I laughed. “Your antics are cute, Will.”
“I was going for irresistible,” he said with a brazen smirk. He handed me my bag and let me go in front of him. His warm breath on my neck caused me to shiver and stumble in the aisle. He chuckled. “You’re cute.” When another passenger jetted out of his seat, bumping me, Will blurted out, “Hey! Watch it, buddy!” I turned around to his sexy smile. His lips flattened, he narrowed his eyes and then whispered, “See, baby, chivalry isn’t dead.”
When I stepped out into the crisp March, New York air, I sensed him walking behind me, but I didn’t turn around. I walked straight up to the first available cab, hopped in, shut the door, and shouted, “Manhattan!” As we pulled away from the curb, I glanced over at Will. He was blowing a lungful of smoke into the air with curiosity in his eyes like he was listening to God. His gaze met mine and with a larger-than-life wave, he mouthed the words, “Goodbye, Mia.” I thought I caught “Sweet Thing” just as he left my view.
As the cab wove in and out of traffic, I couldn’t get my mind off him. The entire flight I didn’t think once about my future, my father’s apartment, or the café, and I don’t think Will worried much about the possibility of crashing. We kind of hit it off; we did hit it off. He had this silly, to the point of being honest, quality about him. When I thought about our conversation, I remembered how he called Pete, the lead singer of The Ivans, the world’s biggest douche bag. It was clear to me that Will was in a band for the love of music and not for fame or sex; I was sure he didn’t need any help in that department. I knew there was something about him that drew me in, but I convinced myself at that moment that Will was not boyfriend material—not in my book, anyway. I thought maybe we could be friends; after all, I didn’t have many in my new city.
The last time I was in New York had been for my father’s funeral one month before. I knew I had my work cut out for me, which gave me a rush of anxiety. I needed to sort through Pops’s things and make room for my own. Making my way through the door leading to the stairwell, I stopped at the mail slot and slipped my key in but could barely turn it from the amount of mail jammed in the tiny box. I managed to shove the massive pile under my arm and carry the rest of my things up the stairs to the landing. I set my bags down and searched for the right key. I tried five keys before finally unlocking the door. It occurred to me that the giant key ring was a handful of discoveries I would learn about my father.
The first thing I noticed when I entered the apartment was that it was very clean. Someone had been there, probably one of the two regular women in my father’s life. Either Martha, who was like a sister to him—she also ran Kell’s—or Sheil, who was his on-and-off girlfriend. Both women had been in Pops’s life for decades and both were like family. They were going to be lifelines in the months to come as I ventured through my father’s belongings… and his story.
After tossing out a large amount of junk mail, I sifted through a few sympathy cards, financial statements, and bills before I got to a letter from the probate lawyer. I leaned over the kitchen counter, closed my eyes, and inhaled deeply before opening it. My father’s scent was still somehow wafting through the still air in the apartment, like his residual movements were reminding me that his spirit was alive. My eyes welled and my heart ached over his loss. I committed his smell to memory, a mixture of espresso, petula oil, and hand-rolled clove cigarettes that had stained every article of clothing he owned with a combination of earthy spice and sweetness. I smiled slightly at his somewhat-painful memory and then addressed the task at hand.
In the days following my father’s heart attack, my mother and David had put their lives on hold to follow me to New York to make arrangements. That week is a foggy memory; filled with shock and pain, but the ease, grace, and familiarity that my mother displayed through it all was inspiring and intriguing to me. I wasn’t sure if it was born out of her love for me and desire to help when she knew I was hurting, or if it was a deeper love for my father that I hadn’t known she felt. As disjointed as my family seemed growing up, in Pops’s death we were all brought together. Isn’t that how it always is? It was like my mother and Martha were sisters who shared an untold story, each one falling perfectly into a rhythm in the apartment and at Kell’s.
The day before the funeral, we worked in the café, I watched my mother navigate the espresso machine with a certain know-how. “Were you a barista in another life?” I said to her.