Claire gets the job, for one very simple reason:
Joshua begs shamelessly, like a child imploring Mom and Dad to pull into the driveway with the Free Puppies sign out front. Frank Gallo, proprietor of The Chocolate Chipped Mug, is understandably reluctant.
"You expect me to hire this girl just because you like her?" asks the older, rather more portly cousin in a highly skeptical tone.
"I don't like her—she's a friend," insists Joshua. "And why not? You've got an opening. Didn't Cindy go to California with that spec script she's always talking about?"
"Never mind. If you didn't have a thing for this Claire, we wouldn't be having this conversation. Since when do I send you out recruiting baristas for me, huh?"
"Look . . ." Joshua sighs, defeated, puffing his bangs back from his forehead. "Okay, I like her. And she just broke up with her boyfriend, and she needs this, Frank—"
"So you're gonna rush in and sweep her off her dainty little tootsies," the other man sums up, nodding. "Got it. You know what your problem is, Josh? You like everybody."
"So what's wrong with that?"
"What's wrong is I don't know anything about this girl. Is she a felon?" He shrugs exaggeratedly. "I don't know."
"Jeez, Frank, she's like nineteen!"
"She's like nineteen?" Frank repeats, quirking a bushy brow. "Just how the hell old is this girl, Josh?"
Joshua shrugs, uncomfortable.
"I don't . . . I mean, I didn't ask, so . . ."
Frank sighs harshly.
"Jailbait, to boot! That the kind of tail you're chasing these days, Joshie boy?"
"Don't talk about her like that," he reprimands curtly. Frank finds it telling that Joshua immediately defends the woman, rather than himself.
"Shit, she's not even here." He pulls out a rag and begins wiping down the counter. Tidiness, orderliness, is important to Frank.
"That doesn't—"
"Besides, it's the truth, and you know it. Fine, hell, you know what? Bring her in. I'll interview her. Can't hurt. Then, when you've got her good and rescued—that is, when you've got in her pants—"
"Hey."
"I'll fire her to make room for the next teary-eyed damsel you run across. You have a history, Josh. The minute—"
"That's not—"
"The minute she doesn't need saving anymore, you're gonna get bored and start hunting around for your next mission, and I'll be good and goddamned if it isn't wearing a skirt. It's all you do, ever since Kay-"
"Stop it!"
An odd thing happens when he speaks. The little paper doilies stacked near the cash register lift as if on a high wind, fluttering madly about Frank. Startled, swats at them with his rag.
Then it's over, the doilies settling to the floor like confetti at a New Year's party for giants.
There's a long, perplexingly strange moment of silence, and neither of them knows why he isn't speaking, only that something bizarre is going on, an energy building in the air like humidity on the hottest of summer days.
Joshua feels the energy pop, and god, it's an unsettling sensation. Like having a balloon explode directly before him with an unnatural lack of noise.
No . . . no, it's more like being the balloon. Or the rapidly released air inside of it.
Yes, he seems to rush outside himself in all directions, then come back together in a dizzying rush. Exhaling sharply, he blinks, taking in the state of the room with wide-eyed shock.
"Frank . . . where did all the cups go?"
"Huh?" Frank seems dazed, then turns to look behind him. The ceramic cups and mugs that hang so neatly along the wall behind the counter are conspicuously absent.
"What the hell . . ?" He drops the cloth he's holding. "What—what happened? I thought—weren't they just here?"
Joshua runs his palms over his own body, as if to ascertain his own solidity.
"I think . . ." he begins.
"Shit, Sean knows where the cups go!" Frank rants half-heartedly. "It's that art school—kid's got his head so far up his own—"
"It wasn't Sean," Joshua says quietly. "It was me."
"Huh?"
"They were here, and then they just . . . weren't. I think it was me."
Joshua's cousin stares at him as if he's gone mad. Which is a definite possibility.
"What, you think you vanished my cups? Like Houdini or something?"
"I think so." He nods. "Yes."
The two men simply look at each other. Frank purses his lips and seems to be considering calling up the men in white coats.
"O-kay!" Frank says at last, walking around the counter and putting his arm around Joshua's back. He turns him around and gives him a light shove toward the door. "You go home, Joshie boy, and sleep off whatever it is you've snorted, drunk, or injected. Then you can bring what's-her-face in for an interview. All goes well, she can start Monday. Sound good?"
"Sounds good, Frank." The younger man still seems vaguely overcome, and Frank shakes his head. Wonders if he ought to give Joshua's mother a ring and let her know her son seems to be forming a few cracks . . . or reforming, he should say. But he decides against it. Mrs. Gallo has enough worries, and Joshua is her angel. She does her best to overlook his fallacies.
Joshua halts at the door.
"I wish you wouldn't mention her, Frank," he says, back to his cousin. "I could go the rest of my life without being reminded of her. Anyway . . . not everything is about Kay."
He goes home, as Frank suggested. He stares at his own hands, mesmerized, trying to summon that energy again. He never felt anything like it.
The cups. They just went away.
Inexplicably, he feels his signature lopsided smile start to form on his face.
What if I'd made Frank go away? What happens then?
The smile dies, and he drops his hands to his lap. This is dangerous. Whatever this is . . . he doesn't want it.
Yeah, I do.
No. No, he doesn't.
I could use it to help. I could vanish all the evil in the world. The bad people. It's what she wanted me to do.
I could be a hero. Hers.
Whose? Kay's? Claire's?
Claire. He needs to call her.
I could save somebody. Or destroy somebody.
He reaches for the telephone, and the notepad where he's scribbled the number of Claire's latest hotel room.
Sometimes, Joshua believes, it's the same thing.