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Marie-Jeanne rubs her eyes as she stumbles down the stairs to the Café, fumbling with her badge to unlock the door. It drops to the floor and she curses, groaning as she bends down to pick it up.
She's going to need so much coffee to get through the day – the neighbours' baby cried all night, again, and she slept like shit, again. She's not supposed to use the Café's supplies for herself, but the last of her chicory finally ran out for good, and she hasn't had the energy to get food supplies this week.
It's not like anyone will know. George's name is still listed on the licence display, even though he's been in jail for weeks, which means the management company hasn't gotten around to hiring anyone yet. And the last camera broke down weeks ago, probably with a little help from Johnny and his new friends.
She finally gets the door unlocked and steps in, pressing all the light switches as she goes. The neons buzz alight one after the other, blinding her a little after the darkness of the street.
She sets her keys down behind the bar and switches the machines on, surveying the room as she does – everything is in order, just like it was when she locked up last night.
When she walks through the storeroom to drop her jacket in the office, though, something trips her up.
“The hell?”
It takes a second for her to figure out what she’s looking at: that dumb purple jacket that Johnny has fallen in love with, in a heap on the floor.
“Johnny?” she calls. “Are you there?”
She lets him sleep here every once in a while, when he shows up sheepish and bedraggled around closing time, wielding those big brown eyes like a weapon. But he didn’t, last night. She’s not tired enough to forget something like that. And the jacket definitely wasn’t there when she left.
There’s been no answer. Her heart rate picks up.
Johnny loves that thing, for some unfathomable reason. She hasn’t seen him without it ever since he – acquired it. He wouldn’t just throw it on the ground like that, not unless something bad was happening.
There doesn’t seem to be any blood on the jacket, though, and there is no sign of a struggle in the room, nothing out of place, which helps her breathe a little easier again. But there’s no sign of Johnny either.
“Johnny?”
The office door is locked from the inside, even though she knows she didn’t bother badging it shut before she left.
Fucking hell, Johnny. She can feel her faith in humanity crack yet a little more. They’ve agreed the office is off-limits, but it was probably pretty naive of her, believing he would behave if she left him alone at the Café.
At least she's sure he can't be trying to rob her. He knows there’s no money in there – not since the last time the Café was burglarized and someone sawed through the metal bars on the office window and just took off with the little safe. Another thing the company has been dragging its feet about for months; that’s probably how Johnny got in, come to think of it.
But there’s no way Johnny is just in there sleeping – there’s no bed in the office, just a desk and a chair and a few cabinets; he sleeps on the bench of the back booth in the front room, always says it’s the most comfortable spot.
That means he’s doing something else that requires a locked door; something he doesn’t want her to know about.
And what was her only other condition? No hard drugs. Fuck!
“Johnny! Open the door!”
Deep down, she’s always known it was a matter of time. Every time he asks to stay, Johnny swears that he won’t do anything stupid, that he wouldn’t put her or her job in danger – not that she’d care too much about that at this point. And she believes that he means it, but trouble just seems to follow him around.
He’s still not answering. Please, she thinks, pleading to no one, please let him not be dead in there. She can’t deal with the police, she hasn’t even had coffee yet.
Finally, there’s a noise behind the door, a muffled thump and then some rustling.
Oh thank fuck. The guy’s an asshole but at least he’s still alive.
“Johnny! I can hear you, dickhead!” she says, her voice wobbly. “Come on, open up!!”
More noise, like something clattering to the floor. The door remains shut. She lets her forehead thump too hard against it. Fucking ow.
“Fine! I’m going to go get my badge, and I swear you better not be OD’ing in there or I’m going to kill you.”
She rushes back to the front room, dropping his jacket behind the bar, and then races back to the storeroom – and jumps out of her skin when she sees someone standing in the open doorway of the office.
Even though he’s backlit by the artificial sunrise coming through the window, it’s clear that the figure is Johnny Rockfort. She gasps and flails uselessly for a second anyway, clutching at her chest.
“Hey,” Johnny says, seemingly unbothered that he’s just taken years of her life away.
“Fuck!” she yells. “You fucker! Are you okay? What the fuck??”
“Sorry,” he shrugs. He seems well, in one piece, and not like he just shot up – probably. She’s not that familiar with the hard stuff, but she's seen some of her patrons in pretty rough states; she thinks she could probably tell.
She glances around him, sneaking a look into the office, while she waits for him to explain further. Everything seems in order. The desk might have been moved but she's not sure, and some papers have fallen to the floor, but that seems like the only disturbance.
Johnny doesn’t say anything.
“Well?” she presses. “What the hell were you doing in there? How did you even get in??”
Now that she’s getting a good look at him next to the window, she can tell he’s too broad to fit through the narrow opening without at least messing up his clothes a little.
He’s glancing back at it, too, so she says, pre-emptively: “You don’t fit, don’t even try me. And it’s not even broken.”
He runs a hand through his hair, clearly thinking hard.
“Just tell me the truth, man. Come on.”
“Ugh, okay, I have a copy of your door badge.”
Well, that’s not what she expected to hear. “What?”
“They’re real easy to make if you know the right people, by the way. Not safe at all! Is that what you have on your door at home? Because if yes…”
She’s still reeling, incredulous, and he seems to run out of steam.
“Look, I’m sorry, MJ. I just – You’ve done a lot for me already, and I didn’t want to ask too much.”
He’s chewing on his lips a little, actually looking nervous now, for the first time in this whole surreal conversation. She can’t help but soften; it reminds her of the way he looked when she first found him – literally – curled up on the doorstep of the Café. It’s been a couple years since then, but she’s always been able to see through him: she knows that deep down he’s still the same lost kid, terrified of being alone but trying to act tough. He’s just gotten a little more convincing, if you don’t know him.
“So what,” she says, trying not to let him off the hook too easily, “you didn’t want to impose so you thought you’d steal my badge and break in instead? The owners keep a log, you idiot!”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. How often do you actually sleep here, then?”
There’s a beat, and he shuffles his feet a little, embarrassed.
“Um. Most nights?”
Oh, Johnny.
He continues, looking worried: “Are you going to be in trouble?”
She won’t be, she doesn’t think. It’s not like anyone seems to actually be monitoring the Café; she’s been out of VitC for months and no one’s even opened the request form.
Part of her wants to let him stew a little, as revenge for making her worry. But she also doesn’t want to kick him when he’s already embarrassed, and she’s a little ashamed that he didn’t feel like he could ask her for the help he needs, and above all she is exhausted now that the adrenaline has left her, ready for bed even though the day is just starting. Oh, hell.
“Well, you’re in luck, nobody cares about this place. They might not even notice.”
She sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose, willing away the headache that is threatening to form.
“Just – don’t do that again, okay? If there’s something I should know, just tell me. Don’t lie to me.”
He nods a few times, chewing on his lips some more, like there might be something else. Finally he just steps forward and she’s being hugged.
“Okay, alright, get off me,” she grumbles half-heartedly. “You’re crushing me and you smell like death. What were you doing in there?”
He laughs a little and doesn’t say anything, but she can’t push because the doorbell starts ringing insistently, and she has to run to the front to let people in. Her regulars are going to be annoyed she’s late and make her life even harder than usual, and the broken sensor on the coffee machine means it’s probably overflowing by now.
Great! Perfect! What a wonderful day this is going to be.
*
Johnny hangs around for a bit, slouched across the end of the bar, but she’s so in the weeds for the first hour that there is no way to continue their conversation. She just turns off her brain and goes on autopilot, pouring cup after cup after cup like she’s a human cafeine dispenser.
There’s no time for anything, not sitting down, not drinking the damn coffee she so desperately needs herself, not even stopping for a chat with Ziggy who drops by unusually early, looking bedraggled but smiling like the cat that got the cream. He’s probably fresh out of a club backroom, judging by the stains at his knees and the giant hickey that’s just starting to purple across his throat.
She’s too busy to even feel the usual pang of jealousy, which is a nice change.
He hangs around for a few minutes anyway, wordlessly sipping his cup of orange juice at the bar opposite Johnny, and then makes his exit with a flourish and a loud “see you tonight, darling!” that makes Johnny wince and takes her by surprise. She’s so out of it she even forgot they had plans.
Johnny slinks out soon after while she’s bringing plates of powdered eggs and soysages to the a group of taxi drivers in one of the booths.
Then, finally, the day shift is off to work and the night shift to bed, and things quiet down enough that she can sit for a minute and have that blessed cup of coffee. She’s pretty awake by now, but it still feels nice, comforting and indulgent, even though it’s not the real stuff they drink in the Towers either. It’s still a lot better than chicory.
Ziggy looked particularly good, earlier, she thinks as she blows on the cup. It’s really too bad they didn’t get to talk. He’s been weirdly secretive lately, almost elusive, and it’s setting off her need to know, like an itch under her skin that’s not getting scratched properly. He’s never shied away from the details before, even months ago when they’d just met. Sometimes she thinks it might be weird, that he tells her about his escapades when she doesn’t have anything to contribute to the conversation. But it helps. Everytime he starts expounding in loving detail about stubble and chest hair and dicks and abs, she gets to remembers: it’s not about her. She just can’t give him what he wants; it’s nobody’s fault, and that makes it okay.
She wonders, for the hundredth time, if he knows. If that’s why he tells her about the club guys and the bathrooms and the alleyways. If that’s why she’s never met any of the guys in the stories, even when he takes her out; like he’s trying to protect her from having to see it.
She doesn’t know how she would react, honestly. Of course she wants Ziggy to be happy. Maybe one day he'll find someone he can have a real connection with, not just a few quick fucks somewhere; someone who'll stick around long enough that she has to meet him – but part of her hopes she never has to find out how that feels. She doesn’t want to know the men who get what she can never have. It’s much easier to accept if they just stay abstract, a collection of limbs in her imagination, no eyes, no personalities, no souls. Easy to hate without feeling too guilty.
Her coffee has gone cold. She dumps it into the sink and then leans against the counter, taking in the disaster of the bar.
On the floor, between the carpets and the wets rags, tucked half under the dishwasher where she pushed it out of the way at some point, there’s a bit of shiny purple peeking through. Johnny’s fucking beloved jacket.
Shit.
She picks it up, turning it over to check it for stains – water is okay, but if it got soaked in the coffee she spilled, she thinks Johnny might never forgive her. That stuff does not come out, no matter how much you pay the laundry service.
But it seems like it’s intact, the leather shiny and smooth, the satiny sleeves bright, as ludicrously out of place as they ever seem; a shining piece of the upside world Johnny claims to hate so fiercely. Maybe that’s why she feels so strongly about that jacket: it’s a puzzle, proof that she doesn’t understand Johnny that well, after all.
And suddenly, making the coffee roil in her stomach, she spots it: twisted around the buttons at the shoulder, just the right height for it.
A ripped-up strand of long, blonde, curly hair.
*
The end.