Spilled Coffee Read online

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  Copyright ©2013 by J. B. Chicoine

  Cover, interior design, and art by Straw Hill Design.

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, dialogues, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Other Novels by J. B. Chicoine

  Author Biography

  Acknowledgements

  Many thanks to my writing partner, Robynne Marie Plouff, for her constant support and willingness to read through each draft—and to my writing buddy, Liza Carens Salerno. Thanks also to Dan Zenas at Georgia Prosthetics for his generous technical support, and Gary Johnson for tweaking my aviation skills.

  Above all, thank you, Todd, my ever-encouraging, always-willing-to-listen husband. My stories are all for you—without your support, I would never have published them.

  For my brother Pete

  Chapter 1

  I tap the crystal of my pocket watch, as if jarring its works might synchronize it with the time on my dashboard—10:00 AM. The old analog is eighteen minutes slow. I should have given the watch a fine-tuning when I received it, but the idea of tampering with its works seemed sacrilegious. Besides, what’s a mere eighteen minutes?

  Climbing from the rental Saab, I fumble with the timepiece like an awkward memory. Sunlight glints off gold as I ease its cover closed and shut the car door. I press the watch to my ear, listening for a heartbeat, and then return it to my vest pocket. I need one of those vintage watch fobs, something proper to go along with this pinstriped vest.

  Approaching the entrance to Rockette Diner, I gather my hair behind my ear, trying to compensate for having missed my barber appointment—as if anyone here cares that I look like a throwback to the hippie era. I’ve just stepped into a pocket of New England where the artsy mingle freely with local farmers, and although these college and prep-school communities foster individualism, I still feel a little off. Maybe it’s just the weirdness of being back here—or that my twitch has intensified. I rub my eye and adjust the perch of my shades.

  My foot catches the curb. I stumble into an old lady as she steps through the diner door. Reaching out to steady her, I gasp, “I’m so sorry.”

  She frowns, slapping my hand. “Watch where you’re headed, young man! You could hurt someone.”

  I wag my head. “Sorry.”

  The door slams on my elbow, disrupting my sunglasses. In a wave of self-consciousness, I scramble to catch them in midair—I meant to take them off anyway—and tuck them between my shirt and vest.

  Stepping inside, I squint at the fluorescent light. My eyes flinch. The dense aromas of bacon, maple syrup, strong coffee, and cigarettes hit me first. As my sight catches up with my olfactory senses, the black-checkered floor, red vinyl stools, and chrome-edged counter send me from 1987 back to 1969, back to my fourteenth summer. It’s as if the world hasn’t changed—as if I were eighteen years early for this appointment.

  I scan the counter and tables for Oscar in his soiled work coat. I’m not sure if Oscar is the guy’s first name or last. He seemed like a nice enough fellow, even if he did remind me that I’m a “flatlander.” I guess that much is true, although I didn’t bother to explain that I had just flown in from the Rockies. Here in New Hampshire, the saying goes, “Once a flatlander, always a flatlander.” All the more reason why I don’t take for granted that Oscar has agreed to show up at the lake with his truck, tomorrow, on Memorial Day weekend—and a Sunday, no less.

  A few patrons peer over their coffee mugs. Avoiding eye contact, I make my way to an empty stool at the counter. I wipe my sweating palms on my blue jeans, smooth worsted wool over my torso, and then fold each of my crisp, white cuffs. I doubt anyone will recognize me after so much time. I hope no one does. My beard should help, even if it is close-cropped. I twitch. Oh, cut it out! I have every right to be here.

  I breathe deep and pull out my pocket watch. The hands remain unchanged. Eighteen minutes—eighteen years. Ironic.

  To my right, a grisly old man in overalls—smelling of barnyard—sops egg yolk with a crust of toast. As he raises an eyebrow at me, I turn to my left, toward the slender lady wearing a patchwork vest. She’s writing something on a pad, as distracted as the old guy. I’m blending. I’m fine.

  A burly figure wedges himself between the old farmer and me.

  “Hey, how ya’ doin’? Sorry I’m late,” Oscar says. “I got caught up at the town clerk.”

  I swivel my seat, extending my hand. “Oscar. Thanks again for doing this on such short notice. Any problem with the permit?”

  “Nope.” His gaze travels from my face to my attire and back—he ought to be more concerned with his own fashion statement. “We’re all set for tomorrow, but I’ll give you my home number in case you come to your senses.”

  Come to my senses? I resist the urge to chuckle. At any rate, I won’t have a way to contact him once I arrive at the cottage, but I don’t want to come off as unappreciative, so I accept his offer. He pulls a business card from his wallet and pats a non-existent pocket on his too-tight polo shirt. “Got a pen? Seem to have misplaced mine.”

  “No.” I glance at the woman beside me, at her pencil. “Excuse me—” I hope the tone of my voice conveys my sincere smile. “Mind if I borrow that for just a second?”

  The curvature of short black hair carves into her cheek, obscuring her profile. Her eyes don’t meet mine as she passes the pencil and picks up her coffee mug, bringing it to what I imagine are rosebud lips—the one feature I’ve always been a sucker for.

  “Thanks,” I say, lingering for a moment, hoping for a better look.

  She swivels away and folds her arms, perhaps to give us more room. Or I might have annoyed her. Disappointed that she hasn’t allowed me at least to smile at her, I pass the pencil to Oscar. As he scribbles, I glance at her shoulder and left hand clutching her arm. I can’t help noticing the lack of rings. With a recent ex-fiancée, I’m not in any condition to pursue a romantic interest. It’s simply force of habit. Just the same, she does have pretty hands. Long, slender fingers and nails that aren’t all painted and fake looking like my fiancée’s—that is, ex-fiancée. Just trimmed and natural. Don’t they say you can tell a lot about a person by their hands?

  She lifts the coffee cu
p. Too bad she won’t allow me a glimpse of her lips. Oh, honestly! Why am I even checking her out? I’m no better than a fourteen-year-old.

  Oscar passes me the card and pencil. As the pretty-handed woman shifts toward me, I twitch and bump her arm. Coffee sloshes, as if in slow motion, rolling up and over the side of her mug. From the perfect curl of a wave, droplets break away, tumbling past the buffalo china’s pink floral pattern, and splashing, no, crashing all over her pad. She gasps, her mug thumping to the counter, wobbling just enough to dump any remaining coffee before it comes to rest. I hold my breath as tightly as the pencil.

  “Oh God, I am so sorry.” Heat rises from my neck to my ears as I yank paper napkins from the dispenser. I’m such a moron! Fumbling and blotting coffee from her pad, I sop up enough to reveal a sketch of her mug, and from what I can tell, a pretty good one. I choke, trying to form words, but nothing comes out.

  As she lifts the pad, layers of paper curl in front of her. I catch just enough of her cheek to see crimson as she stares straight ahead.

  “Sorry,” I blurt. “What can I do? How can I fix this?”

  “Fix this?” she shoots back, still focused on her drawing. “Seriously?”

  I have no idea what to say. On a heated impulse, I pull my wallet from my hip pocket and open it wide. “You could buy a new pad—I’ve got a fifty—here, sixty, sixty-five, six, seven, eight, sixty-nine dollars—”

  She plucks the fifty from my hand, slaps the pad on the counter, and scribbles across the bottom.

  “There! You just bought yourself a drawing pad,” she says, then up and whisks her way toward the door. Without looking back, she pushes through the exit.

  In all of twenty seconds, I revert from a thirty-one-year-old man to an awkward kid. I’m sure my eyes have been twitching the whole time. I let out a long, strained breath and shake my head. Serves me right for gawking. Oscar’s chuckle tightens to a wheeze as he pats my back.

  I glance at the notepad. Across the bottom she’s written, Spilled Coffee. Well, there’s a twist to the old cliché—I guess there is no use crying over it.

  Chapter 2

  The state route winds up and around, under shady trees that give way to a clearing, cutting through cow-dotted pastures. With one hand on the steering wheel, I put on my sunshades—a rip-off on old aviator goggles. My tape player blares “Lifetime Piling Up,” one of my favorite Talking Heads tunes.

  This rental Saab grips the pavement as though it knows these roads better than I once did. I like the way it handles, although I do miss my old Chevy conversion van with its customized levers and switches. Maybe I’ll replace “The Transformer” with one of these foreign jobs.

  The farmhouse I’m passing looks familiar, but I’m not sure if it simply typifies so many of the old homesteads on the town outskirts, or if I actually remember it. I slow to the thirty-miles-per-hour speed limit through the center of the old brick and clapboarded village, splitting Elmore Academy’s campus. There are only a few students milling around, now that it’s the end of May. I brake again as several stragglers step into the crosswalk and shuffle past in army boots and dyed hair. Their Grunge and Goth attire—albeit toned down to acceptable prep school protocol—looks a lot different from the preppy students of eighteen years ago. Kids of every generation revel in their originality. I can’t help chuckling at my own pair of Doc Martens that I’ve been wearing since those kids were toddling around in baby booties. Even so, I am the melting pot of unoriginality.

  At the edge of town, I accelerate. Will I recognize where to turn? I could double-check the map, but I’m winging it, hoping to engage my memory—after all, that’s what this journey is about.

  Sure enough, as I round a bend in the road and continue straight for about a mile, I look for—the name returns to me—Switchback Road. I turn left. I’ll soon come across the old country store if it’s still there. I’m taking a chance on that, too, since I need to pick up a few groceries, though only enough for one day.

  In the distance, I spot the yellow and red Shell sign and the gas price: $0.95. As I approach, I steer past the single pump and into the parking space in front of the weatherworn porch. The Garver’s Market sign hanging over the entrance is peeling and faded. Garver’s is the first place we always stopped at on our way to Safe Haven. Funny how the names of summer houses and camps sound so much like mental institutions and cemeteries.

  I shiver. Now the memories start encroaching, wicking their way in. I don’t have to close my eyes to conjure the visual.

  My gaze darted past Mom’s bobbed blond hair and over to Garver’s Market. She steered our station wagon to the gas pump and parked, while Dad’s Falcon pulled up to the storefront ahead of us. Dad always drove the company car up to camp, leaving Mom the Galaxie so he could return to his job, selling junk to housewives. We kids always rode with Mom, even though the Falcon had plenty of space for a passenger. Dad had said there was only room for one kid, and he didn’t want to play favorites. Yeah, right!

  My big sister, Penny, brushed her hair into a ponytail and then daubed pale lip-gloss over her already glossed lips. She glanced back at me and smiled with a spark in her eye—the assurance that no matter what, we were going to have the best summer ever.

  Still behind the wheel, Mom flipped the visor mirror and applied hot pink lipstick as Dad climbed from his driver’s seat and approached her open door. He ran his hand over his buzzed hair that melded into a dark five-o’clock shadow. I shuddered at the thought of “the buzz.” This was the first summer Mom let me grow my hair out—“but not past your ears,” she had said, “or you’ll look like a girl with those pretty dark curls.” Penny always wished she had my mop instead of straight, dirty blond hair. At least we both inherited Mom’s modest nose and not Dad’s beak.

  My little brother, Frankie, kicked his door open, wiping his nose on his sleeve as he sprung from the seat. As disgusting as that was, at least he wasn’t picking boogers again. The kid was a veritable snot factory. Frankie zoomed past the fuel pump where Dad grabbed the gas nozzle, flexing his grip as if anyone but him were admiring his biceps. He glanced from the pump display and back at his muscles, as Mom wiggled her way out of the car.

  “Thirty-three cents! It’s highway robbery!” he said loud enough to draw attention. I cringed.

  “Oh, Frank, just pump the gas,” Mom said as she dug through her purse. She looked like she had been peeled off a page of the Sears catalogue, pressed and color coordinated, from her bright pink headband down to her toenail polish. Her puffed-up hair gave her an inch of height over Dad, not that he was short, but he wasn’t tall, either. If I had to define the word average, I could point to Dad.

  I should have moved quicker, because as I scooted from the back seat, Dora Garver stepped outside and sat on the front porch rocker. Her gap-toothed smile splayed between pudgy cheeks, sinking her eyes deep into half-moon sockets. She was twenty but seemed half that age.

  I followed Penny up the steps. Even though my siblings greeted Dora first, her husky voice singled me out. “Hi, Ben!”

  I forced a smile. “Hi, Dora.”

  “You can call me Isadora.”

  I sighed, wishing I had never started calling her Isadora in the first place. That was when her crush began—I had been trying to be nice after she butchered her hair, cutting her bangs so short they stuck out like pine needles. This morning, it looked as if she had snuck the scissors again.

  She grinned. “I cut my own hair.”

  “You did a good job,” I lied.

  Behind me, Mom’s heels clunked the wood steps as I passed Dora and pushed through the jingling door. It slammed behind me.

  Mom waited until we were inside before pinching my arm. “You be nice to Dora. Just be glad it wasn’t one of you kids that was born with Downs.” As if I needed reminding.

  Mr. Garver glanced over his black-rimmed reading glasses from behind the counter, straightened his back, and offered a half-sad-half-chipper smile. It seemed to me that if Mom w
ere so concerned about the Garvers, she would have been a little more discrete about always bringing up Dora’s disability. At least she saved the gossip about how “the Garvers were both close to fifty when they had Dora” for the privacy of our car or at camp, like we needed reminding for the hundredth time.

  Mr. Garver smoothed his thinning pompadour and rubbed his dimpled chin.

  Mom gave her hair a gentle lift, as if it weren’t already Barbie Doll perfect, and waved. “Hello, Mr. Garver.”

  He nodded, his gaze shifting to the stock room and back to Mom. “Mrs. Hughes—good to see you and your family here for another summer. Just let me know if there’s anything I can help you with.”

  Mom smoothed her blouse and flowery pedal pushers, too tight to have any wrinkles. Why couldn’t my mother dress frumpy like all the other moms?

  While she tried on a wide-brimmed hat at the apparel display—Garver’s sold a bit of everything, from trinkets to ammo to Spam—I moved to the reading rack, cautiously checking for the latest Mad magazine. Did I dare sneak it? Since Mom was distracted, slipping in and out of an assortment of flip-flops, now was my chance. Not that either of my parents cared about my lighter reading any more than they did my H.G. Wells or Jules Verne, but Mom hated Mad’s cartoons with “bosoms bursting out of their clothes on every page.” No, it was too risky, too early in our vacation to screw things up. It wasn’t so much Mom and the mood it might put her in, but she had a way of needling Dad into handling matters.

  Instead of grabbing the Mad magazine, I picked up Popular Mechanics and scanned a few pages. As I put it back, some guy in an Elmore Academy blazer brushed past, shoving me into the display. By the time I turned to scowl at him, he was a blur of forest green, stepping up to the front counter. Jerk. Again distracted, I moved on to the snack aisle. Studying the selection and then grabbing a bag of barbecue potato chips, I headed to the counter, now that Elmore’s ‘elite’ had stepped outside and there was no line.