At first I thought they picked me because of who I am. Who I was, I should say. See, I've been a terrible person, for a long time, so it seemed to fit. When I was young, I was all sex, drugs, and rock & roll. Then came the chase for the Almighty Dollar, but when I realized that it was all rigged against us, I just kinda lost it. I went through an angry phase, a revolutionary phase, an all-out anarchist phase. And finally, when it was all too much, I just...turned my back on all of it, including my partner in (literal) crime. And now I'm here, working graveyard in a shit-pile somewhere between Big Sky and Jackson Hole. And so of course the Devil's shitty assistant comes to get the Devil's shitty coffee at the shittiest joe joint in the world, from me, the shittiest joe jockey on the whole mortal coil.

Or so I thought. But lemme set the scene right.

I'd been working here nine weeks before I got graveyard, and that very first night, at 3:33a on the nose, this super sad, harried-looking chick blasts in like a bat out of Hell and cracks out a latte order in between gasps. She was heaving like she’d just run up a million stairs, and she was dressed like a tax collector’s second-favorite apprentice. She was out of place here, but I didn’t notice her just like I didn’t notice anything in those days, until she looked up and I saw her eyes. When I met those eyes I could tell she was frustrated, aggravated, overworked and underappreciated–and wholly, numinously damned. Her eyes were stained-glass windows before a towering flame, and the light of it danced across the blackboard with our specials.

She blinked and it was gone, but we both knew what I’d seen. “Make this one a rush, alright? I can’t be late again.” Her voice was thrillingly rich. I didn’t move. “Please hurry.”

“Um,” I said. I couldn’t say anything else.

“Oh, right,” she said. “I’m not here for you. When we come for you, you’ll know it.”

“Oh. Ok,” I said. “Uh, whole or half?”

“Full fat, please.” She’d pulled out a jet-black BlackBerry and started clacking away on it, looking up every few seconds to check the clock. The clock didn’t work; you knew because the mold on it would’ve been shaken off if it ticked. But she kept glancing up anyway.

I pulled it as hot as I could–they’d want that, right? I picked the largest cup, though she hadn’t specified. And on pure impulse, I pulled a second and gave it just a tiny shot of the sheep’s milk my boss sneaks in for his own consumption.

“Uh, here you go,” I said. I was having some very understandable trouble with words.

She took the large latte and looked down at the second, smaller drink. “What’s this?” she asked.

“Well, you seemed like you needed a little something,” I floundered.

She looked up at me with those eyes, the flame roaring behind them, and her lips quirked upward, and she said “hey, thanks! That’s really nice of you.” She took both of them and sat down in one of our uneven, cracked-vinyl booths. She put her long-nailed (taloned?) hands around the small pour I’d pulled for her, and made this short, hiccupy sound, and put her head on the table, and just cried there quietly for, like, five full minutes.

I made myself busy behind the counter, because that’s what you do when a patron has a breakdown; you let them have that breakdown in peace. When she was done, she drained her drink in one swig and walked back up to the counter.

Her glass-before-fire eyes found mine. “Hey, thanks again, I really needed that. What do I owe you?”

“On the house,” I said.

“Won’t your boss get mad at you? She looked up over my shoulder, as if remembering. “Bad Scally? Is that really what you call him?”

“Bad Scally isn’t so bad,” I said. “It’s his kid Worse Scally you have to look out for.”

She looked me over, sized me up, read my life top to bottom for all I know, and sighed, and said, “look, can I come back next week? Have the same order ready?”

“Sure,” I said. I waved out across the fluorescently empty room. “But you’ll have to wait in line like everyone else.”

She almost smiled at that one. And then she got serious. “Do you promise not to tell anyone?”

“Who would I tell?” I asked.

“I mean it,” she said, and the shadows across the room sharpened as she said it. “Do you swear on your eternal soul not to tell anyone I’m coming back here?”

It seemed simple enough. “Sure,” I said. “I swear.”

The relief on her face was completely, absurdly, over the top out-of-place for such a simple promise, for this ratty coffee bar, for the tattered decade I was living out.

“Thank you,” she said, and I could tell she would be smiling if she could. “I’ll see you in a week.” She set her shoulders, cracked her neck, picked up the latte, and checked her watch. “God damn it,” she cursed, “6:65a already?” She turned quickly around and marched out the door, her heels (hooves?) cracking against the parking lot pavement.

So that’s what it was like when I met her the first time. Afterward, I couldn’t help but think that this was how my slide down the hill was going to go–one stilted, awkward, sympathy-for-the-Devil conversation at a time. I still thought it was about me. So let me get you a refill and we’ll talk about last night.

Part 2 tomorrow

It’s my first time writing a Part 2!

Bonus points for folks who can guess the protagonist’s name