‘When one door closes, another's probably getting ready to
smack you in the ass.’

 Nice. My Brookhills coffeehouse, Uncommon Grounds, had
been reduced to rubble by a freak but devastating blizzard.
The very livelihood of Maggy Thorsen was in serious
jeopardy. If another door closed on me, I needed at least a
window to jump out of.

 ‘That's a glass half-empty kind of thing to say, don't
you think?’ I asked, following my friend Sarah Kingston
through the doors of another unsuitable storefront located
in yet another unprofitable strip mall.

 Halfway out I stopped short, the stress of the last two
weeks – and a full day spent with Sarah – overtaking
me. ‘I'd think that you, at least, would want to put a
positive spin on this. After all, as my real estate agent
you stand to make money if you find us a new location.’

 ‘If’ being the operative word. If Sarah found a new place
we could afford. And if gourmet coffee survived the
economic downturn. Hell, with even Starbucks having—

 ‘You are an idiot, Maggy, you know that?’ Sarah, who had
already been heading to the car, turned back to me. ‘I
meant…’

 Slap. The screen door she had just exited slammed shut,
trapping me in the ‘airlock’ between that door and the more
solid one swinging closed behind me.

 Which, of course, smacked me in the butt.

 Sarah opened the screen door to let me out. ‘Sorry, but I
warned you.’

 I rubbed my rump, which was going numb. ‘Sorry my ass.’

 ‘Exactly.’

 ‘So,’ she raised her eyebrows at me, ‘I suppose you hate
this one, too?’

 I stepped off the sidewalk and into the parking lot to
survey the long, squat brick building, fronted with dark
square windows. ‘It's characterless. Not to mention,’ some
feeling was returning to my butt, ‘dangerous.’

 ‘It's perfect.’ Sarah snatched the listing sheet from me
and stuffed it back into her briefcase. ‘My cousin Ronny is
a contractor and he can fix that door in ten minutes. The
space is already outfitted as a coffeehouse. Hell, what do
you want? You and Caron would just have to move in. No
build-out, no new equipment, no nothing.’

 ‘That's because it was a coffeehouse,’ I said. ‘This is
the middle of an industrial park, which is why Perk 'n Stew
couldn't survive. Once the people working in the area
realized they couldn’t really get “stewed” here, the place
went belly-up. What makes you think a resurrected Uncommon
Grounds wouldn’t do the same?’

 ‘This is a perfectly good location,’ Sarah said, a
defensive tone seeping into her voice. ‘Besides, you and
Caron know how to market yourselves.’

 I looked around. ‘FOR LEASE’ signs filled the windows of
not just the building we’d been in, but half the factories
and wholesale businesses on the two blocks I could see. The
strip mall itself was set well back, barely noticeable from
the street.

 The only positive was plenty of parking. Which we
wouldn't need, because nobody was likely to find us. ‘It's
crap.’

 Sarah seemed almost – almost – hurt. ‘And you're
complaining about my attitude? You're not exactly Little
Mary Sunshine yourself this morning.’

 I sighed and sat down gingerly on the curb, thinking
about last night's telephone conversation with my partner,
Caron Egan. Caron had been ‘too busy’ to hunt for new
locations with me. After two weeks of ducking my calls,
she'd finally fessed up.

 Patting my palms on the thighs of my jeans, I
said, ‘Caron wants out.’

 Sarah started to join me at the curb, but glanced down at
her usual uniform of baggy trousers and flapping jacket and
thought better of it. ‘Wants out of what? Her marriage
again? Tell her to find another boy-toy and purge the urge
from her system.’

 Ah, if only it were that simple. A dalliance with an
acned mini-mart clerk and Caron would come running back to
me and our coffeehouse.

 ‘This time it's Uncommon Grounds she wants to dump,’ I
said. ‘She claims our first year was tough enough, without
having to start all over again.’

 Three or four murders, a couple of betrayals. The
occasional natural disaster. What had Caron expected? We
were small-business owners in America’s Heartland.

 ‘Maybe they're having money troubles.’

 I looked up sharply at Sarah, who was digging in her
pockets, likely for a phantom cigarette. She'd given them
up months ago, but the reflex was still there.

 ‘Bernie and Caron?’ I asked. ‘Why? What do you know?’

 Sarah shrugged, but didn't answer the question.

 Caron's husband, Bernie the attorney (yes, yes – I know),
seemed to be doing quite well, even on our country’s
economic roller coaster. The couple had a lovely home on an
acre or…

 ‘They're selling?’ I asked my real estate friend. ‘Did
Caron ask you to list their house?’

 Sarah wouldn't meet my eyes. ‘I can't say.’

 ‘You just did.’ Sort of. ‘Besides, all I have to do is
check the advertisements.’

 ‘It's not on the market yet,’ Sarah said. ‘That's all I
can tell you.’

 Yet.

‘FOR SALE’ signs dotted lawns all across south-eastern
Wisconsin. Milwaukee and its nearest suburbs had been hit
hardest, but even Brookhills, farther west, was feeling the
cash-flow pinch. The little exurb, as its residents like to
think of it, was relatively affluent, but it wasn't
recession-proof. Nor was anyone in it.

 ‘Times are tough,’ Sarah was saying. ‘Good thing you
bought that little shit-box of yours when you did and
didn't overreach.’

 She was right, though I thought ‘shit-box’ was a bit
cruel, despite my blue, stucco walls and puke-green
toilet. ‘Amen to that. I was just lucky I could pay cash
thanks to my divorce settlement with Ted.’

 Because I damn well couldn't qualify for a mortgage.
There was always that pesky question about last year's
income. Negative numbers need not apply.

 Which brought me full circle to my current problem.
Opening a business had been costly and I didn't have much
cash left to draw upon. Happily, I also didn't have many
expenses. Taxes, sure. Wine, but of course. And some food.
Mostly Frank's.

 Frank is my son's sheepdog. A furry stomach on four feet.
And he drooled, even when nothing edible was in sight.

 When Eric took English Lit, he suggested renaming the
sheepdog: ‘We should have called him “Dickens”. He's the
best of times, the worst of slimes.’

 True on both counts. I'd given up mopping sheepdog saliva
off my glass-topped coffee table and taken to using a bath
towel as a table runner. On the other hand, the hairy lug
had made the 663 days since Eric left home for the
University of Minnesota (and Ted, for his slut in the big
house) bearable. Truth is, I missed the kid far more than
the cad.

 But if something good had come out of Ted's affair and
our subsequent divorce, it was that my life had already
been forcibly downsized by the time the recession hit.

 A cloud with a tin-can lining. Can't lose what you don't
have anymore.

 The ‘haves’, though, had lost a lot. If Caron's
hesitation at re-opening UG was because Bernie's specialty –
trademark and copyright law – was on the skids, I couldn't
try to talk her into doing something that might prove
devastating for them.

  Still…‘Caron can't be broke,’ I wailed. ‘I can't afford
her to be. Nobody could do this on her own.’

 Sarah started to say something. Then, apparently thinking
better of it, she clamped her mouth closed and looked away.

 ‘What?’ I got up from the curb and dusted off my tender
butt. ‘I'm going to have a bruise the size of a
grapefruit.’

 But my friend had already started back toward her car, a
yellow 1975 Firebird.

 With a last glance at the loser of a mall, I scurried
after her.

 ‘Wait up,’ I called.

 Sarah stopped short of the car and turned. ‘Listen, I was
thinking…’ She paused again.

 ‘Will you spit it out?’ I demanded. ‘Since when are you
afraid to say what you think?’

 She blushed.

 Sarah. Blushing.

 I felt a twinge of unease. Was she sick? Or were Caron
and Bernie worse than broke? Maybe one of them was sick. I
eyed Sarah. She didn’t usually mince words or shrink from
bad news. Especially somebody else's bad news.

 So I waited.

 ‘Umm…’ Sarah pressed the toe of her shoe into the asphalt
and twisted it, like she was grinding out a lit cigarette.
She gave me the impression of a shy kid at recess, staring
down at the ground while desperately hoping someone would
ask her to play.

 She started over. ‘I was just thinking. Maybe…’ Another
twist of the shoe.

 I waited some more.

 Sarah Kingston finally took a deep breath and looked up.

 ‘Maybe I could be your partner, Maggy.’