By her calculations, she had slept exactly two hours in the last forty-eight. And even with the best of payment plans—the handyman had allowed her to pay in installments for her new windows and doors—she would not have any spare cash for the next few months.
So she'd been going from table to table, forcing her professional smile and longing—just longing—for the end of the shift. It didn't help that the night was exceptionally hot and the single air-conditioning unit labored, helplessly, against the dry heat that plunged through the windows patrons opened and clung around Kyrie in a vapor of french-fry grease and hamburger smell.
"It doesn't help that Frank is acting like someone did him wrong," Anthony said, as he passed her on the narrow isle between the plastic tables in the addition and gave her a sympathetic scowl. "Couldn't you get your friend Tom to show up?" he said. "I mean, Frank said if I wanted to continue working here, I'd do this shift too."
"I don't know where Tom is," Kyrie said, her voice sounding even more depressed than she felt.
Anthony—tonight resplendent in a ruffled red shirt and his customary tight black pants and colorful vest—looked very aggrieved. "Only, I'm missing my bolero dance group practice." And, at the widening of her eyes that she couldn't control, "Oh, Lord. Why did you think I dressed this way?"
Kyrie just smiled and looked away. There was an answer she had no intention of giving. Instead, she took her tray laden with dirty dishes to behind the counter, scraped them, and loaded them into the dishwasher.
Needless to say the diner was crowded tonight. Probably because people couldn't sleep with the heat—since most houses in Colorado didn't have air-conditioning—and had decided to come here and eat the night away instead. Normally, Kyrie and Tom, after six months of working together, had things down to a routine. Whichever of them went to bus one of his tables did the other's tables too, if they needed doing. They'd worked it out, and it all evened out in the end. When the night was busy, it kept the tables clear so people could sit down as soon as other people left. And that was good. But Anthony, though he was a very nice man, wasn't used to Kyrie's routines.
Kyrie hesitated, alternating between being mad at Tom for not being here, and a sort of formless groping, not quite a prayer, toward some unnamed power to grant his safety. She had as good as kicked him out . . .
No. She wouldn't go there. Of all the useless emotions in the world, the most useless was guilt. She slammed the last dish in the dishwasher, and checked the cell phone she'd slipped into her apron pocket.
Rafiel had said he'd call as soon as he had checked on Tom. He'd call even if he couldn't find Tom. He hadn't called yet. Why hadn't he called?
Kyrie turned from the dishwasher, expecting to see Frank glaring at her for slamming the dish in. But Frank was leaning over the counter, seemingly elated by intimate conference with his girlfriend—or at least the woman he'd been seeing. Kyrie was afraid the staff had decided she was his girlfriend partly as a joke. Which was kind of funny, because the woman was not much to look at.
She had to be fifty if she was a day, with the kind of lined, weathered skin that people got when they'd lived too long outdoors. And she had the sort of features that were normally associated with British women of a horsey kind. Her hair was flyaway, mostly white, and if it could be said to have been styled, she'd been aiming to look like popular pictures of Einstein.
But Frank was leaning forward toward her, to the point where there foreheads almost touched. It revealed his neck, above the T-shirt, and showed a bandage there. Ew. Had his girlfriend given him a hickey?
They'd been seeing each other for a while, but today they seemed cozier than Kyrie had ever seen them.
On the way back to her tables, coffeepot in hand for warm-ups, Kyrie noticed that, despite the woman's weathered features, she wore a very expensive skirt suit. Maybe Frank was interested in her for her money?
"Or maybe he has no taste," she told Anthony, as they met one coming and one going into the addition. "But see, you wished him to get laid and there . . ."
"Don't say it," Anthony said. "Don't even say it. I don't have the money to buy as much mental floss as I'd need to get that image out of my mind." He made a face, as he moved the tray the other way, to clear the doorway. "But it's been going on for a while, now, hasn't it? I hear she's the new owner of the castle. And there's talk she's going to renovate it and use it as a bed-and-breakfast. So, perhaps it is just for money." He looked hopeful.
Kyrie gave her warm-ups and then started taking orders. Went back and gave the orders to Frank, whom, she was sure, was ignoring them. Or didn't even notice the new handful of orders spiked through the order wire.