The Cup That Waited

Odessa stood on the wrong side of the glass, looking at herself.

The duplicate sat in the booth beneath the dead neon sign, wearing Odessa’s jacket, Odessa’s scuffed boots, Odessa’s expression of bored suspicion. Only the hands were wrong. They rested flat on the table, palms down, as if waiting for fingerprints to grow.

Femmie had drawn the blinds over the diner windows. She moved behind the counter with the deliberate calm of a woman setting a table during an earthquake.

“Don’t wave,” she said.

“I wasn’t going to.”

“You were thinking about it.”

“That’s not a crime.”

“Not here.”

The duplicate lifted its head. Its eyes found Odessa through the glass. It smiled with her mouth, but the smile arrived a moment late.

Then it raised one finger and tapped the table.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

The sound came through the glass as clearly as if there were no wall between them.

Odessa glanced at the rule card lying beside the register. The eleventh rule had appeared in a cramped black hand beneath the tenth:

THE ONE WHO ANSWERS OWES THE NEXT CUP.

Below it, in red ink that had not been there before, someone had written: NOT THE FIRST.

“What does that mean?” Odessa asked.

Femmie poured coffee into a clean mug. The machine was humming, though its reservoir remained visibly empty. “It means you don’t owe the cup that’s already been poured.”

“The one in its hands?”

“The one in its hands.”

“And the next one?”

“Yours.”

Odessa looked at the duplicate again. It had stopped tapping. A second mug now sat on the table before it. The coffee inside was black enough to swallow the reflection of the overhead light.

“What happens if I don’t serve it?”

Femmie’s face tightened. “Then the Nightjar chooses somebody who will.”

A vehicle rolled into the lot. Its headlights pointed in opposite directions, one toward the highway and one toward the desert. Hollis Creed climbed down from the cab, carrying no hat and wearing the same dusty coat he had worn every night since Odessa started working there.