By the time I quit, Apron Man had refilled my coffee twice and brought out two more plates. I couldn’t get full, felt like a pig. At first the food just vanished into the huge hole in my gut, but after the second plate I slowed down a bit. I was in the middle of the third before I began to feel halfway satisfied—biscuits and gravy, sausage patties, a mountain of wheat toast dripping with butter, a smaller plate of huevos rancheros with a side of rice. It was enough to put a grown man in the hospital, but it looked good to me. I did my best, but the yawning emptiness in me suddenly filled halfway through the eggs. The plates looked like something feral had been at them, but Apron Boy didn’t say a word, just took them as soon as I pushed them away, then came back with the coffee pot and a slice of coconut cream pie.
I didn’t even know if I liked coconut cream pie. I sat there and looked at the piped decorative cream and the little shaved bits of toasted nutflesh and felt sick. Then I wondered if chocolate cream would’ve been worse. Or cherry. Or…
How could I know about pie and not know who I was?
The gun’s heavy weight rested against my side. Jill. You’re Jill, and you’re armed. Focus on that, the rest will take care of itself.
“Sure be glad to close up early tonight.” Apron Man shuffled back with another cup of coffee. He wedged himself into the other side of the booth with a sigh. “Get off my old dogs. I’m going into town, give you a lift.”
Another one of those silences, and I figured out he was waiting for me to say something. “Really? That’s… nice.” My voice was a papery husk. “Town?”
He shrugged. “Santa Luz. The bad old lady herself. You’d have to walk a fair ways. Told your friend I’d give you a lift, since he was goin’ elsewhere.”
Was he, now. I’ll just bet. I picked up the clean fork, cut off the tip of the pie slice. “Nice of you.” Awkward, like the words were sharp edges and I had to hold them just right.
“Yeah, well. Got to do what we can to he’p each other. You got somewhere in town you’re goin’?”
I don’t even know my name. Just how to hold this gun. And that if I wanted to, I could be across this table with this cheapass fork stuck in your carotid in a hot half second. It played out in vivid Technicolor inside my head—spurting blood, the greenstick crack of a neck breaking, the things I could do. “No. Just the city limits will do.”
He gave me a dubious look, but his attention was snagged by the pie. “Is it gone off? I wouldn’t think so, ol’ Onorious brought it in this morning.”
Onorious? “It’s good.” It was a lie, I hadn’t tasted it yet. But the rest of the food was good. I slid the plate over into the middle of the table. “Want to share?”
His face lit up. “Boy howdy!” And wouldn’t you know it, he had a spoon. He must’ve been waiting for me to ask.
I put my forkful in my mouth, studied his wide walrus face. He looked… kind. But something bothered me. I barely tasted the pie, but it was okay. I could get to like coconut cream. “What are you doing out here?”
He shrugged, chewing vigorously. Swallowed in a rush, took a gulp of coffee. “Landed here a while ago. Get a fair amount of business. People drive, they get hungry. And here I am. Gas pumps still work, but mostly it’s the phone and the cookin’. People come in for the phone, and it smells so good they want to have a bite.”
I nodded. My right hand came up, I offered it across the table. The gleam on the underside of my wrist sent a small rainbow winging across the Formica. “Jill.”
He grinned even wider. It was a nice smile, broad white teeth with not a trace of food clinging to them. The corners of his eyes crinkled up, and for a moment something golden moved in the depths of his eyes.
You could see where he had been handsome, once.
His hairy paw closed over my filthy, smaller hand. “Martin. Martin D. Pores, atcher service. Honor to meetcha. Now, what do you say we finish up this here piece of pie and get movin’? Dawn’s a-going to break afore you step over that limit, miss.”
Dawn? But I was past questioning by then, really. A great wave of exhaustion crashed over me. My stomach was full, I had a gun and the ring, and that was all that was important right now. “I’m tired.” I sounded like a cranky child.
He considered me for a long few seconds, and if I’d been less tired I might’ve been concerned about the things moving deep in his gaze. “I’ll bet you are. You want to visit the ladies’ while I get this all closed up?”
The car was a 1975 Mercury wagon, faded fake-wood paneling and handling like a whale. The engine had a slight knock to it, one I caught myself trying to suss out. For all that, it was comfortable. There’s just something about a piece of American heavy metal when you can stretch your filthy battered feet out and watch the miles slip away like silk under the wheels. The ribbon of white paint running alongside the freeway reeled us along just like a big silent fish on a hook.
Martin kept it five under the speed limit, and he drove like an old granny. It didn’t matter. There was nobody else on the road at this hour. The stars were hard clear points of light, each one a diamond, and the moon was low.
“You like music, Miss Jill?”
I thought about it. Did I? Didn’t everyone? I decided on a good answer. “Yes.”
“Well, that’s good. Music’s a good thing.” He twisted the shiny silver knob and caught what must have been an oldies station, because Johnny Cash was singing about shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die.
I shivered. It couldn’t have smelled good with me in the car, so I’d rolled my window down. Fresh, cold air poured over me, the roaring of the slipstream almost making words. I propped my filthy hair against the back of the seat and sighed.
Martin kept both his beefy paws on the wheel. He hummed along as Cash turned into the Mamas and the Papas, singing about nobody getting fat but Mama Cass. My eyelids were suddenly heavy.
Stay alert, Jill.
But there was no way. I’d had a hell of a day. Night. Whatever.
The hum of the engine and the song of the wheels were both soothing. With a full stomach and the heater finally blowing warm air into the car, I fell asleep to Martin’s tuneless humming.
Just like a newborn baby.