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[Fic][White Collar] Three Times Neal Ran (and one time he was found) – 2. Searching
Title: Three Times Neal Ran (and one time he was found) – 2. Searching
Index Post: [Fic][White Collar] Three Times Neal Ran (and one time he was found) – Index
When Neal runs, he doesn't do it by halfmeasures.
In the nearly four years he's spent in prison, he's come up with eight different plausible escape scenarios, and another couple dozen which have no chance of working but would be a hell of a lot of fun to try right up until the point when the combined anger of several different branches of the US judiciary system crashed down between his ears. Until now, none of them have ever been worth the risk.
Kate's always been able to disrupt all his plans.
But Kate is gone by the time he gets to her apartment, a white-walled studio with exposed, dust-gathering pipes, yellowing blinds, and bare bulbs. It reminds him of the apartment he wrangled when he first came to the city, sweltering in the summer and frigid in winter, white and worn and impersonal. He wonders if that's meant to send a message.
Kate's cleaned out the place pretty well, but there's still detritus: a couple of abandoned house plants, their leaves not yet browning; her bike, some light fixtures, a couple old newspapers; his old, empty Bordeaux bottle, overfull with memories. He stands in the center of it, the bottle in hand, and tries to think more like a detective than a con. There are similarities, of course – both positions need you to get in the head of your case or your mark – but being a con, there's a certain framework, a specific endgame, and you can maneuver everything into that if you're good.
There's no framework, here. Just a mostly-empty apartment and maybe, if he's lucky, a clue to lead him on before the feds arrive.
He makes a circuit of the room, seeing where the dust has gathered and where it hasn't had time to. He opens up the fridge, thinking it's the obvious place to hide something – too obvious, unless Kate is going for obvious to make a point or shake a tail – but his fingers on the cool surface make him think of his hand pressing against a window, of Kate, standing on the other side of the prison glass, stiff and distant. There's always been distance – days between visits, the years of his sentence, the half-inch thickness of the glass in the visiting room. But not like this.
Something is wrong. It was wrong then, and it continues to be wrong now. Kate may have left the prison over a month ago, but she's left here in the last couple of days. It's another disconnect in a world of disconnections: the hard look in her eyes, her body language, tense and held apart. She'd said "I have to go," she'd meant I have to run, and if she didn't want him to run after her, she would have just disappeared. She's done it before.
So here they are, staggered in time and logistics, but running, again. Together.
As soon as he finds her.
Soon as he knows what they're running from.
All that's in the fridge is a bottle of white wine and a carton of chocolate milk, and if that's meant to encode a message, Neal's not sure what the message is. He commits the labels on both of them to memory, just in case; it's a Jacob's Creek Moscato and a Schroon River Organics milk, so there does seem to be a waterways theme, there. Slaves ran in rivers to hide their scents from dogs, New York City is dominated by the Hudson and the East River, and he's no closer to figuring this out.
He shuts the fridge and checks the most likely places he would hide something, but does it quickly; the floor moulding all seems attached, the outlet screws all look painted over long ago, the ceiling is plaster and shows no abnormalities. When that's done, he checks the street outside the window. A silver car that looks too nice for the neighborhood has pulled up down the street, but it doesn't look like FBI surveillance, and aside from that, nothing looks out of place from what he saw when he arrived.
By now someone will have noticed his escape, and the hunt will be on. There was no way he could have concealed his motive for escaping, and that means that whoever's after him – and it'll be Burke, he's sure – will probably be heading right here. It's time to go.
Even if he can't go far.
And yeah, staying in New York City is dangerous. It's Burke's home turf, his jurisdiction, and if he hasn't already put descriptions out to all the easy ways out of the city, he'll be doing that soon. But it's the last place Neal has knowledge of Kate, and the first place he has to start looking.
He's got a bottle, an inventory of a carefully-pruned apartment, and his wits.
He'll find her.
Sometimes, Neal thinks the story of his relationship with Kate is the story of her disappearing, Persephone-like, only to reappear with the spring. As though this is the natural law of their interaction, of their world, and nothing he can do will prevent it.
Most of the time, though, he's not nearly so sanguine.
Kate is gone fast, faster than he would have thought she could get her things together and slip away from their little Seychelles cottage, slip him. But Kate doesn't do things by halfmeasures. Either her bridges are already soot or they're built like the Pons Fabricus, giving the impression that they'll never, never fall. Everything she does is decisive. Every action she takes, in the moment she takes it, is the one she's putting her full weight behind.
Him? Half the time, he doesn't realize he's breaking a promise until he's broken it. Saying When this is over, we take Fowler down, and then he was on a plane, sailing over the Atlantic. Saying I swear, Kate, I'm not lying – no more tricks, not on you, and then a brief mention of Copenhagen, ready to sell her on Jacobsen's statue of the Mermaid, on the Tivoli Gardens, with its arch lit up like a festival at night, on the Amalienbouge, with Alex and the music box and the three-person con nowhere so close to the tip of his tongue.
Saying, Peter. I am not gonna run.
Yeah, the not running has always been a hard part. But it's hard not to run, when something is chasing you, or when there's something to chase or it'll slip away for good.
Besides, his experience of promises has never worked out no matter which side he's on. Not many people make promises to people like him, and half the time the ones that do are lying through their teeth or can't keep the promises they've made.
In public, he and Kate have pretended to be a normal couple, hedge-fund Americans from some place in New England, rich enough to afford a place on the islands but unremarkable aside from that. The first thing a normal man would do when his girlfriend disappeared would be to go to the police, but the illusion is barely skin-deep and the concept of police sets a skittering unease off at the corners of his mind. People like him learn to live without backup. Who's going to have their backs, in the end?
Instead he thinks like someone with a talent for vanishing: Where would I go? What would I do?
It'd be easier if he knew what she was running from.
They've never let themselves have pictures taken, which would be inconvenient if he couldn't draw her from memory the instant a picture might be useful; he packs a moleskine and a pencil and goes out to trawl the underworld of the Seychelles, the private charter boats, the rumor mills. If there's one thing he believes, it's that Kate wouldn't have vanished without leaving a trail for him to follow.
Sometimes, the thought occurs to him that the two of them are game animals, like rabbits or deer, who learned to communicate in flashes of signal before they ran. Every once in a while he lets himself believe that he's not prey any more, and then something comes along and shatters all his pleasant illusions.
Standing in the careful anonymity of no particular streetcorner, staring at the battery indicator of a ten-dollar phone, Neal thinks that if there's one thing to be said about New York, it's that your average bodega is God's gift to the working criminal. The selection of untraceable phones has certainly improved over the four years he's spent in trial and prison, and even knowing that he'll be trashing the phones soon didn't stop him from being tempted by some of the nicer models. But, no. The purpose of these is functional, not aesthetic.
At least, they'd be functional if the universe let them be. None of Mozzie's old numbers work – not that Neal expected them to, if he was honest; Mozzie's paranoia makes the paranoia of Russian governments look like vague concern.
Looks like he's going to have to do this the tedious and uncomfortable way.
There are a few ways to track someone: through their trail, through their activities, through their friends, through their enemies. Trail requires resources, activities requires intel, friends require trust and time. Which leaves enemies, which is a strategy Neal's never been comfortable with, but the situation seems urgent and Neal is sure Mozzie will understand. Probably not approve, but hopefully forgive.
So, he dials.
The line rings for a good half a minute before someone answers, with a curt "What?" that sounds Bronx true and sounds like it was designed to keep people from wanting to keep talking. Neal pastes on a smile, more for the sake of people on his end of the street than the guy he's talking to, and says, "Torrino's Pizza?"
The voice on the other end doesn't miss a beat. "Nah, that shut down years ago, man."
"That's a shame," Neal says. "I've been out of the city for a few years, but I really miss their Margherita shrimp."
Yeah, that passphrase is a few years out of date, but Neal is hoping that been out for a few years will explain that. Though, after a long silence from the other end, that seems unlikely.
"I mean," he says. "I did a job out by Hunt's Point back in April '05; it's the kind of thing that tells well over a couple glasses of wine and a few good slices." He glances up and down the streets – no, no, nothing to see here, passers-by; just a young professional of no particular stripe talking to a buddy. Even if the buddy's probably itching for a gun on the other end of the line.
"You're the Hunt's Point man?" the guy asks. "Prove it."
"Love to. Tell you guys how I did it, too."
"For?"
"Information. Sightings. The news these days. Like I said, I've been out of the city for a few years."
There's some background noise on the other end, a couple more indistinct voices, and then the poor schmuck who's tasked with fielding calls from strangers says "Tell you what. Come down by the Bon Bean Café over on West 40th. If you check out, we'll talk getting you what you need."
"Sounds like a great afternoon," Neal says. "I'll be there."
He hangs up, scrubs a hand across his face, and tosses the phone. Right. There is a chance that this will end with him getting horribly murdered and dumped into the Bronx River, but if it starts heading in that direction... well, he used to be good at getting out of tight scrapes. Hopefully prison hasn't dulled that out of him.
The scrapes in prison are different, is the thing.
West 40th isn't too far from where he is now, and after a few feints down side alleys and false turns here and there, he marks a winding path through the city that he's pretty sure no one has followed. Which doesn't mean, of course, that no one's waiting for him there: there's a nice silver car illegally parked blocking a loading dock. One that looks suspiciously similar to the car outside Kate's old apartment.
Aw, crap.
He's pretty sure he hasn't been made, but he backs away from the cafe anyway. Turns and blends into the crowd, letting his body language mimic the language of everyone else on the street, while his eyes and ears are looking for someone following his movements or a car coincidentally pulling out or a couple men in black suits throwing subtlety to the wind and closing in.
These guys are out of his network. The closest he's ever come to dealing with them was hearing Mozzie on a tear about how they weren't to be trusted, so how the hell does the FBI know to stake them? Or is this just some random spot of bad luck, them under surveillance for something unrelated to him?
No. Thinking in terms of random coincidences is never a good idea. Best case, it's true, but still lazy thinking. Worst case, it gets you killed.
He's halfway down the block when the silver car pulls out into traffic behind him.
Once is chance. Twice is supposed to be a coincidence, but the old rule on coincidences still holds true: people in his profession don't get that luxury.
Twice is enemy action.
At this point, he decides the best idea is to run.
The sands here on Cape Verde are gypsum-white, ocean-lapped, and they'll hold Neal's footsteps for a few yards before washing them away with the tide. That, he thinks, is more or less his life in a microcosm, but it still feels good to get out under the sun and stretch his legs.
Or, it should. He's barely made half his normal jog when he has to stop; he's out-of-breath already, and yeah, maybe Mozzie has a point about him coming down with something. He's still upright, still mobile, and it's not like he's even aching that much, but there's something at the corner of his mind that stays maddeningly just out of his grip and suggests that no, he might not know it yet, but he's never in his life felt this bad.
It's disorienting.
He angles himself back up toward the town, and lets the beach give way to stone and asphalt streets. Ends up, probably not coincidentally, heading for El Cafe Isleño, where a drink and the most recent news mailed in from New York is available.
Maya's not there when he gets into the cafe, but there's an empty table and he sits down in it and sends a charming smile the other girl's way, and she rolls her eyes and comes over to serve him. "You look like a man in need, today, Señor Maine."
Sunk in sight of home, Neal thinks. "Caffè Americano," he orders, thinking the heat will chase away whatever's in his lungs and the caffeine will drive off the fuzz in his brain.
"Americano," the server says; she's fully aware of the joke. "Coming right up."
He leans back and takes deep breaths of the sea air. Can't seem to escape it, on the islands. Right now it's still novel enough to be intrusive; salty and cool, like fresh-fallen tears.
He's not sure why the first metaphor that comes to mind is such a depressing one.
Behind the counter, his server is pulling a long shot of espresso from an old and well-cared-for machine; she brings it out to him without a flourish, maybe because she's decided that he doesn't need any encouraging, maybe because Maya told her not to.
"You should be careful," she says. "Maya was here, earlier. She said a man was looking for you. Asking questions."
Part of him perks up, at that. A more sensible part files it away, warily, into the corner of his attention, and the rest of him hits the deck. "Someone from the city?"
"She didn't say."
"She have a description?"
The server shrugs one shoulder. "Just, 'a man'." She gives him a knowing look.
You're trouble, New York.
"I'll keep an eye out," he says, with a winning grin.
She fails to be won over by it. Just walks back behind the counter and smiles at the next woman coming in.
There are only so many people who could be looking for Neal; fewer still who he'd expect to see in this tucked-away corner of the globe. Mozzie chose this place because it was all but forgotten, all but unknown, nowhere anyone in their business or from their history would find themselves of their own accord.
He breathes in the steam from the Americano, and wonders if it's just anticipation that makes it smell so harsh.
Index Post: [Fic][White Collar] Three Times Neal Ran (and one time he was found) – Index
(i)
When Neal runs, he doesn't do it by halfmeasures.
In the nearly four years he's spent in prison, he's come up with eight different plausible escape scenarios, and another couple dozen which have no chance of working but would be a hell of a lot of fun to try right up until the point when the combined anger of several different branches of the US judiciary system crashed down between his ears. Until now, none of them have ever been worth the risk.
Kate's always been able to disrupt all his plans.
But Kate is gone by the time he gets to her apartment, a white-walled studio with exposed, dust-gathering pipes, yellowing blinds, and bare bulbs. It reminds him of the apartment he wrangled when he first came to the city, sweltering in the summer and frigid in winter, white and worn and impersonal. He wonders if that's meant to send a message.
Kate's cleaned out the place pretty well, but there's still detritus: a couple of abandoned house plants, their leaves not yet browning; her bike, some light fixtures, a couple old newspapers; his old, empty Bordeaux bottle, overfull with memories. He stands in the center of it, the bottle in hand, and tries to think more like a detective than a con. There are similarities, of course – both positions need you to get in the head of your case or your mark – but being a con, there's a certain framework, a specific endgame, and you can maneuver everything into that if you're good.
There's no framework, here. Just a mostly-empty apartment and maybe, if he's lucky, a clue to lead him on before the feds arrive.
He makes a circuit of the room, seeing where the dust has gathered and where it hasn't had time to. He opens up the fridge, thinking it's the obvious place to hide something – too obvious, unless Kate is going for obvious to make a point or shake a tail – but his fingers on the cool surface make him think of his hand pressing against a window, of Kate, standing on the other side of the prison glass, stiff and distant. There's always been distance – days between visits, the years of his sentence, the half-inch thickness of the glass in the visiting room. But not like this.
Something is wrong. It was wrong then, and it continues to be wrong now. Kate may have left the prison over a month ago, but she's left here in the last couple of days. It's another disconnect in a world of disconnections: the hard look in her eyes, her body language, tense and held apart. She'd said "I have to go," she'd meant I have to run, and if she didn't want him to run after her, she would have just disappeared. She's done it before.
So here they are, staggered in time and logistics, but running, again. Together.
As soon as he finds her.
Soon as he knows what they're running from.
All that's in the fridge is a bottle of white wine and a carton of chocolate milk, and if that's meant to encode a message, Neal's not sure what the message is. He commits the labels on both of them to memory, just in case; it's a Jacob's Creek Moscato and a Schroon River Organics milk, so there does seem to be a waterways theme, there. Slaves ran in rivers to hide their scents from dogs, New York City is dominated by the Hudson and the East River, and he's no closer to figuring this out.
He shuts the fridge and checks the most likely places he would hide something, but does it quickly; the floor moulding all seems attached, the outlet screws all look painted over long ago, the ceiling is plaster and shows no abnormalities. When that's done, he checks the street outside the window. A silver car that looks too nice for the neighborhood has pulled up down the street, but it doesn't look like FBI surveillance, and aside from that, nothing looks out of place from what he saw when he arrived.
By now someone will have noticed his escape, and the hunt will be on. There was no way he could have concealed his motive for escaping, and that means that whoever's after him – and it'll be Burke, he's sure – will probably be heading right here. It's time to go.
Even if he can't go far.
And yeah, staying in New York City is dangerous. It's Burke's home turf, his jurisdiction, and if he hasn't already put descriptions out to all the easy ways out of the city, he'll be doing that soon. But it's the last place Neal has knowledge of Kate, and the first place he has to start looking.
He's got a bottle, an inventory of a carefully-pruned apartment, and his wits.
He'll find her.
(ii)
Sometimes, Neal thinks the story of his relationship with Kate is the story of her disappearing, Persephone-like, only to reappear with the spring. As though this is the natural law of their interaction, of their world, and nothing he can do will prevent it.
Most of the time, though, he's not nearly so sanguine.
Kate is gone fast, faster than he would have thought she could get her things together and slip away from their little Seychelles cottage, slip him. But Kate doesn't do things by halfmeasures. Either her bridges are already soot or they're built like the Pons Fabricus, giving the impression that they'll never, never fall. Everything she does is decisive. Every action she takes, in the moment she takes it, is the one she's putting her full weight behind.
Him? Half the time, he doesn't realize he's breaking a promise until he's broken it. Saying When this is over, we take Fowler down, and then he was on a plane, sailing over the Atlantic. Saying I swear, Kate, I'm not lying – no more tricks, not on you, and then a brief mention of Copenhagen, ready to sell her on Jacobsen's statue of the Mermaid, on the Tivoli Gardens, with its arch lit up like a festival at night, on the Amalienbouge, with Alex and the music box and the three-person con nowhere so close to the tip of his tongue.
Saying, Peter. I am not gonna run.
Yeah, the not running has always been a hard part. But it's hard not to run, when something is chasing you, or when there's something to chase or it'll slip away for good.
Besides, his experience of promises has never worked out no matter which side he's on. Not many people make promises to people like him, and half the time the ones that do are lying through their teeth or can't keep the promises they've made.
In public, he and Kate have pretended to be a normal couple, hedge-fund Americans from some place in New England, rich enough to afford a place on the islands but unremarkable aside from that. The first thing a normal man would do when his girlfriend disappeared would be to go to the police, but the illusion is barely skin-deep and the concept of police sets a skittering unease off at the corners of his mind. People like him learn to live without backup. Who's going to have their backs, in the end?
Instead he thinks like someone with a talent for vanishing: Where would I go? What would I do?
It'd be easier if he knew what she was running from.
They've never let themselves have pictures taken, which would be inconvenient if he couldn't draw her from memory the instant a picture might be useful; he packs a moleskine and a pencil and goes out to trawl the underworld of the Seychelles, the private charter boats, the rumor mills. If there's one thing he believes, it's that Kate wouldn't have vanished without leaving a trail for him to follow.
Sometimes, the thought occurs to him that the two of them are game animals, like rabbits or deer, who learned to communicate in flashes of signal before they ran. Every once in a while he lets himself believe that he's not prey any more, and then something comes along and shatters all his pleasant illusions.
(i)
Standing in the careful anonymity of no particular streetcorner, staring at the battery indicator of a ten-dollar phone, Neal thinks that if there's one thing to be said about New York, it's that your average bodega is God's gift to the working criminal. The selection of untraceable phones has certainly improved over the four years he's spent in trial and prison, and even knowing that he'll be trashing the phones soon didn't stop him from being tempted by some of the nicer models. But, no. The purpose of these is functional, not aesthetic.
At least, they'd be functional if the universe let them be. None of Mozzie's old numbers work – not that Neal expected them to, if he was honest; Mozzie's paranoia makes the paranoia of Russian governments look like vague concern.
Looks like he's going to have to do this the tedious and uncomfortable way.
There are a few ways to track someone: through their trail, through their activities, through their friends, through their enemies. Trail requires resources, activities requires intel, friends require trust and time. Which leaves enemies, which is a strategy Neal's never been comfortable with, but the situation seems urgent and Neal is sure Mozzie will understand. Probably not approve, but hopefully forgive.
So, he dials.
The line rings for a good half a minute before someone answers, with a curt "What?" that sounds Bronx true and sounds like it was designed to keep people from wanting to keep talking. Neal pastes on a smile, more for the sake of people on his end of the street than the guy he's talking to, and says, "Torrino's Pizza?"
The voice on the other end doesn't miss a beat. "Nah, that shut down years ago, man."
"That's a shame," Neal says. "I've been out of the city for a few years, but I really miss their Margherita shrimp."
Yeah, that passphrase is a few years out of date, but Neal is hoping that been out for a few years will explain that. Though, after a long silence from the other end, that seems unlikely.
"I mean," he says. "I did a job out by Hunt's Point back in April '05; it's the kind of thing that tells well over a couple glasses of wine and a few good slices." He glances up and down the streets – no, no, nothing to see here, passers-by; just a young professional of no particular stripe talking to a buddy. Even if the buddy's probably itching for a gun on the other end of the line.
"You're the Hunt's Point man?" the guy asks. "Prove it."
"Love to. Tell you guys how I did it, too."
"For?"
"Information. Sightings. The news these days. Like I said, I've been out of the city for a few years."
There's some background noise on the other end, a couple more indistinct voices, and then the poor schmuck who's tasked with fielding calls from strangers says "Tell you what. Come down by the Bon Bean Café over on West 40th. If you check out, we'll talk getting you what you need."
"Sounds like a great afternoon," Neal says. "I'll be there."
He hangs up, scrubs a hand across his face, and tosses the phone. Right. There is a chance that this will end with him getting horribly murdered and dumped into the Bronx River, but if it starts heading in that direction... well, he used to be good at getting out of tight scrapes. Hopefully prison hasn't dulled that out of him.
The scrapes in prison are different, is the thing.
West 40th isn't too far from where he is now, and after a few feints down side alleys and false turns here and there, he marks a winding path through the city that he's pretty sure no one has followed. Which doesn't mean, of course, that no one's waiting for him there: there's a nice silver car illegally parked blocking a loading dock. One that looks suspiciously similar to the car outside Kate's old apartment.
Aw, crap.
He's pretty sure he hasn't been made, but he backs away from the cafe anyway. Turns and blends into the crowd, letting his body language mimic the language of everyone else on the street, while his eyes and ears are looking for someone following his movements or a car coincidentally pulling out or a couple men in black suits throwing subtlety to the wind and closing in.
These guys are out of his network. The closest he's ever come to dealing with them was hearing Mozzie on a tear about how they weren't to be trusted, so how the hell does the FBI know to stake them? Or is this just some random spot of bad luck, them under surveillance for something unrelated to him?
No. Thinking in terms of random coincidences is never a good idea. Best case, it's true, but still lazy thinking. Worst case, it gets you killed.
He's halfway down the block when the silver car pulls out into traffic behind him.
Once is chance. Twice is supposed to be a coincidence, but the old rule on coincidences still holds true: people in his profession don't get that luxury.
Twice is enemy action.
At this point, he decides the best idea is to run.
(iii)
The sands here on Cape Verde are gypsum-white, ocean-lapped, and they'll hold Neal's footsteps for a few yards before washing them away with the tide. That, he thinks, is more or less his life in a microcosm, but it still feels good to get out under the sun and stretch his legs.
Or, it should. He's barely made half his normal jog when he has to stop; he's out-of-breath already, and yeah, maybe Mozzie has a point about him coming down with something. He's still upright, still mobile, and it's not like he's even aching that much, but there's something at the corner of his mind that stays maddeningly just out of his grip and suggests that no, he might not know it yet, but he's never in his life felt this bad.
It's disorienting.
He angles himself back up toward the town, and lets the beach give way to stone and asphalt streets. Ends up, probably not coincidentally, heading for El Cafe Isleño, where a drink and the most recent news mailed in from New York is available.
Maya's not there when he gets into the cafe, but there's an empty table and he sits down in it and sends a charming smile the other girl's way, and she rolls her eyes and comes over to serve him. "You look like a man in need, today, Señor Maine."
Sunk in sight of home, Neal thinks. "Caffè Americano," he orders, thinking the heat will chase away whatever's in his lungs and the caffeine will drive off the fuzz in his brain.
"Americano," the server says; she's fully aware of the joke. "Coming right up."
He leans back and takes deep breaths of the sea air. Can't seem to escape it, on the islands. Right now it's still novel enough to be intrusive; salty and cool, like fresh-fallen tears.
He's not sure why the first metaphor that comes to mind is such a depressing one.
Behind the counter, his server is pulling a long shot of espresso from an old and well-cared-for machine; she brings it out to him without a flourish, maybe because she's decided that he doesn't need any encouraging, maybe because Maya told her not to.
"You should be careful," she says. "Maya was here, earlier. She said a man was looking for you. Asking questions."
Part of him perks up, at that. A more sensible part files it away, warily, into the corner of his attention, and the rest of him hits the deck. "Someone from the city?"
"She didn't say."
"She have a description?"
The server shrugs one shoulder. "Just, 'a man'." She gives him a knowing look.
You're trouble, New York.
"I'll keep an eye out," he says, with a winning grin.
She fails to be won over by it. Just walks back behind the counter and smiles at the next woman coming in.
There are only so many people who could be looking for Neal; fewer still who he'd expect to see in this tucked-away corner of the globe. Mozzie chose this place because it was all but forgotten, all but unknown, nowhere anyone in their business or from their history would find themselves of their own accord.
He breathes in the steam from the Americano, and wonders if it's just anticipation that makes it smell so harsh.