I skipped the cemetery this time, taking the street route instead, through a quiet residential neighborhood and across a natural footbridge that traversed the narrow part of the river. The wind picked up, rustling the trees, and I shivered, wishing I’d brought a sweater. As I turned down Main Street, the sun disappeared behind a blue-black cloud. There were several more rolling in across the mountains, darkening the sky. It rained all the time in Seattle, but we didn’t get thunderstorms like this.
I was looking over my shoulder at the clouds as I reached for the door handle at River City Beans and gave it a tug. The door didn’t budge.
CLOSED ON MONDAYS read the sign on the window.
So much for trusting yesterday’s advice.
For a second I debated heading back to campus before the storm, but as the sky lit up with lightning, I decided against it. Paradiso was just two blocks down, and I could tell from here that its lights were on. I’d wait it out there.
As I pushed open the door, I saw North working the espresso machine. At the jingle of the bell, he looked up. My eyes fell to my feet, feeling silly for being there, for coming alone.
“Hey,” North called. “Couldn’t stay away?” When I lifted my gaze to meet his, he smiled. His whole face changed when he did. His eyes were dancing a little, and there was no trace of yesterday’s smirkiness.
“Something like that,” I replied, as thunder rumbled behind me. I shivered and stepped further inside.
“Vanilla cappuccino?” North teased, already reaching for the canister of matcha. He had an earbud in his ear, connected by a wire to a white matchbook-size device clipped to the belt loop of his jeans. I’d seen pictures of old MP3 players and guessed that’s what it was.
“What’re you listening to?” I asked.
“Cardamon’s Couch,” replied North over the hiss of the steamer. “They’re a local band. He slipped the bud out of his ear and held it out for me. I had to lean over the counter a little to get it up to my ear. “My friend Nick is on mandolin. His brother’s the steel guitar.”
It took me a second to orient myself in the song, which had an unusual chord structure and a jarringly despondent tone. But then it all came together, all at once: the soulful lyrics, the haunting melody, the guttural steel guitar, and the feverish mandolin. There were other sounds too, sounds I couldn’t place, eerie rumbles and clangs and whines. I put my palm over the earbud and closed my eyes, letting the music drown everything else out. When the chorus ended, I handed the earbud back to North.
“They’re awesome,” I said, pulling out my handheld and typing in the name. “You said Cardamon’s Couch, right? I want to put them on my playlist.”
The band’s artist profile page popped up on my screen. They had no user rankings and a sales ranking in the seven digits. “Oh,” I said, jumping to the obvious explanation for their obscurity. “They’re new.”
North shook his head. “Nope. Third album.”
I scrolled down and saw that he was right. Their first was released four years before. “I don’t get it,” I said, puzzled. “Why is nobody listening to them? They’re different, but they’re not that different. And a lot closer to the stuff I like than most of what Lux recommends.”
“Lux doesn’t care what you like,” North pointed out. “Lux cares about what you’ll buy.”
“But aren’t those the same thing?”
“Hardly. You buy stuff you don’t like all the time. You just don’t realize it because you’re too busy telling yourself you love it to justify the fact that you bought it. Hey, can you snap?”
I’d been bracing for another lesson on the perils of app-assisted living, so the question threw me. “What?”
“Can you snap?” he repeated. “Your fingers.” He snapped his.
“Can’t everybody snap?” I asked him.
“You’d be surprised,” he replied, pouring soy milk into a metal beaker. He nodded at my hand. “Let me hear yours.”
“Is there a point to this?”
“Yes,” he replied. “Now, snap.”
I snapped. He grinned. “Now that,” he said, “is an excellent snap.” He flicked on the steamer.
“And why, exactly, are you so interested in my snapping skills?” I asked as I touched my handheld to the register’s scanner to pay for my drink. It didn’t beep, so I tried again, waving my Gemini a little in front of the sensor. Still no beep.
“It’s on me,” North said over the hiss of the steamer. “Well, as long as you take it to go.”
“You’re bribing me to leave?”
He flicked a switch and the hissing stopped. “Nope. I’m bribing you to come with me.”
My stomach fluttered just a little. “Come with you where?”
He glanced past me out the cafe’s bay window. A girl with a shaved head and a Paradiso T-shirt was quickly turning the hand crank to close it as lightning flickered menacingly on the other side. “You’ll see,” North said mysteriously, pouring milk into a paper cup with circular precision. With a few flicks of his wrist, he drew a perfect leaf in the foam. My eyes slid up his forearm to the words tattooed there. Only one line was legible at this angle. Who is the third who walks always beside you? There was no attribution, nothing to indicate whether it was something he had written or a line he’d taken from somewhere else.
“It’s T. S. Eliot,” North said. My head jerked up.
“I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s tattooed on my forearm,” North said, handing me my drink. “It’s meant to be read. But not right now, because we have to go.” He snapped a lid onto my cup.
“It’s about to start raining,” I pointed out.
“So we should hurry,” he said, giving his apron strings a tug. The girl who’d just been at the window had joined him behind the counter. North handed her his apron.
“You better hustle,” she told him. “It’s already raining on the mountain.”
“Just in time.” His eyes were bright with excitement. “Wait here,” he instructed me. “I’ll be right back.” Without pausing for my reply, he ducked into the kitchen.
“How do you know North?” the girl asked when he was gone.
“I don’t,” I said. “Uh, do you know where he’s going?”
“Do you have the key to the bottom cabinet?” North had reemerged with a backpack on one shoulder and a hoodie over his arm. The girl nodded, then slipped a key off her key ring and tossed it to him. He caught it easily. “Hand me your bag,” he told me.
I shook my head. “I can’t. I have homework to do.”
“We’ll be gone less than an hour,” North said, lifting my bag off my shoulder. “Your stuff will be fine.” I glanced at my Gemini, peeking out from my bag’s side pocket. “Unless, of course, you can’t go without your leash . . .” He looked at me, eyebrows raised, baiting me. I opened my mouth to tell him that I wasn’t going wherever he wanted to take me and I didn’t care if that made me lame. But he cut me off.
“I’m meeting the guys from Cardamon’s Couch to record some music,” he explained in a low voice. “And we need someone who can snap. Another friend of ours was supposed to do it, but she got called into work. We were gonna just do it without, but then you came in, and you’re such a stellar snapper. . . .” Outside, there was a loud crack of thunder. He looked past me, out the window. “Look, no big deal if you don’t want to come,” he said, sliding his arm through the other strap of his backpack. “I get that you barely know me. But I’ve got to get going, so . . .” He wasn’t going to try to convince me.