Deeply Odd(50)
Tucking the loaded pistol under the seat, I said, “There’s something here we need to know.”
Mrs. Fischer said, “What would that be?”
“Beats me. But I’ll know it when I see it or hear it.”
“You don’t think you’ll need the gun?”
“No, ma’am. Not here.”
“Just the same, I’ll keep mine in my purse. I’ve needed it before in the most unlikely places.”
Nineteen
I RARELY HAVE SUCH MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT A NEW place when first setting foot in it as I had upon entering Ernestine’s.
On the one hand, I felt as if I had come home. From the age of sixteen, when I moved out of my mother’s house to live alone, I had worked at the Pico Mundo Grille, the quintessential diner, where I knew some of the happiest times of my life.
The Grille was scrupulously clean, both in the public areas and in the kitchen, and judging by what I could see of Ernestine’s, the hygiene standards were equally stringent. The lighting achieved that perfect median—bright enough to read the menu easily, to be assured that the management was proud enough to cast light into every well-scrubbed corner, and to engage in people-watching, but low enough to be cozy, intimate.
On the long serving counter, at which several customers sat on chrome stools with red-vinyl seats, were several pedestal displays of cakes under glass, each more enticing than the one before it.
Of all the signifiers that Ernestine’s was a class act, however, the mouthwatering smells were the most convincing. Sautéing onions and green peppers in an omelette pan waited for the eggs. Ground-sirloin burgers, sizzling on the griddle, were ready for the cheese. The savor of frying bacon, the scent of toast, the aroma of fine coffee—all of it was seductive enough to test the willpower of the most devout monk in the middle of a fast.
But though I felt welcome here and in my element, as a sailor in love with the sea feels most at home on a ship, an albatross hung around the moment. The cowboy had been here, eaten here; and from my perspective, even his brief presence was a curse upon the place.
With the dinner rush not quite yet begun, seven booths were open, and I was drawn to one in particular, as a boarhound to a boar. The cowboy and I were part of an age-old pattern that seemed like chaos but was not, participants in the perpetual struggle that began when time began, that would not end when we two were dead, that would end only when time itself ended.
I sat where he had sat.
Mrs. Fischer sat opposite me, where perhaps the stocky man with the battered face had enjoyed an early dinner.
Nothing remained to attest to the previous presence of those two men in this booth. Evil travels the world in anonymity, its presence revealed only by the periodic consequences of its desires, like the missing children and the dead men in the factory basement. To most people in this age of denial, those consequences always come as a surprise, because they fear not what they should but only straw men, imagined threats, phantom crises.
Neither Mrs. Fischer nor I had taken lunch, and dinnertime was upon us. Intuition told me that the children were not in immediate danger of being murdered and that the worst thing I could do would be to rush into the breach before I better understood what I was up against. Until I discovered what clue was waiting in Ernestine’s to be revealed, we might as well eat.
In fact, although it isn’t profound, there are worse mottoes to live by than “We might as well eat.” Say your neighbor’s secret meth lab blows up, destroying your house along with his. We might as well eat. The secretary of defense announces from Sweden that he is having a sex-change operation, is in love with the prime minister of Russia, and has given his lover our nuclear launch codes. We might as well eat.
The gruesome scene in the factory basement had not spoiled my appetite. If every horror I have seen were to leave me so disgusted that I turned away from food for any length of time, I would be a bag of bones subsisting on bottled water and vitamin pills.
Our waitress, Sandy, was a pretty, thirty-something, freckled blonde. She presented herself to the world with appealing directness: no makeup, hair pulled back in a ponytail, her white uniform fresh and neatly pressed, a pendant cross at her throat, a flag pin on the lapel of her blouse, modest engagement and wedding rings on display.
Waitressing can be a hard and thankless job, largely because it requires dealing politely with people regardless of their temperament or mood, even though sometimes you just want to smack them. You can always tell when a waitress likes her work. She lacks the slouch and shuffle that signifies boredom and grievance. Her smile isn’t fixed but comes and goes easily, appropriate to the moment. She makes eye contact and notices details because her customers interest her, not as the source of tips, but as people.