altogether). And Funny Coyote. Can you imagine
going through life with a name that sounds like you're being chased by Bugs
Bunny? She's American Indian, about twenty-eight, twenty-nine, with short black
spiky hair you get the urge to pat, same as a kid with a crew cut or those
hedges in the shapes of animals. She eats everything on her plate, sweeps it
clean of egg yolk with a swipe of pancake. Then again, she goes a thousand miles
an hour when she's manic, so she probably needs the calories. She calls what she
has a "chemical imbalance" because it sounds more accidental and scientific than
a "mental illness." A "chemical imbalance" is no one's fault. She comes in to
write poetry, pages and pages of it, not that it's ever quiet in
Carrera's.

Trina, she gets pie and coffee, which fits her,
because she's as rich as custard and chocolate cream and warm apples with a
scoop of vanilla. She's about Funny's age, but she's all long, blond hair,
lace-up boots, fur down to her knees. She leaves lipstick marks on the rim of
her cup, the kind of marks that make a life seem full of secrets. She has this
white and red classic Thunderbird. Nick Harrison says it's a '55, but she says
it's a '53. You don't care what year it is when you see it parked by the curb.
Jane, who is my boss and the owner of Carrera's, says it attracts customers, so
she likes it when Trina comes in.

I know about breakfast, mostly, because
breakfast was always my regular shift. Usually, I worked several mornings before
school, and then the early weekend hours, meaning that my own breakfast was
reckless--anything I happened to grab on the way out. A handful of Cocoa Puffs,
a granola bar, my brother's beef

3

jerky. I'd have been at the cafe all day, but
right then, where this story starts (where I'm
choosing
to start--most
everything before was nothing in comparison), I was at the end of my senior
year. I still had to clock in what was left of my school hours, and Carrera's
isn't open for dinner. After I graduated, though, I wanted to work full-time
there while I decided "what to do with my life." See, I loved being a waitress
more than anything, but apparently, it's okay to
work
as a waitress but
not to
he
a waitress. To most people, saying you want to be a waitress is
like saying your dream is to be a Walgreens clerk, ringing up spearmint gum and
Halloween candy and condoms, which just proves that most people miss the point
about most things most of the time. Waitressing is a talent--it's about giving
nourishment,
creating
relationships,
not just about bringing the
ketchup.

Anyway, before the Vespa guy, I could tell you
very little about who wanted tuna salad and who wanted turkey on white and who
wanted minestrone, but I could tell you about what people craved when they first
woke up, what they lingered over before they got serious about making the day
into something.

So, what did coffee say? Just coffee? Coffee
served to you, a bill slipped under your saucer when you were finished? When
anyone could whip into any Starbucks on any corner and get coffee in under five
minutes, what did it mean when you decided to wait for a waitress to come to
your table, to refill your cup, to ask if everything was all right?

That's what I wondered the day I first saw him.
Because, here comes this guy, right? He pulls up to the curb one day on his
orange Vespa. He's no one we've ever seen before, and not the type we usually
get in Carrera's. He's wearing a soft, navy blue jacket, and underneath, a
creamy white shirt open easily at the

4

collar, nicely displaying his Adam's apple. And
jeans. But not jeans-jeans; these are not wear-around-the-house jeans, or
go-to-the-store jeans or even work-at-Microsoft jeans. There's something
creative-but-wealthy about them, about him in general with his longish, tousled
hair, and dark, soft leather shoes that are too elegantly simple to be
inexpensive. All in all, sort of hot for an old guy in his thirties, which
sounds freakishly Lolita, but still true. His face is narrow and clean-shaven.
He smiles at me, lips closed, and says, "Just coffee." He smells so
good--showery. A musky cologne, or maybe one of those hunky bars of soap that
are supposedly made out of oatmeal but probably aren't made out of
oatmeal.

Jane looks at me with raised eyebrows, and I
raise one of my own, a trick I can do that neither my twin brother can, nor my
little sister, ha. I'm the only one in my family, far as I know. It makes me
look slightly evil, which I love. Jane's eyebrows are asking,
What's the
story?
Mine are answering,
Hmm, mystery and intrigue.
We've never
seen this guy before, and just so you know, when you go into a small cafe that
mostly fills with regulars and you're not one, you'll likely get talked about
after you leave. It's part of what I really like about my job. Juicy gossip and
lurid conjecture. Love it. Joe Awful Coffee raises his old eyebrows too, but
Nick's too busy sprinkling sugar onto his oatmeal to even notice the new
arrival.

I bring the man his coffee. The glass cup
clatters slightly against the saucer. "Thank you," he says. Murmurs--it's one of
those soft, polite, well-dressed thank-you's that legitimately qualify as a
murmur. Who murmurs anymore? And then he just looks out the window. Stirs his
coffee with a spoon.
Tink, tink, tink
against the edge of the cup. Smiles
up at me when I pour a refill.

5

Just coffee. My guess is that he has things to
think about. Things that are too deep for a
double-tall-foam-no-foam-lite-
mocha-hazelnut-vanilla-skinny-
tripleshot-decaf-iced-extra-
hot-Americano-espresso
type place, where every person can demand and immediately get their combination
of perfect in a cardboard cup. Where everyone only pretends to think deep
thoughts and discuss important subjects but it's all a piece of performance art.
Maybe he needs to get past all that distraction of wants and desires and
greedy-spoiled-American-
hurried-up-insta-gratification and just sip
coffee.

I don't know. But he stays for a while. Almost
to the end of my shift. I smile, he smiles. My tip is more than the coffee
itself.

"Did you see his shoes?" Jane says. "Italian."
I'm pretty sure she knows nothing about this. Jane is a regular jeans and
friends don't let friends vote republican T-shirt wearer. Running shoes. I know
she went to Italy a long time ago, and that's how she got the idea for
Carrera's, but I hardly think it qualifies her as an expert on men's
shoes.

"Fast track," Nick Harrison says. He'd been
paying attention after all. He gets up, wipes his mouth with his napkin. Fast
track--this
is
something Nick knows about. He used to be a big shot in
some architectural engineering firm before his wife died and he used up all his
money on lawyers. Now he works at True Value down the street, mixing paint and
helping people pick out linoleum. When he reaches for change in his pants
pocket, he always has one of those metal tools they give out free to pry up the
paint lids. Now he wears nice-guy plaid. According-to-the-law plaid.

"Fucking beautiful Vespa," Leroy Richie says.
He's sitting at a table by the window, the newspaper spread in front of him.
He

6

scratches a heart wrapped in vines, which is
inked onto the underside of his wrist. "Anyone know what a 'lowboy driver'
is?"

"If you don't know what it is, I'm guessing you
can't do it," fane says. She frees a stack of one-dollar bills bound together
with a rubber band.

"How about a 'resolute trainer'?"

"Someone serious about training?" I take a
guess.

"Hey!" Leroy says. "Pilates instructor! I could
do that. I've got balls."

Leroy works for the Darigold plant in town,
which is why he's up so early, but he's always looking for a second job to make
more money. For retirement, Leroy says, though he's maybe only thirty. People
aren't too quick to hire him because of the tattoos.
They think tattoos equal
drug addict,
he says.
Like all needles are the same. Like even art has to
have its designated places.
Darigold hired him years ago, when all he had
was a falcon on one shoulder. Now, he told us, the only place he didn't have
artwork was on his bald head, which is a picture you didn't especially want to
imagine, thank you.

"He's getting on the Vespa," Nick Harrison
reports. "Starting it up. There he goes."

I look out the window to watch too. I watch the
back of his suit jacket disappear down the street, the flaps whipping softly
against his back. It's like we've been touched by something, but I'm not sure
what. Maybe it's just the twinge of thrill that comes with a stranger's story,
all the possibilities that might be there until you find out he works at a bank
and plays golf. Or maybe it's that down deep hope-knowledge that someone or
something is bound to arrive to save you from your drab existence, that maybe
this is it. We're practically
promised
that, right? That our lives
will

7

at some point go Hollywood? That excitement
will one day arrive, just like a package from the UPS driver? I don't know, but
I can just feel
it
--this static, popping energy buzz. The kind that
comes when there's been an epic shift in the tectonic plates of your personal
universe.

After work I go to school (blah, blah, blah,
nothing, something, more nothing), and after school, Trevor, my boyfriend, comes
to pick me up and take me home, where he'll have dinner with us. Trevor stops me
right outside in the school parking lot; he kisses me and our tongues loll
around together, like seals playing in water. I'm not into public displays of
affection generally, but right then I'm just so happy to see him. My hands are
on his shoulders, which I like to feel because, back then, Trevor delivered
refrigerators and washing machines. He's got these muscles that won't quit. He's
still kissing away when he separates from me suddenly, his brain catching up to
the rest of him. "You changed your hair," he says.

He looks at me, and I put my hand up to my
head. My hair was still short, but I'd gone from brown with yellow highlights to
a rusty orange. My friend Melanie did it for me, and she's good at it too, even
though she never messes with her own color. She always says her dad would kill
her, but personally, I don't think her dad would even notice.