2 Charlotte Whitfield

A proposition? What on Earth…?

My eyes drift from the business card, to the beige envelope, then up to this woman's perfectly contoured face. She's far from the weirdest person I've seen in this homey little cafe. I'm a waitress — we practically specialize in dealing with crazies. It's just that usually, I'm an innocent bystander of that crazy; like, a man will come in without a shirt on, and I'll have to tell him that we can't serve him. The man would have been shirtless anyway. I was just the one who had to deal with it.

But this woman came in here and asked for me by name. That doesn't happen. I'm a nobody. 'Clients of means' and personal representatives move in circles so far above me I can't even see them. The idea that one of these people would have a proposition for me is less than unlikely. It's laughable.

Laughable enough to be a prank, which I can only assume this is. Some kind of hidden camera prank to be plastered around the Internet. Fortunately, the stars in my eyes went out a long time ago, so I can see more clearly than most.

I set my jaw and smile innocently back at the woman. Whatever reaction she's looking for, she'll get none of it from me.

"I'm really sorry, I'm still on my shift," I explain. "I'd be leaving this place high and dry if I took off. I can give you my email address, if that helps?" Not my phone number. Spam emails I could easily send to the void; spam phone calls would be a bit harder to ignore. More than anything, I need her out of the cafe. The few remaining patrons are starting to look up from their smartphones and newspapers, wondering just as me what kind of business an impeccably dressed businesswoman has in Sal's Sweets. Or in the outskirts of Milwaukee, period.

All this attention on me makes my skin crawl, but the woman doesn't even flinch.

"I see," she says. Her hand dips into the designer purse slung around her shoulder. "May I please speak to your manager, then?"

Ah, the dreaded words. No matter where he is in the shop, no matter what he's doing, Sal will hear them, and this time is no exception. The kitchen door swings open, and there he is: a stocky middle-aged man with thinning grey hair and flour permanently whitening his fingers. He'd look friendly, grandfatherly even, if it weren't for his near constant scowl, which only ever deepens when he looks at me.

I shrink back a little, knowing this will only get worse when he notices the two missing girls at the side table.

"I'm her manager," Sal says. He walks from the kitchen door to the cash register, but no further. He must trust rich types even less than he trusts me. "Is there something I can help you with?"

"There is." The woman walks briskly to meet him at the register, her spike heels clacking against the linoleum. "I need to speak to Ms. Evans as soon as I can. I'd greatly appreciate it if you could allow her to take her break sooner rather than later."

It's an awfully bold demand to make. My stomach lurches on her behalf. She doesn't know what Sal's like when someone tells him what to do. He only grunts for now, but from the look in his eye, I know a storm's coming — a storm I'll have to weather once she's gone.

"'Fraid I can't do that. Ms. Evans is my only help on the clock today, and I have a cafe to run. You're more than welcome to come back on her lunch break," he shoots back. The woman's mouth tightens. Her arm twitches inside her bag.

"I understand your situation, Mr. Alberti," she begins, and I have to wonder: she researched Sal's last name ahead of time? "But I'm afraid my employer doesn't have long to wait." She pulls out a something thin, black, and glossy and lays it out on the counter. Only when she takes out her pen to scribble in it do I realize it's a checkbook.

After a few tense seconds, she flips it around and slides it closer to Sal's side of the counter.

"Would this adequately reimburse Ms. Evans' time off?" she asks. Sal glances down with his usual passive disinterest — but then his eyes bulge, wider than I've ever seen. He even picks the checkbook up to look at it more closely.

"Is this some kind of joke?" he asks.

"Not at all. If you'd prefer the compensation in cash, it can be provided for you when my car arrives," she replies, cool as a glacier in the face of his shock. Whatever sum she wrote down, it clearly doesn't bother her, or the mysterious employer she keeps mentioning. "But it'll only be yours if I can speak with Ms. Evans immediately."

She hasn't even completely finished before Sal tears the check out, tossing the book back down to the counter. "Screw it. Take her for the whole day, if you need her. I'll close things up here."

What does he mean he'll close things up? I've been standing to the side of this little exchange until now, with the same kind of passive acceptance that I'd have in a dream, but losing an entire day's worth of pay is enough to wake me up.

I rush behind the counter before Sal can duck back into the kitchen.

"You're closing up for the day?"

"Sure am. I don't know what you've been doing in your free time, Clara, but someone's willing to pay through the nose to get it." He folds up the check and sticks it in his apron pocket, like he's afraid someone's going to come and snatch it away. "We'll open tomorrow same time as usual though, so don't party too hard with him, whoever he is."

"PARTY?" The word falls out of my mouth, incredulous. I can almost feel the patrons' stares on the back of my neck. "Is that what you think is going on?"

"Whatever it is, if you've got the attention of someone who can throw money like this around, I'm not asking questions." Sal undoes the tie in his apron, obviously as ready to go home as he claims to be. "Do me a favor and go with the nice lady before she changes her mind, alright?"

I glance behind me. The woman's still standing there, checkbook in hand, and through the cafe windows I spy a black car polished to a shine pulling up to the curb.

"Glad to know you'd sell me off to a stranger for a fat enough check," I spit out before I can think too hard about the consequences. If some, I don't know, mafia man is willing to bribe the people around me to get his hands on me, I may never have to deal with those consequences at all.

I spin around and march back to the woman.

"What's your name?" I ask, and with the smoothness of a card shark in Vegas, she produces a business card from her breast pocket.

"Charlotte Whitfield, executive assistant," she replies. I take the card without looking at it, though I can feel how expensive the paper is by touch alone.

"And your employer?"

"Not interested in making himself known." She looks nonchalantly at the car sitting in park just outside the cafe. I suck in a breath. Only now do I notice that the windows are blackened too.

"You know how suspicious that sounds, right?" If I'm technically off the clock, I don't have to worry too much about waitress-level politeness.

"Of course. But he has his reasons for keeping his identity hidden."