Клео Коул - On What Grounds

“Joy.”

“Yes.”

“Then what did she say?”

“Then she said, ‘Thanks, that helps a lot,’ and that was it.”

“That’s a pretty big deal, Matt.”

“I don’t see why.”

“It sounds like she was trying to figure out whether to get pregnant to get her boyfriend to marry her, that’s why.”

“So what if she was. That’s none of the detective’s business.”

“It is if her boyfriend is the one who pushed her down our stairs.”

“You see, that’s why I didn’t say anything to those cuff-crazed cops. One remark in a passing conversation and they’d have me incriminating some poor innocent kid.”

“But, Matt, what if he isn’t so innocent? Have you ever met him?”

“No.”

“Neither have I, but I really wish you’d said something to the lieutenant. Clearly Quinn thought you were holding something back. Officer Langley did, too.”

“Let them! I don’t like either one of them.”

“So I noticed. Why not? Other than the handcuff thing. Remember, I thought you were an intruder, and they were trying to protect me at the time.”

“They’re probably dirty cops.”

“That’s ridiculous!”

“You think so? Mark my words they’ll never mention that vial of white powder again. Quinn or Langley will probably pass it around at some cop bar tonight. That or they’ll barter it on the street to some skell junkie for information to make themselves look good at the precinct. Only the joke will be on them because you can’t get a cocaine high from sniffing caffeine. ”

“Matt, you’ve been spending too much time in banana republics. Those guys are good cops. Lieutenant Quinn especially—”

“Quinn I especially don’t like.”

“Why, for heaven’s sake?”

“For one thing, I don’t like the way he looks at you.”

“And how is that?”

“Like he’s interested.”

“Really?…He does?”

Matt stared at me. “My God, Clare, you’re interested, too.”

“Of course not!” I said, “Don’t be stupid. He’s married.”

“So?”

“What do you mean so ! Do you honestly think I’d get involved with someone who’s married? Well, I’m not you, Matt. Get that straight. And you know what? My interest in any man is not your business. Not anymore. You think you can just waltz in here and—and—”

I ran out of gas. It had been a long morning. I turned away, walked to the window, and crossed my arms. The rain that had been threatening all morning had finally begun to fall.

Matt didn’t move for a few moments, then he finally let out a disgusted grunt and headed for the stairs. “Guess it’s time for me to finish getting dressed, before I get any more of a chill.”

Five seconds later I heard a sharp thump, and I knew on the way up the steps, he’d sent his fist into a wall.

In 1849, four Sisters of Charity founded St. Vincent’s as a thirty-bed hospital for the poor in a small brick house on Thirteenth Street.

Today St. Vincent’s has 758 beds, and the only trauma center below Fourteenth Street in Manhattan. It’s also a teaching hospital—something I have firsthand experience with because its medical residents are outstanding customers.

I figured at least one of the red-eyed young residents who regularly stumbled into the Blend for double-tall lattes, triple espressos, and grande Italian roasts during their periodic thirty-hour on-call shifts would be able to tell me about Anabelle’s condition. So, as soon as the Crime Scene Unit left the shop and Tucker arrived to help Matteo open the coffee bar again, I grabbed an umbrella and trudged up Seventh Avenue South, through the pouring rain.

When I neared the hospital’s entrance, I paused at one of the building’s walls. Cold rain streaked the dark gray stone, trickling like tears down its smooth blank face. Just a few years ago, this gray wall wasn’t so blank.

I could still see the hundreds of photos—the faces, the names, the desperate messages scrawled beneath: “Have you seen…?” “Please, please call…” “Looking for my…wife, husband, son, daughter, brother, sister, lover, friend…”

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I had been in New Jersey, watching the breaking news on television like most of the country, but I still remember how hard it was to contemplate the details: the cut throats of stewardesses, the terror of passengers as commercial jets were turned into guided missiles, the horrible deaths of the Trade Center workers—people from all nations, all beliefs, all income levels, people who’d simply arrived early to get the job done—office workers, restaurant staffs, banking executives, security guards, and maintenance men.

Many of those killed had lived in this Village neighborhood. They had woken that morning unsuspecting, unaware it would be the last morning of their lives, the last opportunity to feel a new day’s sunshine, smell and sip a cup of freshly brewed coffee.

People forget as years go by, but this city will never forget. The terror, the tragedy, or the courage…

The firemen running up as others ran out. The businessman who wouldn’t leave his friend stranded alone in a wheelchair. Two figures in a window, high above the street, a man and a woman with locked hands, jumping together, like so many others before and after them who decided a falling fate was better than burning up alive amid the toxic cloud of melting office furniture and hundreds of gallons of jet fuel.

When the reality hit that morning and most of the city felt paralyzed, Madame Dreyfus Allegro Dubois descended from her Fifth Avenue penthouse, just a few blocks from this spot, and marched straight to the Blend, instructing the staff to brew coffee nonstop around the clock—and deliver a fresh thermos every two hours to every nurses’ station at St. Vincent’s. The Village hospital had treated over 1,400 patients, including some of the most severe trauma cases.

“At such times, you do what you can do,” Madame had said to me. “And we can do coffee, so that’s what we will do.”

And we did. Joy and I dropped everything to help. In the weeks that followed, we even helped Madame transport urns down the West Side Highway, to Ground Zero, the smoldering site of the collapsed World Trade Center, where firemen, iron workers, and hundreds of volunteers toiled tirelessly for months to recover remains and clear away the tons of smoking, twisted wreckage near the tip of Manhattan island.

Nothing would end the heartbreak of that fall and winter, certainly nothing as trivial as a cup of coffee. Yet every time Joy, or Madame, or I placed a hot paper cup into the hands of an exhausted volunteer, I understood why Madame wanted to take urn after urn down there.

What cheered and warmed these weary people for a few minutes wasn’t the liquid extraction of a handful of beans, but the idea that someone had made it for them. Someone had cared. Someone had loved—an essential reminder for anyone who must daily face the gray, twisted evidence of someone else’s hate.

“The coffee almanac said it best,” Madame liked to remind us at the end of those long days. And then she’d quote words written at the beginning of the last century:

“Coffee makes a sad man cheerful, a languorous man active, a cold man warm, a warm man glowing. It awakens mental powers thought to be dead, and when left in a sick room, it fills the room with a fragrance…. The very smell of coffee terrorizes death.”

To Madame, a cup of morning coffee was more than a pick-me-up, it was fortification against whatever the world was about to throw at you, be it the best or the worst.