Simona Taylor - Dear Rita

“As usual. No rest for the wicked.” Beatrix laughed. “We’ve got a whole week of signings in the southwest. Three or four radio programs, couple of TV spots. Most of them cable,” she added dismissively. “But we are looking forward to being back in Vegas again. You know how much your father loves the cabaret. He finds it…inspiring.”

Ick, Rita thought. Here it comes….

“Last time we hit the clubs, your father ordered champagne and strawberries up to our suite the minute we got back. I don’t have to tell you, most of the champagne wound up in the hot tub—”

“Mom!” Rita pleaded. Beatrix relished regaling strangers with stories about her erotic adventures with her husband, but it wasn’t the kind of thing a daughter needed to hear about her father. Why couldn’t she just have a mother who played mahjongg and a father who liked golf?

“All right,” Bea gave in. “Have it your way. Wouldn’t want to traumatize you. But that offer still stands, okay?”

“Okay, Bea. Thank you. I will,” Rita promised, scanning the sky for flying pigs. “But I really have to go. I’ve got a deadline.”

“Say no more, I read you loud and clear. I’m hanging up, okay? But I’m aching to set eyes on you. Don’t forget we live in the same town, all right?”

Rita smiled. “All right. I’ll see you soon. Maybe over the weekend.”

“Looking forward to it. Love you, baby.” And before Rita could return her mother’s air kisses, the line went dead.

The conversation left her feeling as though she’d done two rounds in the ring with Tyson. Rita slumped forward, resting her forehead on the cool tabletop, and took several deep breaths. Ah, parents. Couldn’t live with ’em….

But there was work to be done. She went back to her e-mails. Junk…more junk…and then the next few messages in her In-box made Rita pause and frown. There were five e-mails, all coming from the same address, all sent within the space of three minutes, sometime yesterday. The first thing that came to her mind was that they were more of the much loathed spam, but something stopped her before she could wipe them off her screen. The subject lines of all the messages were identical: Dear, dear, dear Rita. That was puzzling. Spammers didn’t yet have the ability to identify each of their targets individually. That technology just did not exist…did it?

Cautiously, she opened the first message.

Dear Rita,

Bet you think you’re real smart.

A.F.

Rita pursed her lips. A lot of her mail came from readers, rather than people with questions. Fan mail. Some were complimentary, even fawning. Some were from men wanting to date her. A lot of it came from men in prison—all wrongfully convicted, of course—who swore they had nothing but love and respect for their “strong Nubian sister.”

But not all of it was that good. Frustrated individuals, readers offended by a column or bored Web surfers looking to start a flame war—she’d had to deal with them all.

She moved to delete the other four, assuming they’d be more of same, but stopped in mid-action, morbidly curious to see what else this person had to say. She opened up another. I bet you think you’re all that.

Someone needed to lighten up. Resisting the other three e-mails was impossible; she opened them all up at the same time. Don’t you? read the third, and the fourth, in bold caps, DON’T YOU???

Unease replaced amusement. She opened the final message with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension. It was cryptic—and a little too threatening for comfort.

Are you afraid of heights?

A.F.

Rita felt her skin crawl. If this was a joke, it wasn’t funny. She took another look at the e-mail address, but it was simply A.F., the same as the writer’s signoff, coming from one of those generic mail hosting Web sites that everyone used when they preferred to keep their regular one private. She had one herself. That wasn’t much help.

She hit the Delete key a little harder than necessary, sending the offending messages into the ether, and leaned back in her chair. This called for another chug of coffee. She lifted her cup, but it was empty. She left her possessions where they were. After all, she’d been a regular here for years. It wasn’t as if she thought anyone would touch her stuff for the few seconds it took to go to the counter and back. She ordered another coffee, keeping it simple this time. Plain, with the tiniest squirt of hazelnut in deference to the aforementioned, lamentable eight extra pounds. She went back to her table, sat and downed half the steaming cup before returning her attention to the glowing screen before her.

A new e-mail had come in.

It was from A.F.

Even the coffee wasn’t enough to keep the chill out of her blood. She opened it at once, and stared at the unblinking words before her. How’s the coffee?

R ita felt the hair at the back of her neck snap to attention. She put her hands to the base of her skull, tugging at the long, dark brown double-stranded twists that fell about her shoulders. How’s the coffee? How could this man, whoever he was, know where she was, and what she was drinking? The possibilities nauseated her. Either someone knew her habits so well that he could make an educated guess as to her whereabouts at seven every morning, or she was being watched. Right at this very moment.

Wildly, she looked around, unable to keep the movement casual and circumspect. Had she been followed? Could someone be right there, in Starbucks, quietly watching her? She glanced from table to table, her heart feeling uncomfortably large in her chest.

But all she could see were the regulars, caffeine addicts just like her who turned up every morning, just as she did, to sit in companionable, familiar surroundings while they had their morning fix. Rita knew them so well, she even had names for them.

Across from her, there was the tall, agonizingly thin man who wore business suits and smelled of expensive cologne. Every day he carefully withdrew the financial section of the papers to read over his coffee, then left as silently as he came, abandoning the rest of the paper in a neat heap for whoever occupied his seat next. She privately called him William Wadsworth, Senior.

Closest to her was an older man, who wore a cable-knit cardigan and tweed jacket whatever the weather, and who took plain coffee and a cheese sandwich every morning. No variations. No substitutions. He arrived at the same time, had his breakfast and left at the same time. Sometimes he timidly invited her or one of the other regulars to sit at his table, but whenever she accepted he never said much, just had his coffee and threw her the occasional shy smile. He always left a fifty-cent tip on the table. Rita felt sorry for him. She thought of him as Uncle Harold.

Then there was the strange Goth girl who, like her, always took the same seat if she could get it, near the window. She was about eighteen, although it was hard to tell under the mass of black, greasy hair that fell over her face. Her skin was the color of oatmeal, and the thick, smudged kohl rimming her eyes made her look as though she was losing out on a lot of sleep. She wore the same black hoodie, dark gray jeans, black socks and black high-top Converse sneakers every day. The only hint of color about her was the dozen or so plastic bracelets on one arm, and an oversized silver pendant, representing some arcane symbol, between her small breasts.

She was hunched over her PDA, thumbs flying as she moved the controls to her game, head bobbing to the rhythm of the music being piped into her ears via noodle-thin wires. Rita had decided that her name was Drucilla.

A few joggers were buying drinks at the counter, and a young couple she hadn’t seen before were wrapped up in each other, sharing a chair made for one. Otherwise, the coffee shop was quiet.