Bled

by Jason McIntyre

  5.

  He called back at her only once as he was leaving the café. He jabbed a finger at her and again, she felt like she was right up close to his face, even though she was actually standing at the back of the dining room with her arms crossed on her sheer white top way back in front of the kitchen’s double-doors. He jabbed that finger at her from near the front door and said, “Just you wait.”

  That was it. No further explanation from him, no real understanding of what he meant. Was it a threat? Teeny didn’t know. Didn’t really care. The bell over the door jangled and she saw him through the dirty windows diminish across the street toward the Union Rail building. The sweepstakes ticket, of course, it went with him, smooshed into his smelly old black wallet and pressed into his buttocks through his wool slacks.

  Teeny collapsed into the nearest booth.

  Dear God, she said to herself, Why did I tell him anything?

  She put her face in her hands and cried.

  It was thirty-five minutes past twelve.

  Part II

  Fairy Tales

  1.

  Her life should have changed by now. If it hadn’t been for Frank Moort, Tina would probably be making plans today, big ones. She might be doing an interview with the Press, or quite possibly, a much bigger paper on the mainland.

  She’d have her small green hardback case filled with the few cherished mementos she had and she might even be getting on the afternoon ferry today. Headed for the morning horizon instead of always looking out at the dusk one beyond the filmy windows of the café. She should have been heading for opportunity, with a fat head start in the form of a cashier’s check tucked safely in a money belt around her waist.

  But he took all that from her.

  2.

  Two weeks went by before Frank Moort came to the Highliner Café for lunch. It was a Wednesday and Tina stood with a carafe of hot coffee across the restaurant from him. She turned from a table at the opposite side from Frank’s, having just taken an order for a plate of French fries with gravy and a Denver sandwich plus two coffees when she saw Frank settling into his usual table. He was folding his suit coat neatly on the bench seat beside him and looking off toward the black board with today’s lunch specials. She didn’t know why he did that. He always got the same thing.

  Teeny had been staring at his face in her mind’s eye since she’d seen him last, way back on that Friday two weeks ago. Though she felt like he’d not been vanished into the woodwork, his face still looked different to her now. Older. Or something.

  Two days after the confrontation in the café, Teeny had gotten off her shift and headed over to the Moort house, a big old Victorian that Frank shared with his wife Caroline, a reclusive woman who, apparently was in the early stages of multiple sclerosis.

  Teeny had at first stood timid on the front porch and rang the bell. It was late in the day, after the cafe’s supper rush and the end of her shift. The Moort’s was just a walk south and a few blocks out of her way to Lannen Lane, the house she still shared with mom and two brothers when they weren’t out trawling.

  The sun was going down by the time Teeny got there and she’d banged on the screen door a few times, then blew a puff of air out and turned to go. That’s when she had heard a noise inside the house. She looked back at the door, expectant that it would open. But it didn’t. She opened the screen door and blasted her fist against the wooden face of the inside door, then on the pane of glass in its window, so hard it made the white sheer curtain vibrate on its other side. Nothing. No one came.

  She called out for Frank Moort to come. Come on, Mr. Moort. I know you’re in there, all that sort of talk. The sun went down and still Teeny McLeod waited for Caroline or Frank Moort to open the door. Still she pounded on it, walked around back, pounded on that one. Still she peeked in windows and shouted at the house. She’s embarrassed to think of it now, but, after about two hours of this, pleading and hoping and praying that Frank Moort would open the door, Teeny broke down in tears, long anguished cries of pain. She felt like she’d lost everything and that Frank was the one who should give it back. As she dried her eyes and got up from the green lawn of the front yard, she saw a light in an upstairs window. Then a dark figure, most likely a woman, turned away from that window and disappeared into the expanse of the room.

  Defeated and drained of every ounce of her energy, Teeny had come home to numerous worried questions from her mother.

  Now, Teeny realized she was daydreaming again. Standing in the café in the middle of a lunch rush, the dining room was abuzz with activity. Loud and boisterous talk from the small business community of Dovetail Cove mingled with sounds of kids and their parents. Jim Swanson, manager of the Foodway on Broadway, was having a lunch meeting with grocery distributors from the mainland. Mr. Parson, the owner of the hardware store had some of his relatives in to lunch on account of there being a Parson family reunion this weekend. Doris, a seamstress at Nightingale’s dress shop was wooing the rich Banatynes at the corner booth so they’d spend at her shop for their daughter’s upcoming wedding. It felt like the whole town was here in a light haze of heat and smoke from burning cigarettes.

  Teeny felt the weight of the heavy coffee carafe in her right hand as though someone had just poured it full to the top right from empty. She snapped out of her faraway dreamland and back to reality, with the voice of her mother calling her name:

  “Tina. Tina, dear.”

  “Mama.” Tina looked down and saw her mother waiting patiently at table fourteen but with neck craned up at her daughter. “What are you doing here? You should be home—who brought you?"

  “Delia from the church, dear—” She nodded at the woman across from her at the table “—she brought me into town for some lunch and a little light shopping. I need a new dress and there’s a sale on at the Kresge. Would you be a dear and get us some iced tea, hon? Just whenever. We’re not in a hurry and I see you’re very busy today. “ She hit the word busy, as if it was sympathetic.

  A few tables over, Helen was serving Mr. Moort his chicken salad sandwich and Frank gave her a curt, pursed little smile before unfolding his paper napkin. He did not look around, this man alone at a four-person booth, by himself in a sea of buzzing activity.

  “Sure, Mama. Be right back. Hi, Mrs. Smythe.” Delia Smythe nodded at Teeny and went back to scouring the menu as if nothing on it was even remotely suitable for a woman of her class and stature.

  Teeny was surprised to see mom here. The woman never left home, despite Teeny worrying about her being alone much of the time. Teeny took her to church, church group and games night. Other than that it was replays of those racy daytime soaps and game shows like Concentration and The Price is Right. There was time to do her bible reading and look out at birds eating the peas in an overgrown garden that Tina tried to manage all summer after the boys planted it each spring. But Mama didn’t do anything else. She simply didn’t.

  Over there at his table, Frank Moort quietly chewed bites of his chicken sandwich. Rumour was, his wife had left him, taken her canes and her pill bottles and a few pieces of luggage and had Arnold Dyer, the town’s only taxi driver, get her onto the ferry. Teeny wondered if some of the story was true or if it had devolved from elderly neighbours of the Moorts seeing a woman bawling her eyes out on the front lawn of the Moort house nearly two weeks ago. Maybe their old brains combined that with just a conveniently-timed holiday trip by Caroline Moort.

  “Hey. Dream-girl. Snap out of it.” Helen was up in Tina’s face and they were both back in the kitchen, full with two cooks, Darlene, the other waitress today, and the sounds and smells of burgers grilling, the fryer making one basket of onion rings and one of french fries plus hot egg sandwiches and the tang of pepper and grease in the air.

  “Yeah, what?" Tina was a little short with Helen.

  “Keep yer panties out of your crack, Teeny. I need you to do a pineapple cheesecake at 29. I’m swamped.”

  “Yeah. ’Kay.” Teeny was still
sidetracked and only realized that 29 was Moort’s table after she’d said she’d handle the cheesecake. She didn’t want to talk to that man, and quickly thought she’d spit in his cheesecake before adding the canned pineapple topping.

  Of course, she knew she wouldn’t do that.

  Feeling exhausted, rolling through the orders in her mind, the tables, how soon the fries would be ready, when to plate the Denver sandwich, Teeny then remembered that her mom was in the café today, too. So weird. And with Mrs. Smythe too. Mama hated no one—she was too devout in her following of the Lord to hate—but she didn’t have a lot of time for the Smythes. Maybe Mrs. Smythe was a project of Mama’s. Teeny wasn’t sure but wondered if a shopping trip to the Dovetail Downtown Kresge store was step one in retrieving Mrs. Smythe’s soul from the threshold of hell.

  And that was another thing. Mama was going shopping for a new dress? No one pinched her pennies tighter than Teeny’s Mama. Getting a new dress was crazy.

  Teeny went to the cold room at the back of the Highliner, yanked the latch and drew the big heavy door open. The squeal of the hinges triggered for her the memory that on Saturday she’d used the last big can of Tahitian Delight cut pineapple pieces when Dana and Dia, the Montmartre twins had come in for pistachio pineapple crisp. She scoured through the metal rack shelving, thinking perhaps one can might turn up, having been misplaced, put in the spot where chick peas or lima beans or canned peas was supposed to be instead. But there weren’t any cans. Not one. She thought, I could make it cherry cheesecake instead. We have a truckload of canned cherries. The last thing she’d want to do is go out there and talk to Frank Moort, even if it was just to tell him he couldn’t have the pineapple but a chocolate cheesecake or a cherry cheesecake were his sweet tooth’s only options.

  She thought she might break down into tears if she even had to look at him, sitting there in his booth, probably with that sweepstakes ticket folded into his ratty old leather wallet.

  She bet it wasn’t in his wallet though. He’d probably already gone to the sweepstakes office on the mainland, probably did it the Tuesday after the long weekend when he’d taken—no, when he’d absconded—with her ticket.

  Teeny got down on her knees, only briefly it crossed her mind that she might put runs in her hosiery. She craned her neck and peered under the bottom shelf of the metal rack of shelving. There, on its side, was one lonely can of Tahitian Delight pineapple, the large commercial size. Its label was canted, slightly towards her and slightly up, but the picture of the yellow chunks was unmistakable. The Highliner had been buying the same brand since Teeny started here.

  She reached for it, wary that a rat or a spider might scurry out of the dark shadowy places under the rack of shelving and scuttle up her arm. She stretched, strained. Her finger tips touched the cold metal of the can and she wiggled them to get purchase on the tin. But it was wet.

  Still she strained. Realizing the can was wet, she shivered at the touch of the cold metal lid. This was gross, no doubt about it. She’d seen rats back here herself but had also heard Miguel tell her about one raccoon and countless stray house cats who’d wandered in. She could imagine one of them peeing under the shelving rack and then this big stray can of Tahitian cut pineapple rolling through the smelly yellow puddle down there in the dark. But going out to the dining room and looking Frank Moort in the face to tell him there was no pineapple was worse. She wanted to spit at him, to shout, but her Mama was in the restaurant. She knew she would do no such thing, not with Mama here, and, quite honestly, not even if she wasn’t. If she’d been a sweepstakes winner with two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in her bank account, maybe she’d have the gall to tell him what she thought about him, but if that was the case, this line of thought would be moot anyway.

  She’d be out of this town, off this island. And the likes of Frank Moort would never bother her again. Probably, in truth, never even cross her mind.

  She got her fingers curled around one back edge of the large tin and pulled it, sending it on an arced roll towards her. As it came close she saw that nearly one half of the can was darkened, as though it was the back half of a rotten tooth that looks normal in the mirror over the sink but revealed to be rotten right through on the negative image of the X-ray film. The can looked like it had been eaten up on that side. A clear liquid oozed from a wound that was hideously black, like textured embers in a dead fire with white, powdery sections, as if it would rub off like fine, bubbling sea foam.

  “Yuck,” she said and yanked her whole arm out from under the rack. It was thicker than water or pee. She rubbed her fingers together and looked at them in the dim light. She couldn’t make out colour, but it felt like a thin jelly on the tips of her fingers and up the length of her index.

  Just gross, she thought and wiped her wet fingers on her pink apron which she usually prided in keeping crisp and perfectly clean. A wave of crushing disappointment came as she realized that she’d have to go out and talk to Frank Moort and explain to him there would be no pineapple cheesecake today.

  3.

  Teeny leaned forward and put her open palm on Frank Moort’s table. She’d been standing there saying his name, Mr. Moort, Mr. Moort?, but he was looking off into the distance, oblivious to Teeny McLeod. The buzz in the restaurant was at its full lunch-hour crescendo and she had nearly needed to shout his name. Still he hadn’t turned his head to look up at her so she’d finally leaned forward. Self-consciously, she wondered if he was simply waiting for her to lean over like this so he could get a nice long look down her blouse at the white wonder bra she was wearing.

  Finally, Mr. Moort blinked and looked at Teeny. He gave a little smile. She noticed that his eyes were badly bloodshot. He gave a sickly sniffle but said nothing. “Mr. Moort,” she said hitching her voice and fighting a lump in her throat, “We’re out of pineapple. You can have chocolate or cherry cheesecake or you can pick something else.”

  Just spilling these simple words threatened to make her cry but she would not give him that satisfaction. Nor would she do so in the presence of her mother whose eyes she could feel on her back. She didn’t know if she was imagining this or if her mother was actually looking at her. Likely, Teeny thought, Mama was having a conversation with Delia Smythe but secretly wondering if she could save the woman’s soul, quietly steering their talk towards discovery of what would help the Smythe woman find proper salvation. In all likelihood, Teeny’s Mom was doing no such thing, and certainly not looking in Teeny’s direction. But still, she felt bore holes in her back.

  Finally, Frank Moort spoke. “No problem. I’ll just finish my coffee. Have to get back anyway. The bill please, Tina?"

  Mr. Moort never called her Tina. Never. It was always dollface. Sweetcakes. Or babydoll. Not Tina. He blinked again and gave her his smallest, thinnest, most polite smile, then he reached into his back pocket to yank out his old wallet. Teeny scrunched up her face then flinched at the thought of what might be in that wallet of his.

  “I’ll get it,” she said and walked off.

  The lunch crowd wasn’t thinning yet. It was still loud in the Highliner and every table was buzzing. Waitresses hurried to get steaming plates out. Philippe shouted an order up from behind the kitchen wall. Dab Saum’s register dinged with another lunch bill paid.

  When she returned to Frank Moort’s table, he had already pulled out some money and was absent-mindedly poking at some coins stacked on top of his five dollar bill. Teeny wasn’t sure but it felt like the two fingers that had touched that colourless jelly oozing from the pineapple can were starting to burn. She looked down at them as she dropped Frank’s dinner bill onto the table near his stack of money. They were definitely reddened. It was an itchy sting now.

  Again, Frank Moort didn’t acknowledge her. And this was starting to get Teeny’s back up. The engine was getting ready to rev. Blood pumped in her ears and then she started talking.

  Teeny leaned forward, palms open on the table, skin of them pink and dented by tiny cru
mbs from his meal. She looked Frank Moort in the eyes, his red with blood, hers circled by dark purple-grey.

  “I want that sweepstakes ticket, Mr. Moort. And if you don’t give it back to me I swear to God I will go to Chief Birkhead and tell him everything. Everything, Mr. Mort. Including the part about you in the...men’s room.”

  There was the tiniest hint of startle in Frank’s bloody eyes but it faded quickly. It wasn’t a start at what she was asking, no, but only perhaps that Tina McCleod had the nerve to say anything at all.

  He hesitated a moment, glaring back into her eyes, both Teeny and Frank unflinching.

  From behind her, within in the babble of customers, the clink of cutlery and coffee cups, one familiar voice emerged, stood out and became voluminous.

  “Teeny! Oh, Teeny!”

  It was Tina’s mom. Tina broke her gaze with Frank Moort, like a doe on the highway getting a flash of the high beams to break a trance. Tina glanced sideways, let out a disgusted exhale, then stood back upright and brushed away the tiny, dry bread crumbs that had been stuck to her palms.

  When Teeny’s mama had realized she got her daughter’s attention, she kept talking, shouting really, across the width of the restaurant to be heard. “Delia and Mr. Smythe have invited us to lunch on Sunday after church, dear. Won’t that be nice? Can you check your schedule, dear, and make sure you’re not working in the afternoon? We’ll want to stay for a nice chat—” then Mrs. McLeod turned to Delia Smythe across from her. “—Won’t we, Delia?”

  Delia Smythe only nodded again, with her flat mouth tight and her eyes lacking any indication of her thought process. And since her mom’s words had been more of a statement, rather than a question, Teeny briefly thought it made sense that Mrs. Smythe had nothing to add. But did this woman have absolutely nothing to say? Ever? Was her mother just sitting there talking the poor woman to death? With all the time that her mom spent alone, it wouldn’t surprise Teeny if she’s nearly shredded poor Mrs. Smythe’s welcome mat.