The Coffee Shop on 3rd

I woke suddenly as someone pounded on the windows outside of my apartment. Glancing over to my right, my eyes searched for the time glowing blue from the clock on my nightstand: 3:17am. Confused and half awake, I slip on my Columbia University hoodie that resides on the floor next to my bed. Maybe one of my neighbors got locked out of their apartment? The pounding continues matching the thumping of my heart as panic begins to swell in my chest. Why wouldn’t they just buzz me then, why bang on the window? Unless they were trying to find a way in and it wasn’t a friendly neighbor at all.

I could honestly laugh at the irony of this situation if all the nerve endings in my body weren’t telling me to be on high alert. When I moved into this apartment after grad school, my mom was a nervous wreck that I was on the first floor, windows facing the street in NYC. You would have thought she’d be over this fear that I was going to get kidnapped considering I’ve been living in the city for almost 11 years. Now glancing around the room searching for a weapon of some kind, I remember assuring her there was nothing to worry about. The jail-like bars on the windows would keep anyone out, and suddenly now I wasn’t so sure. Another loud bang followed by a desperate voice floods my ears.

“Kate! Let me in, please, please be home! Kate, hurry!” I know that voice! As a wave of relief coursed through my body, I ran to the buzzer and let my best friend Lisa into the building. I live to fight another day! As I swing open my door, she nearly knocks me over and runs inside. Slamming the door behind her while gasping for air as if she had just been out for a 10 mile run, Lisa looks at me and breathes “thank you.” She locks the door, walks over to my kitchen table and sits down.

I look at her, still a bit stunned from the events that just occurred, “What is going on, are you okay? It’s 3:20 in the morning Lisa! I thought someone was breaking into my apartment!” I notice that she keeps glancing at the door behind me as if at any moment someone may do that very thing. She rests her forehead in the palms of her hands and shakes her head as if she is in disbelief of something. Lisa finally looks at me with fear filled eyes, “I fucked up Kate. Like, I really fucked up.” I sit down across from her and reach for her hands, attempting to offer some comfort. “I’m sure whatever it is, we can fix it. Do you want something to drink, water or tea maybe?” She shakes her head and says “vodka.”

I head into the kitchen to get the bottle out of the freezer and grab two glasses since it seems like this will likely require alcohol for both of us. Sitting back down at the table, I pour us both a glass and hand one to her. Lisa takes a huge swig, shakes her head and makes the same scrunched up face she’s been making since I met her in undergrad 11 years ago. Setting the glass down she begins, “Sorry about the window, I didn’t know if you’d wake up to the buzzer. Did you happen to read my article from last week?” Unsure of why she wants to discuss her bylines I say, “Of course I did. I read everything you write. It was a great piece! Sad though. I imagine that is exactly what our parents were afraid of when we moved here at 18 years old.” Lisa remains quiet, so I prompt her for more information, “Does the article have something to do with this?” She nods, “ Yes. I wish I had never written it.”

She chews on her lip seemingly thinking about how to proceed and then she begins, “A while ago this girl reached out to me, said she knew I was a journalist and had a story for me. You know how it is when a story shows up like that, you have to at least hear it. I told her to meet me at that coffee shop on 3rd Ave, the one we had found with the cool bookshelf when you were writing your Best Coffee in the Boroughs piece. Anyway, she showed up and told me how she recently had been drugged while out at a club with some promoters and a group of girls from her school. She said she started to feel odd and then doesn’t remember anything else but she woke up in a hospital. I guess her roommate said she called her from the club sounding totally incoherent, so she went to go get her. Then she took her to the hospital because she knew something was wrong, and after the nurses ran a tox screen they said she had Rohypnol in her system.”

Lisa stops for a moment, closes her eyes and shudders as though she caught a chill. We both take another sip of vodka and after a deep breath she continues, “Unfortunately this kind of thing happens way more than anyone thinks. I really wouldn’t have pursued it, but she brought me a list of names of other girls at her school that had experienced the same thing when they were out with this group of promoters. I asked her why she didn’t just take all of this to the police and she said she was embarrassed. She couldn’t believe she fell victim to this kind of thing and just wanted to expose them anonymously. I felt like I owed it to this girl to look into it.” Lisa looks down at her hands for a moment and mutters “I should have just walked her to the police station then and there or gone myself.” She sighs, “Of course though, the journalist junkie in me had to know the whole story. Find out the truth of what was really going on. Kate, the more I dug around, the more twisted it got. The article that came out was barely the tip of the iceberg. I had planned to write a big exposé, several articles released over a few weeks and then I was going to turn everything I had over to the police.”

I can see that she isn’t sure how to continue so I say, “Look, we can go to the cops first thing in the morning, forget the articles.” Lisa stands up and slams her hands on the table “I can’t fucking go to the cops! You have no idea Kate the kind of shit-storm I stumbled upon! The girl, my source, was Melody Sterpton.” That name sounds so familiar to me, like I had just heard it the other day. Where though, possibly from someone at work? No, that doesn’t sound right. Maybe it was on the news. At that moment I think my eyes must have gotten a little too wide not to notice and Lisa said as she sat back down, “Yea, that Melody Sterpton, NYU freshman that disappeared a week ago.” This time she grabs the bottle of vodka and takes a drink right from it.

Lisa pulls out an envelope from her bag and puts it on the table. It has her name written on it in one of those thick, black sharpies. With her hands still on the envelope she looks at me, “A couple of weeks ago, Melody called me to meet at the coffee shop. She sounded flustered and I assumed college stress. When she got there, I could see she was freaked. She kept looking at the door, and truthfully it was starting to make me paranoid. She told me she had made a mistake coming to me in the first place and that I shouldn’t publish anything. Melody said the whole thing was a misunderstanding and she didn’t want the kind of attention this article could bring if people found out she was the source. I reassured her that she would remain anonymous, but she wasn’t having it. She got upset and then got up to leave. I tried to stop her, but she just looked at me and said this won’t end well.”

I feel a chill throughout my body as Melody's words to Lisa wash over me. I realize now that Lisa looks how she described Melody at their last meeting, totally freaked. She slides the envelope across the table to me and says, “This was on the doorstep in front of my apartment when I got home from meeting Melody.” I stare at the envelope in front of me, both wanting and not, to know what its contents are. Lisa encourages me “Open it.” I grab the envelope and inside I find a stack of cash and a handwritten note:

Kill the story!

I look at Lisa then back at the piece of paper and flip the note over. The other side reads:

We know who you are and where you live.

Tell no one.

Our generosity has limits.

You know that feeling you get when your lying in bed at night and the house is quiet but you suddenly hear a creak. You try to convince yourself its just the house making its normal house noises, but that small voice in the back of your mind whispers to you that maybe it wasn’t. Then you just lie there breathing, listening for more and waiting for something. I have that feeling now, but I’m not in bed or in a dark house. I’m staring at a wad of cash unable to form words across the table from my best friend, “Lisa, I—“. She cuts me off, “Kate you have to listen to me carefully. I tried to get Jim to kill the story. I called him immediately after I found the note and the $20,000. I told him the piece wasn’t ready and that we needed to postpone. He said he would wait even though he disagreed, but he lied and published it anyway by executive decision. The next day Melody went missing.”

Lisa takes a shaky breath and her eyes well up with tears as she says, “This won’t end well. Melody warned me, and now I’m here, looking over my shoulder everywhere I go. The last few nights I swear Kate, I’ve heard someone trying to pick the lock to my door. I was at a bar tonight and this guy kept staring at me. I wasn’t far from you, so I just ran here as fast as I could.” Lisa’s eyes grow more intense, “If anything happens to me, you have to promise that you’ll get all of my research and try to figure out where Melody is. I owe that to her.”

“Lisa, come on now—“. “Kate, I need you to hear this. I’ve stored my notes and interview tapes in several different places. I know that sounds odd, but it felt right not to have it altogether. A good chunk is in a small black notebook that I hid in the bookshelf at the coffee shop on 3rd. Look in the top right corner behind the dusty books that no one ever reads. That will get you started and help you find the rest.”

I look at my scared best friend and I just want to hug her and tell her everything will be okay, but I’m not sure that it will be.