Emily St. John Mandel - The Lola Quartet

"Daniel?"

"That's the one. He came in last night after you left, and he was lingering, drinking coffee and reading the paper. Told me he couldn't sleep. Anyway, he goes out back to see what Freddy's talking about, makes everyone stay inside so they don't contaminate the crime scene, next thing you know there's cops everywhere."

"Do they know who it was?"

"I heard a few of them talking. They said it was some criminal from Utah, some guy with a drug record."

"From Utah? Are you sure?"

"You look pale, sweetheart."

"I didn't sleep well." A new group was coming in, four men in hospital scrubs from St. Mary Star of the Sea Hospital, and Sasha crossed the room unsteadily to greet them. She gave them menus and a forced smile, took orders for drinks and moved on autopilot through the motions of her exhausting profession. There were moments that night when disaster seemed so certain that she found herself paralyzed, concentrating on breathing because breathing was all that was left, but sometimes she was above this kind of panic and floated through the hours in a state of suspended hope. The smooth surfaces of the tickets in her apron pocket every time she reached for change.

"You okay, doll?" Bianca was watching her.

"Fine," she said.

"You don't look it, hon." Bianca's voice would be Anna's voice in a few decades, the low rasp that follows a lifetime of cigarettes, and it reminded Sasha of her stepmother's voice, silent now, rest in peace, her father alone. Her hand hovered in the air for just a second and then she punched in the hamburger, the fries, the macaroni and cheese, the Diet Coke and 7-Up, and on the other side of the thin adjoining wall to the kitchen an efficient small machine spit out a receipt with the order and Freddy tacked it up on the counter, the machinery of the restaurant moving into motion and Sasha at the middle of it. She was if nothing else an excellent waitress.

"That's not nothing," Anna had said a few months ago, "and surely there's more than that." There was. This evening Sasha looked out over her tables of customers and tried to remember all the things that were transcendent. Swimming, clean passage up and down the lanes. Chloe, a delight, an elf in the school Christmas play, sitting cross-legged on the sofa reading magazines, doing backflips and cartwheels in the backyard, careening down the street on a secondhand bicycle. A bell from the kitchen: an order was ready. Sasha carried the tray of food out into the dining room.

At e l e v e n o'clock Sasha went outside to make a phone call. She usually went out back but that was impossible now that the space behind the diner was a crime scene, so she left through the front door and stood by the restaurant's neon sign, its bluish light flickering over the gardenia bushes. She counted thirty-eight flowers while she waited for Anna to pick up.

"Anna," Sasha said. She'd been so breathless since Bianca had told her, since she'd seen the police tape. "Am I calling too late?"

"You sound strange." Anna's voice was muffled and sleepy.

"Anna, they found a body behind the restaurant. They said—" and there were tears now, humiliating but at least Anna couldn't see her and she struggled to steady her voice—"Bianca, my coworker, she said a cop told her it was some drifter from Utah."

"From Utah?" Anna spoke a beat too late. She sounded fully awake now. " Really?"

"Anna," she said, but it wasn't possible to ask the question. "Anna. "

"What are you asking me?" An edge in Anna's voice that Sasha had heard only once before, a decade ago, when Anna had called her from Utah months after Sasha had seen her last, before Sasha had even realized she'd left town— I'm going to have a baby and I'm not sure if it's Gavin's or Daniel's, do you think I'm awful Sasha? I've run away and I couldn't tell Gavin and please don't tell him either, I'm so scared— and Sasha had done her best to soothe her over the staticky connection, Shh, of course you're not awful, everything's going to be fine, Anna, we'll work it out, and after she'd hung up she'd gone to buy baby clothes at the mall in a gesture of what? Acceptance? Love? Guilt, because her sister had been gone for three months and Sasha had been too caught up in the theatrics of her own life that summer to really notice. She reminded herself that they'd been living in different houses, each with their respective fathers, but still; it was shocking, actually, how easy it had been for Anna to leave town undetected, and Sasha always knew afterward that she should have been paying more attention.

"Are you still there?" Anna asked.

"I'm here."

"Then what are you asking me?"

Sasha found herself at a loss for words. What am I asking you? I'm asking you if I was complicit in something unspeakable, because Anna, Anna, I already carry so much. The tears hot on her face.

"That's a good question," she said. "I don't know, Anna. I don't know what I'm asking you." She disconnected and when she went back inside she put her phone in her handbag in the staff room, where she wouldn't be able to hear it ring. For just a moment she felt unreachable and protected, but of course everyone who knew her also knew where she worked.

.

Da n i e l w a s there at two in the morning, slump-shouldered and harrowed in the corner of a booth. Sasha poured two cups of coffee, milk and sugar for him, black for her. She set the coffee in front of him. He was changed, smudges of exhaustion under his eyes, a tightness around his mouth that she hadn't seen before.

"Hell of a thing," he said after a few minutes of silence, and it was so inadequate that she laughed out loud. She felt a little giddy. He gave her a look that she recognized from gambling. It was a look she'd seen across poker tables on the faces of men and women who'd been dealt poor hands and hadn't decided whether to bluff or not. Daniel was sizing her up, but he was also afraid. They had, she realized, something in common at that moment: neither of them knew what she was going to do.

"Sasha," he began, but stopped.

"Yes?"

"Sasha, I spoke with Anna earlier. She said you were a little. she said you seemed. " He had run out of words again. He looked at her helplessly for a moment and then turned his focus to pouring a third packet of sugar into his coffee and stirring it for longer than necessary.

"How's your investigation going, Daniel?"

"Investigation?" He looked up as if startled.

"The body behind the diner last night. The drifter from Utah."

"Well, it's not my investigation, but in my understanding there's no weapon, no suspect, and no motive."

"Not much of an investigation, then, is it?"

"Sasha," he said.

"Where's Liam?"

"Gone."

" Gone gone?"

"Jesus, Sasha, he just left town. People do that sometimes. He said he was leaving for Europe."

"Daniel," she said, "you told me not to worry about where the money came from."

"What?" That miserable fugitive look. It wasn't just exhaustion. He looked eaten alive.

"When you came back from Utah," she said. "All those weeks ago. You told me you'd talked to the dealer, arranged repayment of the money Anna took. I asked where the money was coming from, and you said you'd recently come into an inheritance. Do you remember telling me that?"

"I remember." He wouldn't meet her eyes. "A man like that has a lot of enemies," he said. " Would you believe me if I said I see this all the time?"

"Yes," she said. "People who think they're getting a payment and get shot instead, because there was never any money at all. Why did I believe you when you said there was money? I wanted so much to believe that this could actually be over, but—"

"Sasha, think about what you're saying."

"What am I supposed to say?"

" Think about how the things you say might affect other people," he said. " Think about your niece."