“Duke! God, I’m glad to hear from you.”

“I’m at the store –”

“I closed the store for the weekend,” I informed him belatedly.

“I saw the note, I opened it. We have a near-riot on our hands here. People are freakin’ that Rosie’s not here. It started out pretty peaceful but now the mob want blood.”

“Are you there alone?”

I was aghast. Staffing Fortnum’s in the morning alone in the years pre-espresso-counter was doable. Post-coffee, impossible.

“Dolores is with me.”

Uh-oh.

Dolores drank instant coffee. This was not a good thing.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

I flipped my phone shut and the buzzer went just as my cell rang again.

The phone was Ally, I flipped it open and told her to hang on while I hit the button on Lee’s intercom. It was Hank so I told him I’d be down to meet him.

“You doin’ okay?” Ally asked.

“Yeah, I ache but other than that, fine,” I answered.

“What’re you up to today?”

“Duke opened Fortnum’s and just phoned in a potential Rosie Riot. I’m heading over with Hank.”

“I’ll meet you there.”

Hank was not thrilled about heading into a riot situation as the first order of business during his Indy Watch. I talked him into it by alluding to concerns about his masculinity.

I walked in the door at Fortnum’s and wished I’d let Hank talk me out of riot control. There were at least fifteen, maybe twenty people and the air crackled with hostility. It was pretty clear that the regulars were okay with a few confused Rosie-free days but now the natives were getting restless.

Annie spied me before the door shut behind Hank. Annie had been coming every weekday morning for years, eight fifteen, wearing a suit, her blonde hair molded into a style reminiscent of a football helmet. We’d chatted over the counter hundreds of times and she was always pleasant if sometimes in a hurry. It was Sunday and I’d never seen her there on a weekend.

“What the f**k is going on here? Where’s the little guy who makes the coffee?” she snapped.

I stared at her and my mouth dropped open.

“Yeah. Where’s Rosie and why was the store closed yesterday? Ellen never closed the store. As in, ever.” That was Manuel, he’d been a regular since before the days of caffeine. He used to read Vonnegut and Updike for hours in the T-U-V section. I’d known him for as long as I could remember.

“I go out of my way, seventeen blocks, for the Coffee Guy’s coffee. What am I gonna do now? Where am I gonna go?” another guy asked. I didn’t know his name but he’d come with Rosie after he left the chain-coffee-shop and usually popped by a couple of Sundays a month and sometimes actually bought a book.

They started to press in and Hank pushed in front of me going into bodyguard mode.

Really, I was fed up. I understood the love of coffee, but this was ridiculous. I’d had the worst few days of my entire life. I was Lee Nightingale’s girlfriend and we hadn’t done it yet. I was a woman on the edge.

I stood on a chair, put my thumb and finger in my mouth and gave the ear-splitting whistle Dad taught me when I was eleven.

“Listen up people!” I shouted.

All eyes turned to me as I noticed Mr. Kumar walk in with an Asian woman his age and another one much older, the other one possibly prehistoric.

I turned my attention back to the mob.

“The Coffee Guy, whose name is Rosie by the way, has moved to El Salvador,” I lied.

This was not met with happy noises.

“He’s turned his back on coffee and is in the wilds of Central America building houses for the poor. I think we should all take a moment away from our quest for coffee-satisfaction and think about this noble decision. As you clamor for caffeine and curse the hard-working but innocent staff at my store, Rosie is sitting in the bed of a beat-up pickup bumping across dirt roads to make one room homes out of mud for those who have nothing at all.”

I was kind of laying it on thick and had no idea what I was talking about but I was counting on American insularity. Since we hadn’t been to war with El Salvador, what did anyone know about it?

Now, people were staring at me as if I was a performer in the Jim Rose Circus Sideshow.

“I’ll understand if you make the decision to move back to a franchise coffee shop, but consider this. In a couple of years, little businesses like mine, and Mr. Kumar’s over there,” I pointed at Kumar and his neck descended three inches into his shoulders, “are going to be taken over and America will be wall-to-wall franchises. The franchise is killing off America’s Mom and Pop shops. Ask yourself… is that what you want? Is that what you really want?”

No one said a word.

“I said, is that what you want?” I shouted.

There was some shuffling of feet and someone said a quiet, “No.”

It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement or a cry to freedom but I was beginning to feel like an idiot. I mean, I was talking like Tex, for God’s sake, not to mention standing on a chair.

“Good. Duke’s taking coffee orders. We’ll get you all sorted out in no time. Thank you for your attention.”

I stepped off the chair and Hank was grinning at me. I figured Lee would hear about this. It didn’t matter, they were used to me doing crazy shit. I ignored Hank and smiled at Kumar.

“Hey, Mr. Kumar.”

“India,” he said. “This is my wife, Mrs. Kumar and my wife’s mother, Mrs. Salim.”

I smiled at the women. Mrs. Kumar was clearly a beauty in her day and the bloom was not yet off the rose. She smiled back and it reached her eyes with a dazzle.

Mrs. Salim’s entire face was wrinkled and motionless and I fought the urge to listen for her breathing.

“You buy food at my store, we are here to buy books at yours.”

Something about this show of solidarity made me want to cry. Mr. Kumar must have sensed it because he bowed his head to me. I bowed mine back.

“Then we are going to go to see Tex in the hospital. Then we will go and open our store.”

“I’m going to see Tex later too.”

He nodded.

“Now I can see that you need to make coffee.”

I nodded back and Ally pushed through the door. She saw Kumar right away and smiled, pushing forward. “Hey Mr. Kumar. Is this the missus? Whoa!”