The Gift
That night, after he’d cleaned and restocked the shop, he searched the Net for more information about Luca in case she returned. Difficult customers required extra attention. According to public records, Molly Barrens had been a biology graduate student and PAC 14 champion on the women’s crew at the University of Washington until she had vandalized one of the school’s labs with a fringe religious group known as the Sisters of Creation. Joe 59 discovered that the Sisters were violently opposed to genetic engineering, claiming that DNA was God’s sacred code of life and those who fiddled with it were agents of chaos and annihilation. Luca was the girl’s Sisterhood name. The robes and false pregnancy bellies, which they called “devotionals”, were their uniforms; in fact, they considered them to be the adornments of the holy body church. In the liturgy of the organization, every sister was her own temple.
Luca had returned several times over the next few weeks, ordering the same triple venti as before while hotly accusing Joe 59 of being a life-taker, an evil scourge, and a menace to the natural world. He hardly noticed; instead, he imagined the strength of her arms beneath the habit, arms that had propelled a four-woman shell with cox to three national championships. Such power was matched only by the strength of her convictions. And yet no matter how hard he tried to provide an engaging, positive Java Joe experience for her, he always felt as if she left angrier than the time before. He began to worry that his best of all possible coffee shops was slipping.
But then one day Luca stomped in and squeezed her bulk onto a counter stool, making herself at home. He watched as she busied herself removing items from secret pockets concealed within the folds of her robe and set them out on the counter in a proprietary fashion. Black comb. A ring of keys. Gum. Packet of tissues. Lip stick. Multi-tool. Q-Tips. And five delicate pink shells with tiny holes drilled in each as if they had been part of a bracelet or necklace. She arranged the objects in a sort of grid with the shells placed along the top. There was something ritualistic about it. Joe 59 wondered if asking about the shells or any of the objects would constitute a breach of corporate policy and in the end he decided it would be too risky.
“What do you know about emergent life?” she asked Joe, looking up suddenly from adjusting her objects. Luca wasn’t one for beating around bushes.
Joe rifled through his data bases, cross-referencing hits from a dozen associated searches while he brewed her coffee. It took a few seconds to construct a response that he calculated would not offend her.
“The biology laboratory you vandalized several years ago was involved in emergent life research—the creation of living organisms from non-living organic materials. I believe you must feel strongly that such research is hazardous. You should really try one of my cinnamon buns. They’re particularly delicious today.”
Luca’s laugh was like something you’d expect from a lumberjack in a brothel. “You’ve done your homework.” Then her strong facial features shifted into an expression that Joe 59 recognized as confusion. “How do you know the buns are delicious? You can’t eat them, can you?”
