four // cairo, cocoa, and chagrin
We pull up to the curb next to the smallest section of downtown Cobalt Bay. The building we park in front of is as old and faded as the ones along the rest of the quiet street, except that it has ivy lacing around the bricks that blanket the entire left side that is exposed due to the left turn at the end of the street.
A green, hand-painted sign hangs above the door, reading: Cairo’s Cocoa & Scones
“What’s this?” I ask Basil, hopping out of his car after the short, yet inevitably uncomfortable, drive from the school.
“My aunt’s…”A confused look appears on his face for a brief second as he cocks his head to the side and squints his eyes. “Shop-slash-bakery-joint?”
“What?”
“I want to say that it’s a cafe, but that’s not right because she refuses to serve anything with caffeine in it.” Basil gets out of the car and trots into his aunt’s “shop-slash-bakery-joint”.
I follow suit and catch the heavy door before it quickly swings shut in my face.
“What do you even call this place?” Basil asks loudly to the empty counter at the back of the shop.
Mis-matched armchairs and coffee tables are paired up and scattered across the small space, but are placed strategically enough to make it feel more quaint than claustrophobic, unlike most shops and restaurants in our miniscule town. The brick walls are covered in artsy photos of unrecognizable places in Europe, antique clocks, and vintage posters. The whole aura of the place is like a chaotic, yet elegant, work of art.
“A sconery!” A woman with a considerably large mass of flaming red curls on her head exclaims jovially as she pops up from behind the counter.
I try to pretend I didn’t just jump a little bit at her sudden appearance as Basil walks over.
“A what?” he questions.
“A sconery.”
“That isn’t a word.”
“Cairo’s Cocoa and Scones cannot simply be labeled, my dear Basil.” The extremely petite woman pushes a curl behind her ear, but it bounces back into the air like a spring. “So if it is going to be labeled, I’m going to be the one to come up with that label.”
“That’s horrible for business, you know,” Basil argues.
“Since when have I cared about advertising issues?” The woman rolls her eyes and then averts them to me. “Hello, daffodil! You want some cocoa?”
Basil cuts me off before I can respond. “She’s with me, Cairo. We just need the free wi-fi.” He drags a red, velvety armchair over to a green one by the window and pulls a laptop out of his backpack. I sit in the green armchair in confusion and wait awkwardly as Basil works on his laptop for a few seconds.
At first Cairo looks disappointed, but her disposition changes suddenly and her young face is smiling so big that you’d think a celebrity just walked in.
She skips over to us with a notepad and a pen in her hand. “Are you sure I can’t get you two anything?” She pats Basil’s head and adds, “It’s on the house.”
I didn’t eat lunch today because I was trying to avoid Basil, so a scone sounds heavenly at the moment.
Before I can politely accept the woman’s kind offer, Basil looks up at his young and bubbly aunt as if she’s lost her mind. “What are you--”
Cairo lifts him by the arm up and out of his seat with one strong pull, despite her small frame, and drags Basil to the back of the shop where I can’t hear them discuss labels or strange words or unwanted free food or whatever it is that is making them feel the need to get away from me.
My stomach howls and on instinct I wrap my arms around myself in an awkward belly-hug that I wrongly assume will silence the thing.
Basil marches back to our table by the window and slumps into the red armchair, shaking his head. Cairo disappears behind a black door that I’m guessing leads to where the food is prepared.
If only I could get back there, I hear my stomach whisper deviously.
No! my brain shoots back.
Aasdfjhsfkdjuesfhl! my stomach retorts a little too loudly.
“Are you hungry?” Basil asks, noticing my stomach’s desperate cry for nourishment.
“Well, I skipped lunch today, but I don’t want your aunt to give me free food if it’s going to cost her anything--”
“Oh no, trust me, she wants to give it to you. She would give everything away for free if it weren’t for me. She has no money because she wasted it all on furniture. I’m pretty good with numbers and so I help her manage her budget in order to keep her ‘sconery’ running.”
“So you can keep a bankrupt sconery-owner in business because you’re 'pretty good with numbers', but can’t even beat the last level in an Inspector Ruins computer game?” I shake my head in disappointment.
Basil throws his hands in the air, completely forgetting about my stomach and scones. “Not exactly a jack of all trades.”
***
After I cleverly steer the conversation back to my skipped meal, Basil asks Cairo to bring us a couple scones and mugs of hot cocoa. She happily obliges and tells me to come anytime and I’ll get anything I want for free. Basil awkwardly tells me that I can’t because of the whole debt issue, then tries to change the subject by redirecting his focuses to beating the game. I find his discomfort in telling me that the whole “free food” thing isn’t gonna work out hilarious, but decide not to mock him about it until I know him a bit better.Teasing someone about their video game skills is much more acceptable when first getting to know someone.
I use Basil's wireless computer mouse to click on a small piece of lint on the simulated apartment carpet. Inspector Ruins bends down to pick it up just as the gunshot is blasted from the laptop’s speakers. Basil jumps at the noise and Cairo comes running out of the kitchen in a panic.
"Did I just hear a gun go off? In Cobalt Bay? What a strange--wait." Cairo points to the laptop expectantly and Basil and I nod, laughing.
She waves us off and trudges back into the kitchen.
"So that's it?" Basil pushes the palms of his hands to his temples in disbelief. "You just duck to pick up a little piece of nothing and everything turns out okay?"
"Wait for it."
"For wha--"
BANG!
Another gun goes off, except this time you see Inspector Ruin's hand pointing a gun at a new, but unrecognizable dead body on the floor.
The screen fades black, and all that's left are the words:
TO BE CONTINUED IN INSPECTOR RUINS: MURDER IN MADRID PART II
"What?!" Basil slams his fist on the table in complete chagrin.
Cairo comes running out again, her fiery curls bobbing up and down. She exits as fast as she entered when she sees his outraged expression.
"You're lucky I don't have any real customers, otherwise both of you two and your horrifying murder game would be out on the street!"
____________
this chapter is dedicated to the lovely @frankfurterr for making my amazing new cover and for giving so much support on this story :)
the photo on the side is kind of how i pictured cairo so there ya go haha
thanks for reading lovelies
xx beth
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