Chapter 20 #2
Well, Joaquin had tried, Zoey supposed. And a company logo was still better than a list of the names of all of Nestor’s victims. (Zoey still had her suspicions about the whole serial- killer thing.)
Sascha paid for the drinks, jabbing at the screen with one of her vicious nails. As Nestor flounced off shrieking about his brain freeze, Sascha took a moment to gather herself.
‘Back to the furnace,’ she muttered. Then, sighing, added, ‘I need to find a new place to work.’
You and me both, thought Zoey, grimacing as she glimpsed the ever-growing line outside. Oops, she’d knocked over Maeve’s photo.
Righting it, she felt a pang. She was so grateful for Maeve, and she was proud to help carry on her legacy, but this was all starting to feel like too much. Her heart was elsewhere.
‘Need some help, love?’
Bangles jangled as a tie-dye-clad elbow propped itself up on the bench.
It was Reba, with Gracie Nivola at her side.
Judging from the dark circles visible beneath her pointed, sparkly glasses, Reba was clearly still kicking on from a night on Killingsworth, while Gracie, serene in leggings and an extremely expensive-looking T-shirt, had probably come from yoga at June’s studio.
‘I can …’ Zoey had been about to say that she could handle it herself, but the queue outside was showing no sign of dwindling.
Her phone dinged: Terriffany. Sorry, Zoey – there in an hour. Mentor had feedback on my pitch deck. Priorities.
Zoey smiled wanly. Well, she couldn’t blame Terriffany. The girl had goals, and she wasn’t shy about going after them. It was a shame she wasn’t more into smoothies, because with her smarts and ambition she’d be ten times the owner Zoey was.
Reba helped herself to a carrot, nibbling on it like a psychedelic Bugs Bunny.
‘It’s all right to accept help, love. Maeve would want you to – she always did herself.
Well, unless we’re talking about me offering to make my famous casserole.
She always turned that down. Anyway, we won’t even charge you for it.
Just so long as you promise to be an alibi for me if I need it.
Something that gets more likely the longer I stick around in any given place. ’
‘And I can take photos,’ added Gracie, grey eyes unfairly luminous for this time of day. ‘Portland is the perfect anthropological hot spot. I’ve never shot so many people in blow-up frog costumes. Or Darth Vader unicyclists. Or people chanting about brains.’
‘That’ll be the zombies,’ said Reba, knowingly. ‘No one believes me about the zombies. Not even Gracie here, and she and I have seen some weird shit, trust me.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Zoey, although coming around to the idea of zombies, was too occupied to entertain the notion right now.
She was busy running around trying to manage her ingredient prep and ice-cube situation as more people than the fire code allowed pressed into the tiny shop.
The customer at the front of the line swayed on the spot, pointing at the Brain Freeze menu item as she allowed whatever was playing in her earphones to envelop her.
Others squeezed in behind her as though they’d mistaken the shop for a peak-hour subway carriage.
The shop was so full that the selfie wall was completely obscured.
They’d handed out way too many vouchers yesterday, Zoey thought, anxiously. That was the downside of having someone as good-looking as Nick on your team.
‘With you in a second!’ called Zoey, pouring the contents of a blender jug into a giant mug and applying the reusable-cup discount. She typed in the order and turned the screen around to the customer – see, done. She didn’t need help. This was manageable.
Until it wasn’t. Zoey grabbed the jug from the next blender … but a fraction of a second before she hit the off button. Smoothie went everywhere.
‘Offer still stands, hon.’ Reba leaned against the counter, drumming brightly painted fingernails against it. ‘And good news: I brought branded aprons.’
In resourceful hippie-granny fashion, she pulled a couple of tie-dyed aprons out of her purse and tossed them at Zoey and Gracie in turn.
‘Perfect for if you’re cleaning up after a crime and don’t want to wear the evidence. Righto, let us back behind this counter, will you, and we’ll get started.’
‘This was premeditated, wasn’t it,’ accused Zoey, hands akimbo.
Reba’s cat’s-eye glasses flashed as she preened.
‘I figured that I owed dear old Maeve a favour after the incident with the pineapples and the FBI all those years back. Don’t ask.
Besides, we have tons of experience being behind a counter.
The amount of Baileys I poured into coffee drinks at this little place called Riffraff in Brooklyn – it was criminal.
Literally. Although it was actually the least criminal thing about that place, what with all the murder and all.
Don’t ask about that, either,’ she added, at Zoey’s surprised look.
‘Ooh, and Venus’s wedding at that microgreens tax write-off farm near Mirage-by-the-Sea.
We did a good job helping out the little pop-up tea shop.
Not to mention supplying the drugs as part of the PR crisis strategy,’ added Reba.
‘Except for that guy who died. But that wasn’t us.
My money was on that personal assistant with the three iPads and the headset. ’
‘NDA,’ whispered Gracie. ‘We’re bound by an NDA.’
‘Um?’ A guy with a beard so neatly and closely cropped that it looked painted on flapped a beanie at them.
‘Sorry to interrupt this reunion, but some of us need our nootropics before we can face a day of arguing with the new hire that prompt-engineering is not actually a type of engineering and is not even related to the engineering world in any way, shape or form.’
‘AI is bullshit, if you ask me,’ said Reba, handing the guy a smoothie.
‘Right? Thank you.’ The guy spoke to the ceiling, as though he’d just had a revelation from above. He left a 30 per cent tip and strutted off, sipping on his mushroom-infused drink.
Okay, so maybe accepting help wasn’t so bad. Maybe Zoey could rely on other people. Maybe … Nick was right about people being like mushrooms. Not the bit about growing in a substrate of manure. But the bit about being connected. Part of a community that grew together.
‘Thanks for this,’ said Zoey, as she prepped and served alongside Gracie and Reba (the latter who, thankfully, did not appear to be spiking the smoothies with Baileys). ‘I’m meeting Nick’s sisters for the first time tonight, so I’m a bit off my game. And I wasn’t expecting—’
She gestured out at the unending line of customers.
‘Sorry,’ said Gracie. ‘I pushed my Smoothie Maven photo edit to my newsletter last night, and Honour reshared the link to her followers.’
Zoey couldn’t imagine having the power to make or break a business via social media. She was just glad that Gracie and Honour apparently used their power for good.
‘And let’s not forget the power of the Naked Bike Ride,’ said Reba. ‘There’s a direct line between bicycle nudity and smoothie chugging. Probably.’
‘Three Brain Freezes, biggest cup you’ve got, no milk,’ said a guy in head-to-toe argyle, right down to the socks.
He looked like a WWI-era navy ship wearing dazzle camouflage.
Zoey translated his order into the relevant parlance, and Reba set to work.
‘Also, are those aprons for sale? I’m working on my next print palette. ’
Reba slipped him a card with a wink. ‘Text me a compliment and I’ll give you a discount.’
The three of them fell into a routine of blending and pouring, with Zoey honouring the discount cards the nude cyclists had picked up at yesterday’s event.
Alas, the fact that most of them were actually wearing clothes today made it difficult to remember who was who.
And the distinguishing features that she did remember, well, it wasn’t proper to bring that up in public.
Hello, triple nipple piercing and erotic rooster tattoo guy! Good to see you again!
There were, however, a few familiar faces in the crowd. Although they seemed to be moving a little slowly today. Among them was June, who shuffled in on the arm of Nate, who himself was shuffling, which made a pleasant change from hating. Darina remained nowhere to be seen.
‘Is everything all right with June?’ Gracie asked Zoey.
Her huge eyes narrowed, making them look like a regular person’s eyes.
How truly unfair that someone got to look like that.
‘The yoga session she led this morning was truly strange. Even for hot yoga. There was a lot of neck cracking and contortionism. And so much silent head massaging.’
Zoey frowned. Maybe she’d been talking to Nova.
Although speaking of Nova, Zoey hadn’t seen her in weeks.
To be fair, it wasn’t like she owed day-in-day-out loyalty to her hairdresser’s chair.
She was probably on vacation. Or visiting family in Idaho.
Or holed up in her room eating Cool Ranch Doritos and being traumatised by BoJack Horseman.
‘She’s probably just taken a vow of silence,’ said Reba. ‘It’s a blessing when that type goes that route instead of starting a podcast.’
June turned towards them, as though to defend her podcast, and Zoey prepared an apology. June’s podcast wasn’t the worst she’d heard. In fact, it wasn’t even in the top-five worst spiritual yoga influencer podcasts in the Portland metro area.