Vinnie's Diner

by Jennifer AlLee

  “That’s because I needed to know those things in order to help you. I only know what I’m told. And I haven’t been told what’s going to happen to your physical body.”

  Great. He works on a need-to-know basis. He’s like some sort of one-man Mission: Impossible unit. I look up at the ceiling, rolling my head from one shoulder to the other. “So you get your info from higher up on the food chain. Tell me, does the tape automatically self-destruct, too?”

  He lets my sarcasm slide by. “There’s a reason for everything that happens, including the things you don’t know about yet.” His voice has returned to its regular soft, modulated tone.

  “And the things that don’t make sense,” I add.

  He nods. “And the things we don’t like.”

  Vinnie’s face freezes. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and takes a step back. His chin almost touches his chest and his lips are pursed tight. I think he realizes he’s told me too much and wishes he could take it back.

  I squint at him and take a step toward him, once again closing the distance between us. He’s not talking about me now. He’s talking about himself.

  “You don’t want me to go out there, do you?”

  He hesitates, then says, “No.”

  If I’m not supposed to go outside, there’s no reason for him not to stop me. In fact, it would be his duty. The only reason for him to be unhappy about me going out there is . . .

  He’s following orders.

  “I have to go out there, don’t I?”

  Vinnie nods.

  I look over at the door. It’s just an innocent rectangle of glass with a shiny silver handle. But it’s the only thing standing between me and something evil. Something I know I have to face, whether I want to or not.

  I was thinking about going out there when I thought I had a choice. But now that I know I have to do it, I’m not so sure. Because that means there’s something else I have to walk through, and I really don’t want to do it with a demon.

  “Why?” I end up sounding like a spoiled little girl, but I don’t care. I put my hand up and rush on before Vinnie can offer me any platitudes. “Please don’t tell me it doesn’t matter. Because it does. It matters to me. I need to know why your God would send me out there with a demon.”

  Vinnie lifts his head. He pulls his hands out of his pockets. The defensive posture has vanished. “Did you hear what you just said? Your God.”

  The pain in his eyes is so sharp it cuts to my core.

  “You’ve never made a choice, Allie. You’ve been introduced to the Lord, you’ve been told about His love and His goodness. And you’ve experienced it, whether you want to admit it or not. But you’ve pushed Him away time and again. That distance you feel isn’t because He’s left you, but because you’ve built a wall around yourself to keep Him out.”

  I am hollow inside, empty. The dull ache of my denial has turned into an acute pain. Justifications and excuses fight to get out, but I keep my lips shut tight against them. Now isn’t the time to argue. For once in my life, I need to shut up and listen.

  “God isn’t sending you out there,” Vinnie continues, pointing toward the door. “The actions and choices you’ve made during your life have brought you to this place. You’re at a crossroads, Allie, and you can’t hide anymore. Your life literally hangs in the balance, and you have to make a choice. You have to pick a side.”

  “Fine. I choose God.” I cringe as soon as the words leave my mouth. Even to my own ears, my answer is too flippant.

  Vinnie shakes his head. “It has to come from your heart. And your heart is still carrying so much grief that it’s blinding you to the truth.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a miniature version of the chest that used to be on the table. He places it in the middle of his flat palm and holds it out to me, but I recoil.

  “I thought I was done with that. I went through everything in the chest.”

  “There’s one thing left, but it’s the biggest thing you have yet to face.”

  I want to knock the little box out of his hand and refuse to look in it. Instead, I reach for it, slowly, tentatively. I wrap my fingers around its sides and carefully lift off the top.

  It’s empty.

  I look more closely, but don’t see anything. I turn it upside down and shake it the way a kid looks for money inside a Christmas card, but nothing falls out.

  “I don’t understand. There’s nothing in here.”

  “That’s because it’s in here.” Vinnie puts two fingertips on the spot above my heart. “In here, you’re still a little girl who was hurt and betrayed by every father figure in her life.”

  The box falls from my hand and bounces across the tile with a clatter. Vinnie ignores it. So do I.

  As if I’m looking at the pictures again, my mind sees every “father” I’ve had over the years. Every one of them disappointed me. Some had devastated me. And the person that should have given me comfort never did. A thought coalesces, one that has poked at the corners of my mind in the past, but that I’d never dared acknowledge. “The men were awful. But you know the worst part? No matter how bad they were, my mother was always sad when they were gone. And she blamed me for driving them away.”

  Vinnie folds me in his arms again, but this time, my eyes are dry. There was a time, when I was younger and full of ridiculous optimism, when I would have cried over my mother and her disregard of me. But the more times I saw the same story played out again and again, the harder my heart became until it was finally encased in a solid shell. I won’t let her hurt me anymore, and I’ve stopped feeling sorry for her.

  “You and your mother aren’t so different.” Vinnie’s breath is warm against the top of my head. “She was once a scared little girl, too, and she handled her pain in the only way she knew how.”

  It’s hard to imagine my mother ever being scared of anything. But maybe that’s part of what I have yet to discover.

  Something stirs in my chest. And I know. It’s time to go. I’ve heard of people saying they had to face their demons. I could never imagine that I’d be facing mine in such a literal way.

  I push gently away from Vinnie. “I’ve got to go now.”

  Vinnie nods, but he holds onto my wrist with one hand. “You were right. I really don’t want you to go out there. But I know it’s something you need to do. Remember, you’re not alone.”

  “I’ll remember.”

  I walk to the door. My fingers are wrapped around the handle when Vinnie calls out to me. I look at him over my shoulder.

  “Ba’al can’t keep you from coming back in here. He’ll lie to you, tell you he can, but he can’t. He has no power over you except what you give him.”

  “Okay.” I nod. Smile. “I’ll remember. I promise. And I’ll be back.”

  “It won’t be easy,” he says. “But when you need help, call on The Name.”

  My smile slips. I’m not sure what he’s talking about. “You mean call you?”

  Vinnie shakes his head. “Nope. You’re still not thinking big enough.”

  27

  Out of the diner

  I blink my eyes, just once, but that’s all it takes.

  Vinnie’s gone.

  The diner’s gone.

  I’m standing in the middle of a run down drive-in theater. Rows and rows of evenly spaced poles, their white paint chipped and speakers hanging on either side, remind me of the rows of crosses at Arlington National Cemetery. Warm air gusts past me, sending an empty popcorn bucket scuttling across the cracked pavement. There’s a squeaking sound in the distance, and I turn my attention to the old play area at the base of the giant screen. Several swings in the set are swaying. One is broken, the seat hanging uselessly by the end of a rusty chain.

  A tall man stands off to the side, hands on his hips, staring intently at the playground. It has to be Ba’al, but he’s changed his appearance again. He’s wearing the same black duster, only it seems newer, crisper. His long hair, which now looks clean and silky, is pu
lled back from his face, giving me a clear view of his profile. The cheeks are filled out and the sharp planes and angles of his face have been replaced by classic, fine features. He looks almost pretty, like Orlando Bloom in The Fellowship of the Ring.

  Prickles of electricity pierce my body, as though every limb, every piece of me had fallen asleep and the blood is now rushing back to my skin, trying to break through to the surface. I’m overcome with a strong desire to run away, but my legs are locked in place. There’s nowhere for me to go anyway. This constantly changing being has information, information I need, and I can’t leave until I get it. But he doesn’t strike me as the kind who’ll answer a direct question. I decide to make him think I’m starting to trust him, just for a while. Just to get what I want.

  “Why do you look so different?”

  He laughs but doesn’t bother to look at me. “Vincent and his kind bring out the worst in me. But now that you and I are alone, I can be myself.”

  I’ve seen so many different versions of him, I have no idea which one is real. But before I can counter his claim, he starts shaking his head, still looking out at the sad playground.

  “Such a shame, isn’t it?”

  “What’s a shame?”

  The corner of his mouth twitches slightly. “How people let things fall into disrepair. There was a time, not so long ago, when this place was full of life.” He lifts his hand and I see the images of ghostly people, carrying ghostly snack trays, walking to ghostly vehicles. He drops his hand, and the images float away, wisps of fog weaving their way through the pole graveyard. “But this place outlived its purpose. And when something’s not useful anymore, it’s ignored.”

  He turns to me, his now icy blue eyes burrowing into mine. “It happens with people, too. The more trouble you are, the less convenient it becomes to be around you, then . . .” His voice trails off, and he shakes his head, giving me a smile that he probably intends to come across as sympathetic. But it doesn’t quite get there. To me, it just looks condescending. “Well, I guess you’ll find out all about that for yourself soon enough.”

  I take a step away from him, trying to pull my thoughts together, trying to hold on to what Vinnie had told me. “You don’t know that,” I spit out. “You don’t know what’s really going to happen to me.”

  He crooks a pale, perfectly shaped eyebrow, tilting his head to one side. “Oh, don’t I? Do you have any idea how many people I’ve seen in your condition? People who fight and scrape to stay alive, determined to conquer the odds. And they try. Oh, they really try. At first, the excitement of the challenge is enough to carry them through. They see it as something they need to conquer, the mountain they need to climb. They’ve got their loved ones by their sides, you see, and they can feel all that love and support seeping into their bones. It’s truly inspiring.”

  Why is he saying these things? The words he’s using should be encouraging, but his tone turns them into something else. He sounds like someone who’s about to say “I told you so.” I don’t think I’m prepared for where this conversation is going.

  He puts a hand to his mouth. A high pitched, almost maniacal laugh leaks out from between his fingers. “I’ll never forget this one young woman. She was about your age. If memory serves, and it usually does, she was in a car accident, too.” He looks up and taps his lips with his fingers, as though searching for the memory of her.

  “She fought so hard, and her husband was right there. He spent every night and every day in the hospital until the day she was discharged. He swore he’d always be there to support her, help her. He meant it, too. At first, he did everything. He helped her with her physical therapy. He fed her. He bathed her. He changed her catheter bag. When the bag leaked in bed one night and made a mess of both of them, he swore under his breath, but then he kissed her on the forehead and cleaned it up. And while he cleaned, he thought of a time when being woken in the middle of the night would have meant intimacy with the woman that used to be his wife. That night, he grieved her loss and blamed the tears on the fumes from the ammonia cleaner.” The longer he speaks, the louder he gets, and the pace of the story intensifies. Now he’s sporting a full blown smile. “Do you want to know how the story ends?”

  I don’t respond. I don’t want to know. But he goes on anyway.

  “It ends with him hiring someone to take care of his wife. It ends with him finding more and more reasons why he has to be away from the house. Away from her. It ends with him confiding in a special friend, someone he knows from work. Someone who understands him, who supports him, who makes him feel like a man again and who takes away his pain. It ends with him leaving his crippled wife for a very beautiful, very successful, very able-bodied woman.”

  In my mind, I see an image of myself lying in a bed, twisted and helpless. And I see Jake walking away from me and into the arms of a beautiful, strong, healthy woman. I know Ba’al’s baiting me, trying to make me think the worst. I need to resist him, to ignore the poison that’s seeping through my body. But I can’t help myself. “What happened to the wife?”

  “Poor thing.” He makes an unconvincing tsk tsk sound and shakes his head. “She was devastated, of course. All she could do was lie there in that bed, tortured by thoughts of what her husband was doing with his new girlfriend . . . things she’d never be able to do again with anybody. Finally, she convinced the one friend that still came around every now and then to help her end it all.”

  “You mean . . .”

  “She killed herself. Pills. It was quick and then her suffering was over.” His black eyes soften to dark gray and take on a far off, almost wistful quality. “Looking back, it would have been better if she’d just died in the car, but this was the next best thing.”

  My legs tremble, threatening to dump me into a heap at Ba’al’s feet. I’ve already heard Jake say that he’s going to be with me to the end. He’s the kind of man who would try to do the right thing. I can see him, leaning over me, taking care of me. Terrible images assault me: him spooning food into my mouth, struggling to dress me, bathe me, change me. What right do I have to tie him to that kind of life? And how can I bear to live that way?

  Ba’al points at me. “So you see, I can tell you exactly what will happen if you go back.”

  My mind is a tornado of whirling feelings and emotions. There are too many thoughts in my head, and they’re all pushing so hard to get out they’ve become trapped. There were questions I wanted answered but now they’ve become a blur. Something about my mother. Things I need to remember. Things Vinnie told me. I’m trying to grab hold of them, but something else makes its way through and snaps to the front of this jumbled mess. Something Ba’al just said.

  If?

  “If I go back? Are you saying I have a choice?”

  He contorts his face into an overemphasized look of surprise. “Of course you have a choice. Didn’t your angel tell you that, either? That’s usually one of the first things he spouts off about. The one he answers to is big on people making their own choices.” His lips pull back in a sneer, and for a second I get a glimpse of the face I saw back in the park. “Free will,” he growls, “is yours.”

  I put before you life and death. Choose life.

  The words, strong and sure, cut through the haze in my head. Where did that come from? I look around for the owner of the voice I just heard, but I don’t see anyone else in the drive-in.

  It’s impossible for Ba’al to miss my searching looks. He frowns. “What are you looking for?”

  He must not have heard it. What was it Vinnie said? Oh yeah, angels aren’t omniscient. Apparently, neither are demons, which is good. I don’t plan on giving this one any more information than he already has.

  “Answers,” I say, hoping to throw him off track. “I’m looking for answers.” An image of my mother pops up in my memory, and I regain some level of clarity. She has something to do with this. “What do you know about my mother?”

  His eyes narrow but he remains silent. I think he
must be trying to decide whether or not to answer my question. “Georgia Burton,” he finally says, letting the name fall lazily from his tongue. “She and I go way back.”

  My head jerks in an involuntary shudder. It can’t be good that he’s so familiar with her. But I need to know more. “Tell me what you know about my mother.”

  His eyes are almost dancing now. “Are you sure you want to hear this? It’s not a pretty story, and you humans can be so squeamish.”

  Through clenched teeth, I make my demand. “Tell me.”

  He lowers his eyebrows, drawing his features together. “Oh, I can do better than that. Let me show you.”

  Angry, dark clouds roll in, obscuring the sun and turning the sky black. The drive-in screen begins to hum and glow, like an old tube television warming up. Lightning cracks through the air and now he’s behind me, palms pressing on either side of my skull, squeezing, forcing me to look at the screen. I try to turn away, try to pull from his grasp, but he’s too strong. He leans over my shoulder, his mouth close to my cheek. His breath, the same odor as burnt out matches, assaults my nostrils.

  “Let’s see whether or not the truth sets you free.”

  28

  The Drive-In

  The living room of my grandmother’s house fills the screen.

  I’d been to that house once. My mother took me along with her and Aunt Bobbie after grandma died. Mom and her mother weren’t close. In fact, I’d never met the woman. Mom didn’t tell me why they didn’t get along, but going into the house gave me a good idea.

  Up on the screen, it’s pretty much like I remember. Anything you can sit on is covered with plastic. A big pot in one corner holds a tall rubber plant with leaves such a dark, shiny green they almost look fake. I saw that pot when we were in the house for the clean up, but all it had in it then was dust-dry dirt and a broken off, shriveled stalk from the dead plant. What I’m seeing now must be how the room looked a whole lot of years ago.