Chapter 7: The Spare Room

I took the duffel bag off her shoulder.

It weighed almost nothing.

"Sit down," I said. "Have you eaten?"

Tori stared at me.

"You hate me."

"I'm undecided. Sit down."

She sat at table three, the one with the wobbly leg, and I went into the back.

There was half a pot of tomato soup left from lunch and a tray of morning buns nobody had bought.

I heated the soup.

I put the buns on a plate, then took two off, then put them back.

When I came out she was crying again, very quietly, into a napkin.

I set the bowl in front of her.

"Eat. Then cry. You can't do both, you'll choke."

She laughed, wet and startled, and picked up the spoon.

I called Faye.

"I have a situation," I said.

"Is it a husband situation or a dough situation?"

"It's a student situation. It's the student."

There was a pause on the line.

"The student," Faye said. "In my café."

"Eating your soup."

"I'll be there in twenty minutes. Don't let her touch the morning buns, they're for tomorrow."

"She's on her third."

"Christ on a bike."

Faye came in eighteen minutes later with her coat over her pajamas and her lemon tattoos showing.

She looked at Tori.

Tori looked at her with a mouthful of morning bun.

"You're the one with the voice memo," Faye said.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Don't call me ma'am, I'm thirty." Faye pulled out a chair, turned it around and sat on it backwards. "Sylvie says you've got nowhere to sleep."

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