“Penny didn’t do this,” she said flatly.
“God. Of course not.”
Flaca released me, moving away. It was twenty degrees hotter inside the kitchen, and the skin on my arms began to take on a thin sheen. The room smelled overwhelmingly sweet, the pastries baking in the double oven. I followed her back to the counter where she picked up a silver sifter, shaking powdered sugar over a rack of wedding cookies.
“Dime. You pissed someone off.”
“That’s not what I came to talk about.”
“Oh? What does Cale want to talk about?” She set down the sifter and lifted the tray, sliding it onto one of the rolling racks.
“Penny never showed up to work last night,” I spoke to her back. “Maybe you’d know where she is.”
“I have no idea.”
“But you’re always together.”
“So are you,” she said, turning to shoot me a look. “Lately.”
“Flaca, I went to her place. She didn’t answer. I used the spare. She wasn’t there but she left her cellphone behind. You don’t think that’s weird?”
“That Penny forgot her phone?”
“She didn’t forget it. And she hasn’t come back, not that I know of.”
“Where is it now?”
“What?”
“Her phone, Cale.”
I hesitated. All the drops Penny was making for her, the business Flaca would lose if Penny didn’t have it on her. There was no good way to deliver the news.
“I might have given it to the police.”
“What!”
“I’m sorry! That’s why I’m here.”
Flaca rubbed her face, smearing flour down her cheeks. The bandanna pulling back her hair brought her features into stark focus; the angle of her cheeks and chin, her nose a degree too sharp. I longed for Flaca’s mother to emerge from the front of the shop, to see mother and daughter standing side by side and compare their faces and hands, to ask how some things could be passed down so easily from one to another while other familial aspects were entirely betrayed.
“I didn’t know what else to do. Maybe it could help? I have a feeling—”
“A feeling!”
“Something could be wrong.”
“And what are the cops going to do?”
“Help find her?”
Flaca laughed. In all the time we had been in school together, I couldn’t recall the sound. I had never heard it, or I had heard it too often; it had dissolved into the childhood soundtrack of playground sounds along with the recess bell, the squeak of swing sets, the rhythmic whip of jump ropes slapping the blacktop. It cracked her face wide open, making her appear less birdlike, revealing a pliable warmth: a secret she had kept hidden inside herself all this time.
“You can’t help it, can you?”
“They’re probably going to call you,” I said.
“The cops aren’t going to do shit.”
“How do you know?”
“I know.”
I met her eyes. “If they don’t, who will?”
“Relax. Penny’s fine. If she went somewhere, she’s already back and pissed you went through her shit.”
“Where could she go? She doesn’t have a car.”
“She can get a ride.”
“You’re the one who gives her rides!”
“I’m not the only one.” She said it pointedly, something in it I was supposed to extract.
“Fine. Okay? Say she got a ride. Why hasn’t she come back yet?”
She looked heavenward, as if the answer was soon to arrive. “You don’t understand. She thinks she’s like you. But we’re not anything like you.”
“What’s so wrong with me, anyway?”
“For one thing, you’re dumb about things you never had to know about.”
I realized we were standing at a cross angle from one another, that I had one hand on my hip, that she had both on hers. I wanted to drop my hand, to tell her where I’d found Penny’s phone, and how, the rolls of cash in the freezer, what they might mean. If Penny was here, she would have trusted Flaca enough to tell her about the desert and the sand-colored man, everything. If we were going to traffic in secrets, Flaca’s could rival us all. Flaca was surveying the pastries on the counters, a curious expression growing on her face, as if they were bizarre, diminutive creatures struggling toward life.
“What is it?”
“How long has it been?” Flaca asked.
“Since she’s been gone? I don’t know. She was supposed to be on shift the night before last. What time is it now?”
“Almost eight. So what is that? Two days? Three?”
I didn’t answer. She looked up, finally seeing me. The wheels in her mind, I could tell, were beginning to turn.
“You have an idea. Someplace she could be.”
“No,” she said. “But maybe I can find out.”
11
The other waitress, Clara, was awkward but gentle. A small woman, elflike in stature, wispy platinum hair trimmed into a bob. In another life she was a nurse. I had no idea when that career began or ended but I imagined all manner of possibilities: a patient dying on the table, a lost child, an affair. The only token remaining from her previous identity was those pragmatic, rubber-soled shoes, their mouseish echo trailing behind her on the waxed floors. The things Penny disliked about her were not eccentricities so much as personality traits that, when compiled, revealed a sensitivity, a tendency toward artistry. Clara remained quiet for hours, speaking only to request the music be lowered a degree, a piece of silverware polished a second time. Her requests were exacting, startling in a voice so gently delivered. Her singularity contributed to the diner’s familial quality. Jake’s was a place where a plate of scrambled eggs and a Monte Cristo might overshadow other problems, other lives.
Junior arrived early every morning, bull-shaped and perpetually vexed, and stayed long enough to collect receipts and the previous evening’s deposit. The rest he left to us. Besides Rico and Benoit, the other short-order cook, it was a space ruled entirely by women. So maybe this is why the men came. Maybe we made the diner feel like a bosom, a warm lap. Maybe we made it feel like home.
By now I could walk from one end of the diner to the other with my eyes closed, the blueprint etched firmly in my mind. In the front of the diner were six square Formica tables; behind them, a long counter wrapped around the kitchen like a grin. The second stool over had a rip in the tobacco-colored vinyl, the fourth worn so shiny it would split any day. All the stools squeaked when turned. To the left of the counter, a faint indentation remained in the floor where a wall once partitioned the space. I stood in the ghost of that room and imagined a family moving inside; what they talked about, how they spoke. Beneath four east-facing windows, a coveted row of booths overlooked a patch of tangled juniper bush.
During the week, Penny worked the overnight shift and our paths crossed in the morning hours. I arrived at ten and propped the front door to air the sharp odor of bleach. Penny counted tips while I tied my apron and checked stock. Luz and Flaca arrived together and smoked cigarettes on the porch, waiting for Penny to finish. When I saw them now, Luz chinned at me, but Flaca still tracked me with her eyes. I wondered what they did together so early in the morning, before the bars were open, Pomoc’s list of diversions were few. There was only one kind of business I could imagine, and I was fairly certain it was one in which they were all developing a stake.
By the afternoon, when the sun seared the windows and the patrons skittered like wise animals seeking cool dark shelter, I walked onto the porch to smoke one cigarette after another, scanning the road for the next car that might turn off, white or blue or green, a minivan, a truck, a man, a couple. Here was the hour Lamb would return to our empty house; now he would open the fridge for a slice of cheese, now he would pour a cup of coffee i
nto his favorite striped mug, smoke a cigarette, take his pills, read a book in the front room, then pull weeds in the yard. If I wasn’t there to call him to the table, would he eat his dinner just the same? It was as if I’d forgotten all the years between his old family and new, the hundreds of evenings he must have stood alone in front of a fridge or a bed or a mirror, evaluating how to proceed.
I counted the hours until dusk began to eat the light, her ravenous rose glow. I wiped down countertops and stacked dirty plates, refilled salt shakers and ketchup bottles, stocked napkins and paper-covered straws. Rico slipped out of the kitchen after sunset, squatting in the back alley with a cigarette clamped between his teeth, staring at shadows in the dirt. When he returned I poured him a cup of coffee and watched him shake little blue pills out of the Ziploc bag Penny hid underneath the register every Monday morning before she left work. He crushed one under the back of a spoon and cut the line off the prep sink, bending his face to vacuum up the powder with a rolled dollar bill. After years of moving through the same small town with the same tired faces, we all knew the tweakers, potheads, and pipe fiends; who might get high for fun and who needed a bump to get by—and who they called for their supply. In all that time, I had never known Penny to deal. It was Flaca with the reputation; Flaca in the girls’ bathroom at Vista, angling her sharp, lean figure over some blitzed-out cheerleader by the sinks. So if Rico was getting drugs from Penny, Rico was actually getting his drugs from Flaca. For the most part, Pomoc’s chain of supply wasn’t of particular interest. It was just all those years I spent carefully watching, the habit slow to leave me.
By night the diner cooled off under the fans. Rico returned to his post behind the cook’s window. I went outside to plug in the Christmas lights, their diminutive bulbs twinkling in the window. The promise of Rico’s food once again lured peckish townies from their homes; they creaked over to the diner in rattling cars; they sat at the counter, where they could catch sight of Rico’s white shirt moving behind the stove, his battle-scarred hands plating their meatloaf year after year, in all manner of heartbreak and joy. They made small talk, watching me roll forks and knives in paper napkins. They asked for pie.
I came to recognize the cross-country truckers winding along the same routes, again and again. These men tipped their hats and ate fast, then lingered over their last cup of coffee. I imagined other lives for them, wives and babies and dogs somewhere, awaiting their return. Some nights I left before Penny arrived, driving home under a sky the impermeable color of spilled ink. I let myself into our shuttered home. The dogs slunk from the shadows to greet me in the hall, wagging cautious, loyal tails. I stroked their solemn heads, feeding them each a square of cheese. Their parting signal was a whisper, a kiss on the ear, a clap of my hands to send them off. I listened to them racing upstairs, the squeak of Lamb’s bedroom door. They settled at the foot of his bed like sentinels against the night, shielding him against all manner of danger we could not yet know.
12
On the weekend, Penny and I arrived early to meet a shipment of stock, then loitered behind the counter, waiting for the weekend crowd of families and their sticky-handed children, groups of sulky friends still hungover from a night at one of the palo bars. Penny leaned back against the counter and twisted her hair, still wet from a shower, into a bun on the top of her head. She dug into the wide pockets of her apron and scattered a number of bobby pins onto the counter; a compact, a squashed stick of gum, a slim tube of mascara. Once she secured her bun, she flipped open the mirror and examined her high cheekbones before reaching for the mascara, parting her lips to ink her lashes. When she finished she screwed the cap back on, arching an eyebrow in my direction. “Want some?”
“No,” I said. We were both keeping one eye on the door as if bracing for a mob, but the parking lot was barren. Pomoc dreamed on.
“I have my whole makeup kit in the back,” Penny said.
“No way.”
“Just a little makeover? You’re pretty, actually, it’s your clothes. You’re very committed to this Ponyboy look.”
I shot her a dark look, surprised when it muted her into silence. We stared out the window side by side, waiting for a car. After a while she flipped open the lid on the sundae tray and picked at the chopped peanuts. Ate a few. Dug for a handful and and threw them at me.
“Penny—” I ducked, but she was already reaching for more. She shot them hard and fast, the spray bouncing off my bare arm.
“You’re going to clean those up!”
“Cale, come on! I’m bored. You’re a loner, so I’m going to tell you how this works, okay? When people spend a lot of time together, they get to talking. They tell each other things, even when I’m not asking you a direct question like Cale, where did you put the pineapple sauce? Or Cale, how was your week?”
“You hired me!”
She chucked another handful of nuts in my direction. “Temporary insanity.”
“Ugh.” I untied my apron and tugged my shirt free from of my shorts, shaking out peanut bits. “I hate you.”
“Liar.” Penny wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist, a brusque, elegant motion, already familiar. The fans were going, just pushing the hot air around. I moved down the counter to pour myself a cup of coffee. I poured a second cup for her and slid it down. She caught it, sighed.
“My week was lame,” she said. “Tips were shitty. Every week here is lame.” She paused. “I should have just hired Luz. But she’s so dumb.”
“Then why do you hang out with her?”
She shrugged. “She came with Flaca. They were a package deal.”
“What do you guys do together all the time?”
“Nothing. Hang out.”
I dug deep inside my shirt to fish a peanut out of my bra and tossed it on the floor. “You’ve been friends forever, right?”
“It feels that way.”
We both heard the car turning into the gravel lot and turned to look. It was a woman in an ancient teal two-door. We watched her climb out; pink pajama bottoms, a loose T-shirt hanging over a large bosom. One of those cottage cheese and cantaloupe ladies, her hair pressed in curls.
“What are you doing after work?” Penny asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Well, I’m going to Rena’s.”
“Are you asking me to go with you?”
“If you want.”
“Is this the kind of thing you’d do with Luz and Flaca?”
“No, we make tamales and listen to mariachi.”
“Funny.”
“I am, actually. But you . . . who knows? I’ve been meaning to ask. ¿De dónde son tus ojos? ¿Eres india? ¿Dominicana?” She took an exaggerated step back, squinting. “Wait. Don’t tell me. ¿Egipcia?”
The woman was walking toward us now. I watched her get closer and closer until she disappeared under the low stair.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
I didn’t have to look over to know Penny was pursing her lips, flattening them; the thing she did when she didn’t know what to say. She picked up a rag from the counter and wiped the rings under our coffee cups. The front door opened, the woman huffing in.
“Listen,” Penny said finally. “I haven’t seen Rena since her husband got hit by the car. It’ll be depressing. Better if I bring someone.”
“Why don’t you take Luz or Flaca?”
“Are you obsessed?”
The woman watching, waiting for us to finish.
“I’m asking you,” Penny said.
“I didn’t think you and Rena were friends.”
Penny grabbed a menu off the stack and smiled at me, flashing teeth.
“I’m not really anyone’s friend,” she said.
* * *
—
Penny didn’t have a car, so I drove. The truck was unbearable in the heat, the vinyl seats stickin
g to the bottom of our thighs. For the first few minutes I gripped and released the steering wheel by turns, the plastic leaving a welt across the center of my palm. Main Street was empty, the heat keeping the townies locked inside. The diner had received only stragglers all day; occasional regulars arrived, looking wilted, their expressions pained from having made the journey. They placed incongruous orders for egg whites and lemon pie, afraid to consume.
I rolled down the windows, a bead of sweat trickling between my breasts. We came to a red light, both of us reaching for cigarettes.
“How were you going to get there if I hadn’t agreed to come?” I lit up, passing her the lighter.
“Why do you think I invited you?”
“Penny. You’re not really so mean.”
She arched an eyebrow in my direction. When the light turned green, I drove.
“What about you?” she said, flicking her ash out the window. “You could be a serial killer for all we know. So quiet; never a peep in school.”
“I used to raise my hand in class all the time. I liked to read. It was the first thing Lamb taught me. When he was at work I used to practice all day so I could show him how much better I was when he got home. I read out loud when I was alone in the house; I made it a game to see how fast I could go. Then I’d volunteer to read in class. I’d speed read so fast no one could understand the words. I don’t know what I thought. Maybe they’d think I was cool.”
“Smartass.”
“Right. They thought I was showing off. It was just something I could do. After reading one day we lined up outside for an assembly. Dusty Cowan started kicking me from behind.”
“Dusty Cowan’s dumb as rocks,” Penny murmured.
A Prayer for Travelers Page 5
