The Multitude, стр. 39
He sipped his coffee while she teased hers, stirring a sugar cube into it, pausing to steal a drag from a cigarette, and then stirring again.
“Igor isn’t a dress-for-success kind of guy,” she said. “You probably wrote him off as some sort of deadbeat.”
“If he is, he’s got plenty of company in our customer base.”
“He’s a poet, you know.”
“I’m impressed. We don’t have many deadbeat poets.”
The joke won a rueful grin. “Poetry and trucking go hand in hand,” she said. “Each leads to heavy drinking.”
“Funny you should bring that up. Igor mentioned a young girl who told him to find me. But he said he’d been drinking at the time so I wasn’t sure—”
“A girl?”
“Yeah.”
She averted her gaze.
Brewster burned his tongue on his coffee. “She’s real?”
“Define real. Igor sees the girl in his dreams.”
“Oh.” So there it was. Clearly, the trucker’s vanishing visitor lived in the bottom of a vodka bottle.
A waitress set their food on the table. Kara turned her attention to a bowl of soup, stirring it, scooping some onto her spoon, blowing it cool, tasting it, and frowning. Did she ever actually eat or drink?
“Your boyfriend and I have something in common,” he said. “I’m a writer, too. Novels, though, not poetry.”
“Are you published?”
“Nope. The agents and editors have written me off as some sort of deadbeat.”
“Hah! A man with a sense of humor.”
“I try.”
Kara looked down. “I might as well come out and tell you Igor can’t afford the truck. I could have killed him for buying the thing.” She spoke into her coffee rather than meet his eye. “We went over all the numbers this morning—how many loads he’ll get, how much he’ll make on each one, what his expenses will be, and so on.”
It was Brewster’s turn to look away. Train wrecks always made him queasy.
“Can we give you the keys and call it even?” she asked.
“Hold on.” While the math wasn’t pretty for his typical customer, the numbers were just as bad for Crestview. If Brewster took the truck back, they’d probably lose five grand, minimum, after reconditioning expense and the commissions they’d have to pay some dealer for reselling the thing on consignment. “How upside down is he?”
“We’ll be short at least three hundred a month. That’s after living expenses. I bring a check home, but my hours keep getting cut.”
“What do you do?”
“Cashier at a bookstore. I should have stuck with waitressing. The tips were better.”
“You just can’t get away from the world of literature, can you?”
“Funny man. I wouldn’t call it literature, though. Airport bookstore. The stuff is mostly trash.” Kara sipped some coffee and went quiet.
That should have been the end of it, but a ridiculous, outside-the-box idea popped into his head. He took a bite of his hamburger, chewed and thought, chewed some more. “Suppose we waive the interest.”
Kara set her cup down hard enough to slosh coffee onto the table. The glimmer of hope in her eyes tugged at his heart. “Would the payments go down much?”
“I’m guessing as much as four hundred a month. If that keeps us from getting the truck back, we’re happy to do it.”
“Wow! I can’t believe your generosity.”
And he couldn’t believe he’d come up with such a great idea. By cutting interest—the company’s perceived lifeblood—he’d actually found a way to avoid a loss, or defer it, anyway. Yeah, they’d miss out on interest income by collecting lower payments, but that shortfall wouldn’t add up to the five thousand bucks they’d otherwise lose on the truck for at least a year. Maybe by then, the economy would be better.
He dove into his burger with gusto. When he paused for breath, he caught Kara staring at him with love in her eyes.
“You’re one of the good guys,” she said.
“Uh-uh. I’m being totally selfish here.”
She reached across the table and settled a hand on his. “Igor has your back from now on.” She flashed one of the Latin words from Carla’s coin—Somnium—tattooed in black ink to the underside of her wrist.
Brewster almost choked on his burger. “Can I call in the debt right now? I’ve been meaning to look up that word in a Latin dictionary.”
She flipped her wrist over, revealing the tattoo more clearly. “Dreams.”
“Wow.” Of all the coincidences. But should he believe in coincidences anymore? He pulled Carla’s coin out of his pocket and slid it across the table.
She lifted the coin, looked it over. “Roman? This must be worth a mint.”
“Who knows? It isn’t for sale.”
“Family heirloom?”
He shook his head. “Someone gave it to me last night.”
Kara went silent for a long moment. She stirred her coffee, added more sugar, glanced at the coin again. “Do you feel manipulated, Brewster?”
“Huh?”
“The words on this coin. Virtus. That means virtue maybe? Spiritus. That one’s easy. Spirit. Somnium. Dreams. You were confused about that one. What are the odds you’d meet somebody who had the same word on her wrist?”
He tried to process that. Couldn’t. “I’m not following. Manipulated by whom?”
“Somebody scary strong.” Kara grabbed her purse and started sliding out of the booth. “This mystery girl Igor keeps talking about… She didn’t tell him her name, but I should have put two and two together.”
“Wait. I thought you said she came to him in a dream.”
“She did.” Kara slung her purse over her shoulder, glanced at the door as if she had a bus to catch, looked down at him. “And we wouldn’t be here talking if she hadn’t. Sorry, Brewster, but I’m not good at following somebody else’s stage directions.”
Great. The world’s craziness had seeped into every aspect of his daily life. He couldn’t even have a simple lunch with someone without something nutty happening. “But she was a dream!”
“Dreams are real, Brewster. That girl…” Kara’s eyes flared. “Real. I have to go talk to Henry.”
“Who?”
“A crazy uncle of mine. He knows more about Gabriella than I do. Thanks so much