"You're right. Gary is a saint, and I'm pathetic. Totally pathetic." The words burst out of my mouth the second that Mem rushes over to take my order. Her eyebrows quirk upwards into her hairline.
"Sorry, ma'am, we don't serve that here."
"He took fifty dollars off of my purchase, Mem." I sag against the counter, threading my fingers through my hair. "He gave me a pity discount. He probably thinks I'm homeless."
"Or," Mem says, surreptitiously nudging a chocolate chip muffin towards me, "he's a good person and wanted to properly welcome you to town?"
"I don't know..." I take a bite out of the muffin and quirk my lips to the side in exaggerated thought. Oddly enough, that hadn't occurred to me at all: the possibility of Gary just being a nice guy. Usually if something in my life seems too good to be true, that's because it is.
"You sure have trouble accepting that there are good people in the world," Mem says. Her hands fly around like frantic birds as she prepares orders for the other patrons crowded into the Nest, but somehow she still holds a conversation with me.
"Can you blame me?" I shrug. "I grew up in New York City, where everybody is either insane or an asshole. Sometimes both."
"If you haven't noticed, this isn't New York." Mem gestures to the massive Neverton Nest sign behind the counter, but I know she's referring to the entire town. "There are plenty of good people here."
"Who? You and Gary?" I tease.
"Sure." Then Mem gives me a meaningful look and lowers her voice. "Death's a good guy, too, you know."
"Oh, sure. He's nice enough."
"Are you kidding? He's a doll." I don't know why, but my stomach does somersaults when Mem says his name. I lower my face, so hopefully she doesn't notice the rising color in my cheeks.
Even though I know that there's nothing at all to speak of between Death and I, other than maybe a minor crush, it feels like I shouldn't be talking about him. Like he's forbidden. There's as much secrecy around his existence as there is about what he does in the garden behind the mansion.
But, as I study Mem and the age-old wisdom behind her eyes, it suddenly strikes me that she may be able to connect some of the dots for me. After all, she and Death are both Immortals that have presumably spent their entire lives in Neverton. They must go way back. Suddenly, I wonder if the admiration in her voice is something else in disguise.
As nonchalantly as I can, I mutter "So, you and Death...Have you ever been more than Immortal acquaintances?"
The corner of Mem's mouth quirks upwards in a sly grin, and I silently scold myself for being way too obvious. All the same, she wipes off her hands with a blue rag and says, "Are you trying to ask if we've ever dated?"
"I mean..?" I throw up my hands in an awkward shrug. Is that even possible between..? Actually, I don't want to know. And now my face is burning. Great. "I feel like there's still so much I don't know. You don't have to answer if it's too personal."
After a cruel pause, Mem says, "No. No, we never dated." She sets a steaming mug of coffee on the counter in front of me and tilts her head. "In fact, I'm not sure how that would even work, what with him being incorporeal and unable to leave the mansion."
It feels like my stomach tumbles from a great height, even though I'm sitting perfectly still. "So he's just been in that house, alone? Since the beginning of time?"
"Well, I don't think he's been there that long. But certainly as long as I've been here, which is still quite a while."
I shake my head. "I can't imagine that."
"He's endured a lot. There are so many rules and guidelines that come with being Death, as you can imagine." Mem suddenly freezes and glances at me sidelong, as if she'd let something slip. I narrow my eyes.
"Rules? Who sets rules for Death? He's Death."
"I didn't mean rules in the literal sense," Mem says, chewing on her lip. "Just that his existence comes with several limitations." I can tell that she's trying to backtrack, but when she pushes the mug of coffee forward so that the fragrant steam rises towards my nostrils, I can suddenly only think of one thing.
"Caffeine." The word tears out of my throat in a beastly growl that makes Mem laugh. I move to take a sip but pause when the coffee is mere centimeters from reaching my lips. "Wait. I never gave you my order."
Mem winks and hefts a tray on her shoulder, carrying drinks and pastries out into the dining room so she can avoid my questioning. "You didn't have to. I made this cup special."
"You better not be poisoning me!" I call after her, loud enough to turn the heads of a few patrons, but then the mingled scents of hazelnut and something earthy (cinnamon?) slip into my brain and shut off the part that thinks rationally.
Awake juice, it growls. Awake, good.
I tilt my head back and take a good long sip of Mem's concoction. I can feel the drink sliding down my throat, warming me from the inside, and for a moment I just sit there in bliss and enjoy the insane burst of flavors on my tongue. Then, I pause: all of them are oddly familiar, personal. They hit me in waves, a million different flavors that shouldn't fit in a tiny cup of coffee.
The scented air freshener in my bedroom when I was in fourth grade.
The crunchy bits atop my mother's homemade banana-nut muffins.
The heaviness of the breeze through the open window in my room when a scorching heat wave nearly shut down the city.
Suddenly, I'm falling forward, but not towards the floor or the counter of the coffee shop. When I lift my head, I'm somewhere else entirely.
The floor is covered in a fine film of grease, spat-out gum and straw wrappings littering every square foot. My knees stick to it when I shift, grabbing another fork and knife to wrap up in a cloth napkin.
I'm seven years old.
I hum along with the operatic Italian singer that belts over the speakers, nodding my head until my father bursts through the swinging doors that lead to the kitchen. His dark hair is slicked-back with a mixture of too much hair product and a little sweat, and my mother is squeal-laughing in his arms.
"Don't drop me–DON'T!"
"I will never let go of you, amore mio." My father peppers my mother's face with kisses and I make a disgusted face, even though it's also kind of nice to see my father this way. He only speaks in his native tongue when he's over-the-moon happy or Earth-crushingly angry, and it's clear that right now he is the former. "My love, the Broadway dancer!"
"It's just a callback, Vince," my mother says, righting herself on her feet. "The director hasn't even seen me yet." Her hair is even curlier than mine, and I love the way that it trails over her shoulders like brambles, reminiscent of wild, untameable things.
"When he does, he will adore you." My dad holds her face in his hands and gazes into her eyes, so gingerly. Right there, in the middle of our dingy, empty Italian restaurant, he kisses her. I try to imagine what it must be like for someone to love you as much as you love them. I imagine that it must feel like floating. "You're going to make it, amore mio. If not today, then tomorrow. Or the day after that."
"Cara? Oh dear..." I gasp and nearly fall off of my stool into another patron. Thankfully, Mem grabs my arm and yanks me forward in enough time to avoid making a complete mess out of the stranger's frappuccino. I splutter, choked by my racing heart.
"What the hell was that?" I growl the second that I catch my breath. I shove the cup of coffee away from me.
"What happened?" Mem asks, though by her wince I have a feeling that she already knows. "Did I add too much cinnamon?"
"Did you..?" I gape at her for a moment, at a loss of words. "No! You sent me into some kind of weird trance! Something similar happened the first time that I came here, and at first I thought it was a coincidence, but now I'm getting the feeling that you did it on purpose!"
"Shh. Not in front of the customers." Mem glances at the patrons on either side of me and smiles nervously. Once again, she takes my arm and leads me back into the storage room.
"Explain," I say.
"I'm Memory," she says.
"I know that."
"I don't think you do, fully. And I'll admit that I'm to blame." Mem fixes me with an unwavering gaze as I cross my arms. "Did you know that taste and smell are the two strongest senses in terms of memory?"
"I...guess?"
"Well, that's my specialty." Mem gazes at the smiling customers in the dining room through the tiny window set into the door. "I help people remember the good things in life through my coffee. First kisses, job promotions, inside jokes, marriages: all of them are linked to a scent, or a taste. Most people don't even realize that their coffee tastes different every time. It's always exactly what they need in the moment."
I think of my mother's smiling face, held so tenderly in my father's hands. Her beat-up ballet shoes by the front door. My throat threatens to close up. "So, you're like a potion master."
Mem tilts her head. "That's an odd way of putting it. But, sure, if that helps you make sense of things."
"It doesn't make sense. Why do this, Mem? Why dedicate your entire life to helping people revisit their favorite memories instead of making your own?" Maybe that came out a little too harsh, but oh well. I'm thoroughly overwhelmed, and it's a wonder that I can string words together at all.
"It's my purpose. It's why I'm here." Mem tilts her head forward, as if she's trying to impress upon me a very important point. "The same way that Death is here to pass souls from this world to the next. All of us are here for a reason."
"Must be nice," I mumble.
"What must be nice?"
"To have a purpose." I sag against the wall and massage my temples. Of all the stressful mornings that I've had in my life, this one takes the cake. "I'm already way in over my head with this renovation, and to top it off I'm out of money."
"Oh! That reminds me!" Mem jumps a little – how is she so hyper at this time of day? – and pulls me out of the storage closet. Before I can protest or properly catch my footing, she shoves a flyer into my face.
"What's this?" I ask as my eyes adjust to a whole lot of black and orange: jack-o-lantern faces grinning up at me.
"Neverton's 175th Annual Halloween Festival!" Mem grins at me like one of the cartoon pumpkins. "It's the biggest event in town, and I want you to help me plan it this year."
I blink at her. "You do know that Halloween is only eleven days away, right?"
"Yes, but don't stress about it! I can coordinate all of the catering and activities and stuff: I'll leave the decorating to you. And you'll be paid." She drags out the last word in a wavering falsetto note.
"Mem, I don't know. Between this and the renovation..." I look at the flyer again, which promises CANDY! MUSIC! COSTUME CONTEST!
While I'm certainly not in any sort of holiday spirit, I can't argue against a paycheck. And, I have to admit, it would be fun to put on this event with Mem. At the very least, it would help get my mind off of a certain mysterious, dark-haired phantom and his odd array of roommates.
"I can see it in your eyes. You're breaking," Mem squeals, quietly clapping her hands. I smile and make a big show of sagging against the counter.
"Fine, I'll help you with the festival. But only if there's free coffee involved. And not the hallucination kind."
"Ahhh, I'm so excited!" Mem suddenly pulls me into a mocha-scented hug – my second of the day, I realize – and I find myself giving into it, wrapping my own arms around her. Maybe Mem was right about the kind of people here; perhaps Neverton is growing on me after all.
When she finally lets me go, I catch sight of a familiar woman through the window of the Nest: the very same one who nearly bulldozed me over twice. She's still making her rounds in the square, offering the same greeting to those she passes. I nudge Mem with my elbow.
"Who is that? Out there, walking past the door?"
Mem searches for the object of my interest, then purses her lips and nods pityingly. "Ah. That's Time. She's stuck in a loop. Poor darling."
"Because that makes perfect sense," I mutter to myself as Mem bustles off, back to work.
I guess there are still some things about Neverton that will take longer for me to get used to.