Thing was, he also knew her pretty well. And he knew her family lineage going back a long, long way.
“So, Glenn. Did Sherrie send you out here to talk me out of wanting a job?”
He grinned. “There. Right there is why she likes you. She says it’s because you’re smart and you have strong opinions, and if that doesn’t describe my Sherrie I don’t know what does.”
Glory smiled cautiously.
“Strong, ceaseless, unsolicited opinions,” Glenn expounded.
That was also true. For example, “You’d probably be able to bend over and do your own filing if you’d just unclench and let that stick slide out, Mr. Torkelson” was Glory’s exit line at her last job. Mr. Torkelson was a mortgage broker who had hired her to “sit quietly” and answer phones and file papers even when the phone didn’t ring and there wasn’t a scrap of paper in sight. “I’m not paying you for your opinions,” he’d said when she pointed out that maybe this didn’t make a whole lot of sense. It was just that the kind of routine required by the jobs she was qualified for was a recipe for personal misery, and she’d do nearly anything to alleviate it, which is probably how four men ended up thinking they were playing poker for her favors at the Plugged Nickel.
“Some people are more comfortable issuing orders than taking them, let’s just say,” Glenn added.
“I can be flexible.” Even she wasn’t convinced when she said that.
He snorted. “Flexible the way a slingshot is flexible.”
She started to laugh at that, but she cut it short. She was in the business of persuading him to give her a job.
The Baby Owls flyer suddenly slipped from the wall. Glenn grabbed it before it could go sailing onto the floor. He looked down at it.
“The Baby Owls,” he groused. “Stupidest name I ever heard. Owlets! Baby owls are called owlets. Sweet Jesus.”
“I think it’s meant to be ironic.” She was amused.
He snorted. “Ironic. Irony is for wimps. Their album is called Hoot Are You?, did you know that? A takeoff on ‘Who Are You,’ by The Who. Whatever happened to just smashing your guitar when you’re finished with your set? But my little granddaughter Annelise loves that damn song, though, so . . . I worked something out with their manager. Who is a bit of a tool, between you and me.”
“‘In the Forest’ is a good song, at least,” Glory said stoutly. She knew how hard it was to write a good song, let alone an earworm kind of song. She slipped the flyer from Glenn’s hand and carefully patted it back upon the wall in solidarity with bands everywhere.
“Well, if anyone would know a good song, you would,” Glenn said sincerely.
It was a nice little vote of confidence and it warmed her heart.
But that didn’t have much to do with the quest at hand. And her musical talent really didn’t have much of a relationship to carrying plates to tables.
Glenn smiled at her. “Kiddo, being a waitress involves a lot of being pleasant to people all day long. And a lot of being patient. And a lot of not saying what you actually think. And a lot of putting up with every manner of behavior—rude, sexist, drunk, you name it. Even when you think they’re ordering something that will make them fatter than they ought to be or will raise their blood pressure, or if they try to grab your ass.”
When he put it that way, it did sound well-nigh impossible.
She took this in, mulling. “Well, I can handle an unruly audience. And you’ve met most of my relatives over the years. Rude, sexist, and drunk are in my wheelhouse.”
He laughed.
“And I can be . . . I can be pleasant.” She issued that word gingerly. She wasn’t certain she’d ever been anything so banal as “pleasant.”
Glenn grinned at her. “Kiddo, you’re delightful, and I mean that sincerely. I like you. You’re talented. You are one of a kind. You are never dull. But that ain’t the same as pleasant.”
Ouch.
Perversely, she liked Glenn for saying things like that. He was stern and he loved his kids, all of whom seemed to be thriving, and he didn’t take crap from anyone. And she liked being known.
Which made her double determined to win him over. Because she did very much like winning, period, no matter what the game was.
She also had another agenda, but that would be the next battle in this particular war, and she had to win this one first.
“Maybe your customers would enjoy a colorful waitress. Liven up the place.”
This amused him, too. “Maybe so. Maybe so. Let’s try a little exercise. Say I’m a customer and I very plainly order rye toast. You write it down on a tag. You bring me rye toast. I tell you I didn’t order the rye toast, I ordered sourdough—you must have heard me wrong and could you please scurry off and get it right away and what the hell is wrong with your ears, you air-headed woman?”
She could feel her stomach muscles tightening as he spoke, even though this was all hypothetical.
There wasn’t a soul in the world who would get away with talking to Glory like that.
Glenn knew it.
She drew in a breath, and released it slowly. “Well, who are we talking to? Man or a woman?”
“Say it’s a woman.”
“I say, well, I’m so sorry. I brought you rye toast because I read an article that Angelina Jolie eats it for breakfast, and something about your eyes reminded me of her, and I guess I must have gotten confused.”
Glenn stroked his mustache. “Damn.” He was impressed.
Glory leaned back in her chair a little cockily and folded her arms. “Try another one on me.”
“What if it was a man?”
“I’d say, well, I read somewhere that rye helps build muscle and when I saw your forearm, I thought, this guy looks strong, the kind of guy who knows how to really use tools and lift heavy things, and so I just sort of defaulted to rye.”
Glenn snorted. “It would take a strong man to shovel his way out of that pile of bullshit.”
She laughed.
“And we’d have guys volunteering to lift you and carry you on out of here, you talk like that. Riots starting up.”
She shrugged idly with one shoulder. Guys wanting to do things for and to her was just another day. “Doesn’t mean they get to. One thing I know for certain? People like to be noticed. Whether they’re making smart choices for breakfast or reading a good book or their shirt brings out their eyes or whatever. And even if they know it’s B.S., they often just appreciate the attempt.”
Eli was so good at this sort of thing, the noticing of little details. Of course, he used it to catch criminals, too.
Glenn’s eyes widened a little, impressed again. Then they narrowed, and they sat in silence for a moment.
Then he gave his fingers a drum. And then lowered his voice to something approximating gentle.
“What are you still doing here, anyway, young lady?”
Her heart lurched.
“In . . . the Misty Cat?” Her voice was a little frayed. “Now?”
Because she was pretty sure she knew what he meant.
“In Hellcat Canyon. In general.”
Glory gave a short, nervous laugh. “You know an interview isn’t going well if it ends with your interviewer wanting you to get the hell out of town.”
But Glenn had heard her play. And she’d seen him stand absolutely motionless every time she’d played that Linda Ronstadt song “Long, Long Time.” And she’d seen his eyes get shiny.
Glenn wasn’t as crusty as he looked.
So at most every open mic she played, she included it in the set, just for him.
Glenn had seen every manner of college band stop in at the Misty Cat to play over the last decade. At least one band a month with a decent following, sometimes more. He loved music, and he had his own singular tastes and a strong sense of musical history.
And Glenn thought she was quite simply amazing.
“Weren’t you headed to San Francisco?”
She thought about what to say. “It
’s . . . a long story.”
He could probably fill in the blanks. Everyone in town knew about the drama with Jonah.
Glenn was quiet a moment. “Sherrie wishes she had a whole record of you singing so she could listen to it in the bathtub. She does a whole girly thing with candles and bubbles and a glass of wine.” Glenn waved his hand in Sherrie’s direction.
“That’s sweet. One day soon, hopefully, I’ll have one for her.”
She’d never recorded a demo. She didn’t have the kind of laptop you could record things onto. Because she couldn’t yet afford the kind of laptop you could record things onto. She just sang into Jonah’s old tape recorder with her guitar. Admittedly, however, she loved the way that sounded: intimate, every rustle in the room and exhale of breath audible and somehow part of every song, and every now and then birdsong, or a door slamming, found its way onto the recording, too, and sounded somehow right.
She took a deep breath, ready to really sell Glenn on her.
“Okay, let’s look at all the pros. You’ve known me for a long time, so no surprises. What you see is what you get. I have a good memory, so I’ll never forget an order. I can think on my feet. I’ve never been late for anything in my whole life, and you know that, because I was at every softball practice right on the dot. I have, um . . . excellent balance, so I won’t be dropping things, and I like to move fast. Giorgio and I have an understanding.”
She shot Giorgio a look.
He ducked his head and applied himself to scraping the grill.
“I can make people like me. I’ll do a good job.”
“You’ve got a way with a crowd, I’ll hand you that,” Glenn mused.
Sherrie swept by with a wet towel to bus a table and smiled encouragingly at Glory.
Glenn was thoughtful and quiet for a moment, studying her.
“You know, speaking of Sherrie’s notions, Glory, I built her a koi pond. She has some idea about meditating next to it.” He shook his head as if this was a hopelessly eccentric thing to do, but Glory knew how proud he was of Sherrie and how indulgent he was of any notion she might have. “You know what I learned when I was reading up on building koi ponds? If the pond is too small, those beautiful big fish suffer something fierce.”
Glory stared at him.
Her throat knotted.
And she thought about the tigers.
When she was little, she’d loved tigers as passionately as she’d loved horses. She’d draw pictures of them to hang on her walls. And then one day three of the grades at her school had gone on a field trip to the zoo. She’d been so excited to go.
But then she’d seen the tigers pacing in their cages . . . back and forth . . . back and forth.
She found a bench and sat down. And she’d put her face in her hands and just wept. She didn’t know why, for certain, but she felt a sort of desperate, panicky sorrow for the tigers.
It was so incredibly unlike her that Jonah had been concerned and embarrassed all at once, astonished to see his scrappy sister transform into an astonishing baby. He’d been frantic in his attempt to shush her.
But Eli had given her the napkins from his ice cream cone to wipe her eyes, and then he’d sat next to her on the bench and arranged his arm across the back. She’d pressed her skinny little shoulder blades against it and he’d pressed back with his arm, so that no one except them knew they were both taking and giving comfort.
“It’s not right, Eli,” was the best she could do by way of explaining. “It’s not how it’s supposed to be.”
She could still remember how he smelled that day. Like a boy, earthy and grassy and sweaty and wild. He didn’t say much. Back then he stuttered when he got excited. So Eli mostly listened.
He got the stutter under control over the years. Eli always got everything under control.
“I know.” She could feel him suffering on her behalf. “That won’t be you, Glory.”
Only Eli understood it had nothing at all to do with her being afraid of the tigers and everything to do with those cages. Those cages and the tigers’ beauty.
A year after that, he’d given her a little stuffed tiger for her birthday. It was kind of a secret between the two of them. And she’d gotten in the habit of moving her tiger around the house every day, just so the tiger knew it could move, and then the habit stuck.
It occurred to her that Glenn might actually be working toward issuing a no. Because he was no pushover. He knew for a fact that she was a risky choice as waitress, that he needed a good one, that he wanted someone to stick around for a long time, because he was a smart businessman. And he knew, like she did, that she didn’t belong here in Hellcat Canyon forever.
She was also a Greenleaf. Possibly the only Greenleaf who had saved every penny she’d made or found since she was twelve years old. Nevertheless.
Glenn sighed. “Be here tomorrow at eleven for the lunch rush. We’ll throw you in at the deep end, see how that goes.”
She exhaled in exultant relief. “I love the deep end.”
“I know you do, kiddo. I know you do.” He sounded sort of amused and resigned. As if he already knew how it would all turn out but he was willing to watch the show.
They shook hands on it firmly, and he pushed away from the chair, casting one final glare at the flyer.
“Owlets,” he muttered again irritably on his way back to the kitchen.
“Bye, sprinklers!” Glory called to Giorgio as she left.
She tried not to skip, but she indulged in one on the way back up the street.
Halfway home she paused to admire the billboard. The men had finished slapping it up, and it was now shining on the highway.
HOOT ARE YOU?
The new album by The Baby Owls
There they all were, beards and flannel and glasses, only probably about fifteen feet taller than real life.
That was a good omen for certain. She figured she needed to at least put in a full day’s work before she hit Glenn up for the second part of her plan.
Chapter 6
Eli pulled out of the parking lot of Heavenly Shores, bemused by the mazelike turns his job often took. He’d arrived to address a pissed-upon rhododendron; he’d departed with a date with a hot blonde.
Not the worst day he’d ever had.
He made a left down Main Street and waved at Eden Harwood, who was just arranging little tasteful buckets of flowers in front of her store while her black-and-white tuxedo cat, Peace and Love, wound around her ankles, and he found himself singing softly. “This is the chorus, of we’re lost in the for—”
Holy shit!
Was that a Porsche?
Hard to tell exactly what it was when it was doing what amounted to light speed. It was basically a blue smudge on wheels.
Eli switched on his lights, cranked the wheel hard to the left and floored it until he was practically on that Porsche’s bumper.
The Porsche slowed obediently, then practically slinked over to the verge side with such ease and grace Eli wouldn’t be surprised if it rubbed itself on a tree with self-satisfaction like a cat, and despite himself, he admired how that thing handled. If the driver was hammered or otherwise pharmacologically impaired, he probably wouldn’t be able to maneuver a speeding vehicle with that kind of delicacy. Or who knows? Maybe Google had finally invented a self-driving Porsche and set it loose on California back roads. A few Bay Area tech moguls and other outrageously wealthy types owned cabins up along the ridge, and this could be one of them.
It certainly didn’t have that fine coat of red dust that all stalwart Hellcat Canyon vehicles acquired after a few days spent here. It was beautiful and rare and too fast for this place.
All that thought did was remind him of Glory.
Maybe he ought to get a rubber band to wear around his wrist every time he thought of her.
Maybe all he had to do was train his thoughts in a different direction the way Dale Dawber trained his tomatoes up their stakes.
There were so few deput
ies in Hellcat Canyon they often went out alone, so he radioed his location to Owen Haggerty, standard procedure in case things got hairy, got out of his cruiser, and crunched over the graveled road to the verge.
The Porsche’s window was already lowered.
Eli bent down. “License and registration, please.”
The guy behind the wheel whipped off his sunglasses. “Was I going too fast?” He sounded contrite. “I didn’t see a speed limit posted.”
“Yeah, I imagine it’s challenging to read a speed limit sign when you’re roaring past it at seventy miles an hour down the middle of a small-town street,” Eli said evenly. “Must have just looked like a blur.”
The guy just grinned at him, at peace with the world, utterly certain of his place in it. He radiated self-satisfaction. His teeth were flawless uniform rectangles and so brilliant Eli was glad he’d kept his mirrored sunglasses on, because he didn’t need deeper squint lines. Those were definitely not Hellcat Canyon teeth. They were Los Angeles teeth.
And if that guy in the Plugged Nickel last night was what passed for dangerously handsome in Hellcat Canyon, this guy might as well be from another dimension. His face had the prismatic elegance—all hollows and angles and whatnot—of the guys who posed in their underwear on billboards.
Suddenly Eli knew exactly who this was before he even glanced at the license.
Millions of people around the world knew who this was.
“I clocked you at seventy and it’s thirty-five miles an hour through the main part of town. There are only a couple of stoplights, but we like to think they’re there for a reason. We probably have more than enough deer and squirrels in Hellcat Canyon but we still don’t like to see them turned into pancakes. We figure they got a right to go about their business, same as all of us. And at speeds like that, you can take pedestrians out, and well, we’re all kind of fond of the people who live here, too.”
Franco Francone’s smile faded gradually, evenly, as Eli spoke, as if he actually kept it on a dimmer.
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