Milkshakes and Heartbreaks at the Starlight Diner

by Helen Cox

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  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  Published by Maze

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  The News Building

  1 London Bridge Street

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  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins 2016

  Copyright © Helen Cox 2016

  Helen Cox asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Ebook Edition © July 2016 ISBN: 9780008191832

  Version 2016-06-15

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  For all the waitresses.

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  Questions for Discussion

  Keep Reading …

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Next time you’re in New York, take a turn off Broadway onto East Houston. Walk on past 2nd Avenue subway station. Past Russ & Daughters fish shop and Katz’s Delicatessen. Beyond these local landmarks of the East Village, just a skip from where East Houston meets Clinton Street, you’ll see it: The Starlight Diner. A fifties throwback joint serving burgers and breakfast foods long into the night.

  There’s no missing the blare of its blue neon sign. Even from a block away, you can hear the songs of Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran and, house favourites, Marvin and the Starlighters spewing out of the jukebox. Step closer, and you’ll note the modest claim inscribed just above its glass frontage: Best Diner In Town.

  Press your hands against the window. Peer in at the long procession of red leather booths, at the aging signs, hanging all around, for vintage sodas, malts and ice-cream floats. There’s a refrigerator stacked with vanilla cheesecake and blueberry pie, and the waitresses wear candy pink uniforms with black kitten heels.

  Bernie Castillo was just twenty-two when he opened The Starlight Diner. A business decision he made about a week after John Kennedy was shot. Like many others he knew, he wanted nothing more than to return to a time before anyone understood what it meant to see a president gunned down. To a time in which rock ’n’ roll reigned supreme and gas-guzzling Cadillacs clogged up the highways. A time when America ‘stood at the summit of the world’. So, the 1950s is still in full swing at The Starlight Diner, and they serve the tastiest milkshakes in the five boroughs.

  If there’s one thing Bernie’s learned in his time managing a diner, it’s that you never can tell just who’s going to walk through the doorway. But no matter who they are, no matter where they come from – whether they’re a tourist with a tripod or a local who’s ordered the same breakfast there for twenty years – they’ve all got one thing in common.

  All of them, every last one, has a story to tell.

  Chapter One

  New York, 1990

  That airless, August day I hobbled into The Starlight Diner like an extra from a low-rent zombie movie. A bloody cut oozed across my forehead while ‘Rock Around The Clock’ blasted out of the jukebox. Right then, the last thing in the world I needed was Bill Haley singing about an all-night party I wasn’t even invited to.

  ‘Oh my Gawd, Esther!’ Mona, who’d waitressed at the diner for some thirteen years, had a habit of shrieking in a crisis. A habit even less endearing after a hard knock to the head. ‘What happened?’ She stopped pouring a coffee mid-cup, tottered over in her kitten heels and shook her head at the tear in my pink diner uniform.

  ‘I got mugged,’ I said, slumping into a nearby stool. At this, a man in one of the counter seats lifted his head and frowned. He was one of several customers gawking at the disturbance but his stare was more intense than any of the others.

  Mona put an arm around me. ‘Aw honey, now you’re a real New Yorker. They take anything valuable?’

  ‘Luckily I don’t own anything valuable. I was mostly concerned they’d smash my glasses – my spare pair make me look like Annie Potts in Ghostbusters.’

  ‘Well, they seem to be in one piece, and so do you.’

  ‘Yeah, they were only after my wallet.’ I dabbed my cut with a red napkin, then checked how much blood it’d absorbed. A dark, diagonal line slashed across the paper square.

  You deserve this, Esther. You do. And more.

  ‘You want me to tell Alan you was mugged? He’ll probably want you to report it.’ Alan, Mona’s husband, was a New York cop.

  ‘No, no, no,’ I said. Mona jerked her head to her left and shot me a quizzical look. ‘I mean, it was silly. Just kids. No need to make a fuss. Is Bernie here yet?’

  Bernie owned The Starlight Diner, a retro eatery on East Houston Street curious enough to delight tourists and locals alike. It was Bernie who’d decided on the repellent mustard seat coverings for the counter stools. It was he who ensured that the saddest song from the fifties – ‘The End of the World’ by Skeeter Davis – made it into the selection of tracks on the Wurlitzer jukebox alongside up-beat classics like ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’ and ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’. It was also Bernie’s idea to emblazon the words ‘Good Times’ across the back of the uniform, a slogan that felt extra ironic post-mugging.

  ‘No. He’s running later than you this mornin’,’ Mona chuckled. She turned to the reflective surface of the coffee machine and scrunched up some of the shorter layers of her dark, unruly hair. It was the one thing about Mona that wasn’t neat but only because she was growing out a mullet. Her face was a perfect oval and her faultless, black skin was interrupted only by preened e
yebrows and a shock of red lip gloss that, she claimed, boosted her tips. ‘You’ve got time to clean up,’ she said, turning back to me. ‘I won’t tell Bernie you was bleedin’ all over the customers and puttin’ ’em off their pancakes.’

  Twenty minutes later you wouldn’t have guessed I’d been mugged – unless you looked too close at my safety-pinned uniform or spotted the electric blue plaster peeping out from under my fringe. Ever-willing to prove myself the mistress of covering things up, I poured out morning coffee like it was any other day. Flitting across the red and white chequered lino, I delivered slices of blueberry pie and stacks of waffles with extra syrup.

  ‘The frowner at the counter wants his cheque; it’s number twenty-seven. I gotta get four breakfasts to fourteen. Can you sort that for me, honey?’ Mona asked, juggling many more plates than she had hands.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, picking up the correct cheque off the pinboard.

  ‘Here’s your cheque, sir. Hope everything was OK.’ I recited the standard line and offered a measured smile.

  ‘It was just what I needed, thanks,’ the frowner said in a familiar accent. He’d clocked my accent too: there was an expectant sparkle in his blue eyes.

  Further diluting my smile, I turned to walk away before anything concerning – like a conversation – could take place.

  ‘You’re from England, aren’t you?’ he asked.

  I dropped my shoulders and turned back to face him.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied in the most monotone manner I could muster. My absolute lack of interest would surely signal I didn’t want to spew my origin story over the counter to some stranger in a theatrical downtown diner.

  ‘I’m from Putney, in West London. You?’

  ‘London too.’ Insert awkward pause. This was the point in the exchange where I was supposed to ask him something. What brought him to New York? How long would he be staying? Etcetera. But he was a ghost from a past life. A patriot of a place I’d done all I could to distance myself from. Inviting though his smile was, I wouldn’t go back. For anyone.

  ‘Excuse me.’ A woman much younger than the frowner and I, sporting a cropped, neon-yellow blazer, stepped forward. ‘Could I get your autograph?’ I looked at the bronzed beauty holding out a napkin and a biro, skewing her head to one side the way exotic birds do when they’re trying to make sense of the world, and then looked again at the man. He nodded at her request and pushed a hand through his thick, black hair which fell long around the ears but showed signs of receding at the hairline. On closer inspection, his face did look sort of familiar. I thought I’d seen it on a billboard in Times Square but minus the beard, which was peppered with grey at the edges.

  ‘You could add your number, if you wanted.’ The woman put a hand on his shoulder now. Her long hair, crimped from root to tip, spilled over him as she leaned in close. I rolled my eyes, took the opportunity to exit the conversation and went to speak to Walt, a man of seventy-seven who ate breakfast, lunch and dinner with us every day.

  ‘You want your usual or do you feel like a change this morning?’ Walt spent most mornings engrossed in his paper but, as had become the daily ritual between us, cast a stern look at me over his glasses.

  ‘You only ask me that to torment me, don’t ya?’ His freckled face scrunched in irritation.

  ‘Maybe. But I wouldn’t want to be presumptuous, Walt.’ I grinned.

  ‘Be as presumptuous as you like. Whaddo I care? It’s only food.’ He waved a hand in my direction as though he were shooing a pigeon.

  ‘The way you embrace life so whole-heartedly is an inspiration to us all.’ Walt put down his paper and his face scrunched even tighter. ‘Alright, alright,’ I said. ‘Mushroom omelette it is.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  Oh great, the frowner had returned. He stood right in my way. Blocking my route to the kitchen.

  ‘Yes sir, is there a problem?’

  ‘Er. No, of course not. I … we were just interrupted.’ Though his arms were folded loose across his body, the skin around his eyes was taut with confusion. What did this guy want from me? He’d already picked up a brunette this morning. Did he really need to add a blonde to his collection?

  ‘Oh, I have to get Walt’s breakfast now,’ I said.

  ‘I can wait.’ Walt again waved his hand. I glared at him. He smirked, lowering his eyes back to the paper. Sighing, I turned to the frowner; I raised both eyebrows and tilted my head, signposting to this socially blunt individual that if he had something to say, he should say it now.

  ‘I just wondered what brought you to New York?’ His tone was airy and he leaned in close as he spoke, the way an old friend might. The scent of bergamot emanated from his body. It was distracting.

  ‘The affordable housing and the predictable weather,’ I replied. He laughed. I didn’t. ‘Look, I’m busy, OK?’

  Busy trying to hide. Busy trying to breathe and smile and forget.

  ‘Oh. OK. Suppose I might see you tomorrow.’ His gaze was steady but at these words my eyes flared wide.

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Yeah, this is my new local place,’ the frowner explained. ‘I just moved in on Ludlow Street.’

  ‘Well, the restaurant where they shot the orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally is just a few doors down. Maybe that should be your new local place.’ I gave him a patronising pat on the arm. He looked down at my hand which sat content just below his elbow. I followed his gaze and then snatched my hand away. Making physical contact. How could I be so stupid?

  The frowner smiled. ‘Actually, I think I’m going to stick with the diner where the waitresses feel comfortable saying the word “orgasm” to a total stranger.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, collecting empty glasses off the counter, ‘I think that says a lot more about you than it does the waitresses.’

  He rubbed the side of his jaw, no doubt trying to think of some dazzling retort.

  ‘Hey Esther,’ Walt butted in, ‘here’s one for you.’ He looked down at The Times crossword and read, ‘Generally accepted as Shakespeare’s longest play.’

  ‘Hamlet,’ I replied without a blink. Walt checked the paper and then pointed his pen at me.

  ‘How’d you know that?’ He looked at me sidelong.

  ‘It’s a very well-known fact,’ I said. ‘Probably helps I’m from the same country as Shakespeare. It’s the sort of thing that seeps in through the amniotic fluid.’

  ‘Ugh.’ Walt grunted. ‘Do you have to talk about all that woman crap when I’m about to eat?’

  ‘All part of the service.’ I smiled. The frowner chuckled, joining in the joke. I’d almost forgotten he was there. My smile faded and I tried to dodge around him. I moved left and so did he. I stepped right and still he was in my way. After a few moments of this uneasy dance he placed both hands on my arms and lifted me clean off the ground. There wasn’t time to shrink away or sidestep. My whole body stiffened in the time it took him to plant me on the other side of where he was standing.

  ‘That is the weirdest thing anybody has ever done to me,’ I said, breathing harder than I’d like and adjusting my glasses back into their usual resting place.

  ‘Well, you haven’t been in New York very long.’ Walt cackled. His laugh had a sort of clatter to it, like an old, broken washing machine on full spin.

  ‘Can’t be any weirder than getting mugged. Are you OK?’ asked the frowner.

  At his question, I once again felt the sickening lurch of being shoved to the ground. The knife, pointing at my throat. I should’ve been scared. Should’ve cried. Should’ve begged. But instead, I just remembered… Would I ever forget? The things he did to her. Rubbing at the small, white notch she’d worn into my ring finger, I thought again about Mrs Delaney. Hours she’d stood, in the doorway of their living room, twisting the gold around and around. Whilst he’d slouched in his armchair, watching Saturday afternoon darts on TV, she’d pictured the miraculous day when she’d slip her twenty-two carat collar.

  I glanced into the
frowner’s eyes. There was a velvet softness to the blue of them I’d been doing my best to ignore.

  My hands were shaking.

  I looked down at them and his eyes lowered too, watching them jitter.

  ‘I’m sorry, I…’ he began.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I snapped.

  ‘You’re not fine.’ His voice was firm but there was no mistaking his concern. ‘You’ve been mugged and you haven’t so much as sat down. You need help. You’re shaking…’

  He thought it was because of the mugging. Well, what else would he think? I let my eyes stray once again into his.

  ‘Order up!’ Lucia, our grill girl, shouted.

  ‘I’ve got to get on. I’m busy.’ I turned and walked away.

  ‘Hey!’ The frowner called after me, and I sighed. ‘I’m Jack by the way.’

  I nodded and pointed to my name badge in response.

  ‘So I’ll see you tomorrow?’

  ‘Oh-kay.’ I whirled into the kitchen, safe in the knowledge I was working the late shift, rather than breakfast, the next day.

  ‘Walt wants his usual,’ I called over to Lucia, who was a big, square block of a woman. She was fiddling with a small transistor radio which, in a fifties-themed diner, was our only portal to modern-day chart music. Bernie only permitted it if we kept the volume low so as not to ruin the ‘illusion of stepping back in time’. Lucia clapped and giggled to herself when she found a station playing New Kids on the Block. Not my favourite but preferable to hearing Sinead O’Connor warble out ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’, yet again. It had to be one of the most depressing songs ever written and radio stations loved it. Especially early on a Monday when they knew you’d already be in the depths of misery.