Excerpt
Chapter One
The Look Diner hunkers low at the far end of the lot by the tree line, like a creature with its belly to the ground, preparing to pounce. In the orange-yellow panorama of booth-lined windows, silhouettes sit alone or in pairs. The sun, having been bullied back by clouds for the length of the afternoon, has given up and ducked behind the horizon to cower and heal. To the west, on Roaring Spring Road, cars with glowing eyes slide through the blue dusk. To the north, the movie marquee that flanks the access road shouts non sequiturs at indifferent commuters.
Follow me now down the walk littered with curled-up cigarette butts and discarded pennies, past the newspaper boxes with their cracked plastic windows, past the ransacked phone booth graffitied with peeled and faded stickers. Follow me through the front door into the carpeted vestibule with its gumball and decal machines and its particle-board rack of unread pamphlets and flyers. I pull open the interior doors, and we are greeted with a breeze redolent of bacon and burnt butter and overcooked beef. The colors are rust and umber, yellow tile speckled brown. The host's podium stands vacant, a lectern bereft of its lector.
A polite sign tells us, PLEASE SEAT YOURSELVES. So let's grab the big booth in the corner, the one with the round table and the crescent-shaped seat. Though we are only two, the table might easily fit six—seven if the seventh grabs a chair—and if it's Lucy's shift and her table, she won't mind. The crumbs and water rings have been whisked and wiped away, and the surface of the table still shines, the swirling contours left by the dampened cloth fading even as we approach. The view will be best from here.
Why are we at the Look Diner tonight? It's not for the tepid coffee or the waffles straight from the freezer, not for the overcooked beef and the butter-sotted toast. No. We are here because something is going to happen tonight.
***
Look, but don't get caught looking. Make like you're eyeing the tall blonde, settling her bill over at the cash register. Or perusing the freestanding sign with its list of uninspired specials written in multicolored neon on black, spangled with five-pointed stars and unnecessary apostrophes. Now let your glance slide over to the fat man at the centermost round table. His flabby belly hangs low between his thighs. Watch as he bends his neck, his white beard folding into an L, to peruse the menu, syrup-splotched and gilded along one side with a stretched-out teardrop of coagulated yolk. Propped up against his chair is his gnarled wooden cane, a silent confidant, a bulge-fisted familiar. The man's chewed, dirt-lined pinky nail underlines the list of side orders line by line as his lips mouth the words, buffeting his mustache with halitosis-freighted wind.
The door dings, and two women—a bleached blonde and a dyed-too-black brunette, all long bare legs and teased hair—waft in on a wave of perfume and tobacco smoke. They whisper and titter as they bypass the podium, plopping down on either side of the bearded man. The brunette rests the crook of her high heel on the edge of the table, her black shorts sliding up to reveal the moon-white curve of a buttock and a pink-splotched thigh crinkled with cellulite. The three converse in hushed tones as a waitress rushes over with two menus and silverware enshrouded in napkins.
Jake, the slender, acne-scarred busboy, peers out under the awning of pale-green guest checks.
"Behind you," chirps Marci, bumping his backside with her prodigious hip as she sweeps by, holding aloft a round tray teeming with milkshake-stained glasses and plates caked with crusts and carnage and strips of fat.
Jake grunts a reply. Marci deposits the tray and swings back his way. She thrusts her face next to his, her warm ear grazing his. He winces at her excessive perfume, cloying, like plums just gone over. "Strippers," she says. "Excuse me. Exotic dancers. They wriggle around on guys' hard-ons at the Whateley Ballet for a couple soggy dollars. But you probably already know that."
"Behind you," says Shantaya as she pushes past the two, a greasy cloth in one hand and in the other . . . well, how strange. For just a moment, it looks like she's gripping by the neck a catatonic cassowary with a red wattle and panicked eyes. At second glance though, it's simply a dark spray bottle with a red trigger. Wipe your eyes, dig at the corners, but you can't wipe away the surety: it was a bird, and now it's a bottle.
Standing at the griddle, a white-coiffed man hewn of oil, spit, and spindle is engaged in a staring contest with the bubbling Argus eyes of a dozen eggs, above which silver-dollar pancakes sit like thought bubbles. He flips the pancakes one by one, the veins shifting under the skin of his wiry arms, his eyes never leaving the eggs. It happens then. Two of the eggs . . . blink. A shimmering caul forms at the top edge and slides over the surface of each egg, briefly obscuring the yolks. They retract, and two blood-veined yellow eyes stare up at him before popping apart audibly, droplets of blood springing into the air like water on the surface of a storm-shaken lake. He looks left, looks right. No one is watching. He flips the eggs into the trash barrel and cracks two more. The blood that remains on the griddle he scrapes to the far edge. He flips ten eggs, waits for the latecomers to cook. The surface of the griddle begins to expand and contract. It is a breathing thing. He closes his eyes and waits for it to pass. He opens his eyes, and it's blessedly back to normal.
He puts his back to the grill and scans the dining room.
Everyone is here. If it's going to happen, it's going to happen soon.
