Booth Six

The van driver is breathing. You check before anything else, because that's the order the world goes in: airway, breathing, circulation, then whatever the hell just happened.

Diabetic, by the smell of his breath and the pump on his belt. You shout for the ER, and two nurses and a tech come running, and by the time the driver is on a gurney with a glucose line going, you turn around and the woman in the gray coat is walking away down the access road, in the rain, like she has somewhere to be.

"Hey!"

She doesn't stop.

You leave your coffee in the puddle and follow her.

She walks fast for someone who doesn't look like she's hurrying. Down the hill from the hospital, across Ferris Avenue against the light, past the shuttered bakery and the twenty-four-hour laundromat that isn't yours. Rain runs off her coat. She doesn't put her hands in her pockets. She doesn't look back.

She goes into Ormsby's All-Night.

You know Ormsby's. Every medic in Rivermouth knows Ormsby's: the neon coffee cup in the window that's been missing the steam since 1998, the cracked red booths, the pie case that rotates like it's showing off. You've eaten more three a.m. eggs here than you've eaten dinners at a table.

The bell over the door jangles. Connie Ormsby looks up from behind the counter: silver pompadour, reading glasses on a beaded chain, forearms like she unloads freighters on her days off.

"Gray Coat," Connie says, not surprised at all. "Booth six is open, hon."

"Thank you, Connie."

Then Connie sees you, dripping on her mat, and her eyebrows climb.

"Sirens. You're with her?"

"I have no idea," you say honestly.

Connie looks from you to the woman and back, and something in her face goes careful. "Huh," she says. "Coffee?"

"Please."

The woman slides into booth six, at the back, under the clock that runs four minutes fast. You slide in across from her. Up close, under the diner's yellow light, she's even harder to look at. Pale-gold skin that looks lit from inside. That freckle. Lashes with rain on them. Her coat is too thin for November, and she isn't shivering.

Connie brings two coffees and a slice of cherry pie neither of you ordered and sets the pie in front of the woman.

"Same as always."

"Thank you."

Connie leaves. The woman doesn't touch the pie. She leans over it a little, eyes half closed, and breathes in, like it's a fireplace on a cold day.

"Okay," you say. "Who are you?"

"Zephyrine Dray."

"Okay. Zephyrine. How do you know my name? Why were you at three of my calls? And how did you throw me six feet?"

"I know your name because it's on my list." She says it simply, the way you'd say it's raining. "I was at those calls because I'm watching you, which I'm not supposed to do, and because one of them was mine. Barnabas. And I threw you because the van was early. Everything about you is early this week. I don't understand it."

You stare at her.

"Your list," you say.

"I'm a collector." She folds her hands on the table. Long fingers, no rings. "When a person's time comes, someone has to cut the thread. Gently, so it doesn't fray. That's what I do. I've done it for ninety years in this city. I've never been late, and I've never been early." Her mouth tightens. "Until Monday."

"And I'm on your list."

"Friday," she says. "Eleven fifty-two at night." A pause. "I'm sorry. I don't usually say that part out loud. I don't usually say anything at all."

The clock over the booth ticks. Connie's radio plays something with a steel guitar.

You've been doing this job for seven years. You know what this is. Grandiose ideation, possibly a break; she's articulate and oriented to time and place and calm, which is worse, sometimes, than screaming. The strength in the ambulance bay is adrenaline. The calls are coincidence, or she follows scanners. Rivermouth has plenty of people who listen to scanners.

You say, gently, "Zephyrine, can I check something?"

"You want to take my pulse."

"I... yeah."

She holds out her wrist across the table without hesitation, turned up, the way patients do when they trust you. You lay two fingers on the inside of it, just below the heel of her hand.

Her skin is cool. Not cold, not clammy. Cool like a stone in the shade.

You wait.

You move your fingers. You wait again. You try her other wrist, and she gives it to you, patient, watching your face. You press two fingers under the angle of her jaw, and she tilts her head to help you, and her braid falls against your knuckles.

Nothing. Not faint. Not thready. Nothing at all.

"I don't have one," she says quietly. "I'm not supposed to have one."

You take your hand back. It's shaking a little. You put it around your coffee mug so she won't see.

"This is a lot," you say.

"I know." She looks down at the pie. "I'm told I'm bad at this part. Talking. Usually by the time people see me, it's very nearly over, and there isn't much to say."

"Then why are you talking to me now?"

She lifts her eyes. Gray, ringed in silver, very steady.

"Because you saw me on Monday," she says. "Days early. People don't see me days early. And because you keep almost dying before Friday, and every time it happens, I stop it before I've decided to. I don't know why, Ethan. I need to know why."

"Maybe it's because I don't want to die on Friday."

"Nobody wants to." She says it without cruelty. "That isn't usually enough."

Connie drifts by with the coffee pot and tops you up without asking, and she looks at Zephyrine for a beat too long, and then at you, and says nothing at all. That scares you more than the missing pulse.

"Connie," you say. "You know her."

"Forty years," Connie says. "She was here before my dad sold me the place. Same coat." She pats your shoulder like you're a dog that's been hit by a car. "Eat something, Sirens."

When you turn back, Zephyrine is standing, tucking a coin under the plate. The pie is untouched.

"Wait," you say. "That's it? You tell me I'm dying Friday and you leave?"

"I have three more tonight," she says. "Not you. Not anyone you know." She hesitates at the end of the booth, close enough that you can smell the rain on her, and something else, like a match just struck. "Please be careful, Ethan. Things are reaching for you. I don't know why that is either."

The bell jangles. She's gone.

You sit in booth six for a long time. The pie goes cold. Connie doesn't bring the check.

At 6:14 a.m., as you're pulling on your jacket, your phone buzzes in your pocket.

The sender line is blank. No number. No name. Just an empty space where the digits should be.

This is Zephyrine. I have acquired a telephone. Please do not die before Friday.