A Face at the Window

I left my phone at home because its location history had already failed me once.

That was the reason I gave myself, anyway. The less defensible reason was that I did not want it recording me while I asked a stranger whether I had been somewhere I could not remember. I put it in the desk drawer, shut the drawer, and checked the apartment door twice before leaving. My wallet came with me. The card from the charge was still in its slot.

Morrow Cup sat on a narrow side street beneath a row of dark apartment windows. I had passed the block before, I thought, but I couldn’t have said when. The café was bright and warm. A small chalkboard beside the door listed soup and pastries in careful handwriting.

I stood outside long enough for a person behind the counter to look up and notice me. Then I went in.

A bell gave a single bright ring. The room smelled of espresso and toasted bread. One customer sat at the window with a laptop. A woman behind the counter was wiping the milk-steamer wand. She glanced at me, and her expression shifted into recognition.

“Morning,” she said. “The usual?”

I stopped at the end of the counter. “I don’t think I’ve been here before.”

“Oh.” She lowered the cloth. “Sorry. You were in last night.”

The certainty in her voice made the back of my neck tighten. I set my wallet on the counter, keeping my hand on it. “Could I ask you about a transaction? There was a charge here at eleven forty-seven. Eight dollars and sixty cents.”

She leaned toward the register. “That sounds like the large oat latte and lemon cake.”

I looked at the display case, where lemon cakes sat in a row beneath a glass cover. “You remember the order?”

“Because you asked if the cake had been made today.” She seemed to reconsider me. “You said you’d been trying to cut down on coffee, then ordered the largest one we make.”

It was a perfectly plausible exchange. It was also the kind of thing I might have said. That did not make it mine.

“Was I alone?”

“I think so.” She glanced toward the back. “Della?”

A woman emerged from the narrow staff doorway, drying her hands on a towel. She was in her forties, with the practical, watchful look of someone who spent her day keeping small problems from becoming expensive ones.

“This is Oren,” the barista said. “He’s asking about last night.”

Della’s eyes moved over my face, then settled. “You came in just before close.”

I asked whether the café had security footage. I kept my voice level, which was something I’d practiced without admitting I was practicing it. Della asked why. I told her I had a charge I couldn’t account for and wanted to verify the transaction. I did not say that I could not account for myself.