"Obstruction of Traffic"

    Mily wind assaulted my face: the product of a spring day in Manhattan. I pushed the door relentlessly, unstitching the swollen wood from its frame, and entered the shop already filled with a cluster of customers crowding the counters who were shoveling pound cake and lubricating their throats in caffeine. Steinbeck was on my mind, but that was the least of my concerns at that point, the broken coffee steamer and sure pour-in of blended and iced drink customers during my shift was more impotant; Steinbeck took a back Bunsen.
    I wrapped my splash guard apron around my heavy hips, its material dark and flowered with squirts of sauce and sprays of clotted and crusting milk foam. Third working day of the week, and I had a year's worth of splatter on myself. Laundromat quarters bounced behind my eyes in hopes of tips.
    Rigby limped in, scraping his dusty foot across the floor to my plastic granite countertop. A soapbox evangelist, Rigby spent his nights on the free hard backed concrete beds of the city, wrapping his shoulders in leaves; days he stared into the carved chess pieces of businessmen as he shouted his sermon across 5th and Weiser. GOD was tattooed across his forehead, and blank eyes burned below bald eyebrows.
    "Casey," his jagged landscape voice crunched, "something."
    "A pee-bee-and-jay with lemonade," I instructed.
    I went into the kitchen, hurrying, I knew Mark didn't like for Rigby to be in the store, the usual reasons, and quick-slapped a sandwich and drink together. Returning to the counter, I slid the brown bag under his arm, pressing subtotal, void, and subtotal again to clear the register: no evidence.
    I whispered, "It's Wednesday," a nod from GOD, "the unsolds go out back tonight."
    He left, trailing a shadow of dust and onions. I busied my mind, making up a list of drinks from the fridge that needed restocking, then moving onto dishes: my menial existence. A half hour had passed; I hardly heard the bell shrill impatiently through the rush of dishwater. A typical four o'clock shadow was tapping his nails on the counter, staring at the place where I should have been.
    "What can I do for you?"
    "A blended chai tea latte."
    I turned around and mixed his drink: half chai, half milk, ice, ice, ice, blend on two. Clockwork. The usual. I snapped a top onto the cup and slid it over in the best bar tender style.
    "Three fifty four," I sighed, "out of five. One fourty six."
    "You know, you really should do something about the dead guy outside your shop," the guy grumbled, taking his change and leaving.
    "What?" But he was gone.
    I hurried to the picture window facing the street. There, in the middle of the road, the backward letters of Sally's Coffee circled around Rigby's body. Blood and a foot next to a forehead: unnatural. A group of bystanders clotted to one side of the street, staring and pointing, whispering behind hands. His brown bag lay next to his mispositioned leg; lemonade mizing with his blood looked like a spilled Shirley Temple.
    I rushed outside and pushed onto the sidewalk; asking whether anyone had called the police, I was met with shakes of heads. By this time, the cars passing were merging into one lane, avoiding Rigby's body, or else just driving over it, taking chances on their alignment; he was just another speed bump.