Whose job was it to research and harness the most annoying sound on the planet and then build an alarm around it? Beth Ann complained as morning came way too early. She forced herself to get up and do all the things required before one can be seen in public. Romeo lifted his head off the bed briefly as she retrieved her hideous, but comfortable, waitressing shoes out of the closet, but he didn’t follow her out to the kitchen. Apparently even he knew that it was too early to be awake. She put some food in his dish for later, stuck her phone in her purse, and pulled on her coat. Choosing a strawberry toaster pastry to eat on the way, she glanced out the window. It hadn’t started snowing yet, but the stiff wind indicated that it would be coming soon.
She hustled to work, if for no other reason than to drink the free coffee. The opening shift was not Beth Ann’s favorite. It was usually slow, she had to bus her own tables, and she would have to prep the salad bar before the lunch crowd arrived. Washing and chopping veggies and lettuce, and filling crocks with lots of things she wouldn’t eat, was not something that she enjoyed. Then she would have to haul dozens of buckets of ice from the walk-in freezer to pack around the crocks. Finally, she would have to garnish the ice. Seriously? Who thought that it looked realistic to see mounds of kale growing out of the ice? She never understood that one.
This morning was no exception. She went through the motions, bantering off and on with a handful of regulars at the coffee counter. They were all retirees without a timecard to punch, discussing current events and sharing pictures and stories of their grandkids. Apparently, one of them had a new phone–the “smart” kind–which seemed to be more frustrating than useful to him. His friends huddled around him as if they’d found a purpose for their day. Beth Ann tried her best to hide her smiles at their attempts to help him. Each time she passed by, she overheard bits and pieces of their conversation:
“What does this button do?”
“Wait...why aren’t there any numbers? How are you supposed to make a phone call?”
“Aha! It’s one of those touch-the-screen things. Slide your finger across...no, no! Don’t leave your finger on it. Now I don’t know how to go back.”
“I’m never getting one of those. Too complicated.”
“You should see my 4-year-old great-granddaughter use her mom’s! These kids nowadays, always on their gadgets. Don’t even know what ‘outside’ is!”
“I don’t need a blasted phone to tell me how dumb I am.” Way too much laughter...and consternation...was happening at that counter.
Beth Ann snuck a peek at her own phone in her apron pocket to check the time just as Kristen showed up for her shift. Beth Ann intercepted her in the break room.
“It is really getting cold out!” Kristen said with a theatrical shiver, hanging her coat on one of the wall hooks. “And the snow is already covering the ground.”
“How are the roads?” Beth Ann asked.
“Not bad. They’re salted. I didn’t have any problems.”
“They’re calling for four to six inches by tomorrow. I guess winter is here!” She watched as Kristen tied on her apron and checked her hair in the little wall mirror. “Okay. Sally is checking shakers and sugars on all the tables. The salad bar is almost ready. I just have to mix up some more ranch dressing, and Big Joe has to put out the soup and chili. Would you mind changing the seating chart into three zones and putting on a fresh pot of coffee?”
“Sure. Big Joe’s here, huh? I keep hopin’ he’ll get himself fired....”
“Yeah, wouldn’t that be nice? He’s been fine today, probably because we haven’t been that busy. I’ve just left him alone.” Beth Ann felt her apron vibrate and reached into the pocket for her phone. She started laughing and turned the phone to face Kristen. “Look at this! My parents just sent me a picture of their feet in the sand. When I get home later, I’m going to send them a picture of my feet in the snow!” With a good laugh to start them off, the girls headed into the dining room.
***
Beth Ann seated her third table in five minutes with the hope that a busy lunch would make up for her slow breakfast. She would be done at 1:30, unless they were slammed. While filling beverages at the hostess station, she snuck another look at her phone: almost noon. They really weren’t allowed to have their cell phones in the dining room, but the managers let it slide as long as they didn’t “see” anything. Carefully carrying the tray filled with drinks to the newest patrons, she noticed that Kristen and Sally were bustling, too.
At that moment, without warning, all the lights went out. Beth Ann instinctively stopped in her tracks. She heard a couple of quiet gasps in the dining room, followed by a crash and a loud curse coming from the kitchen and then...silence. The dining room was dim because of the cloudy sky, but the many windows along the front and one side of the building allowed the wintry cool light in. People gradually went back to their meals and menus, talking in awkward hushed tones. As Beth Ann delivered the last drink on her tray, she couldn’t help but overhear her customer’s cell phone conversation. “...Hello? Hello? Honey, are you there?” The woman looked up at Beth Ann and said, “That’s weird. My phone just died.... Oh, well. I’m ready to order now.”
As Beth Ann headed for the kitchen with the new order, she noticed that Sally and Kristen were opening the blinds to maximize the amount of natural light coming in. Turning the corner into the kitchen area, however, she was caught off-guard. It was as dark as night back there. She hadn’t thought about it before, but she realized now that they didn’t have any windows in the back. She slowly walked forward to where she knew the warming shelf would be, seeing its shadowy form as her eyes adjusted. She could hear shuffling noises and she now noticed a strange, blue glow. “Guys? You okay back here?”
Kenny answered her from somewhere nearby. “Sure, we’re okay, other than the fact that this stupid kitchen operating at full steam is not the safest place to be in the dark. And that doesn’t count being left alone in the dark with Joe, either.” His voice sounded like it was moving around the room. Just then, a narrow vertical rectangle of light invaded the area to the right of the stove; Joe had propped open the delivery door at the end of a short hallway from the kitchen.
Beth Ann could see Kenny’s form now. “What crashed back here? We heard it clear out front!”
“I was trying to find the stupid flashlight and I knocked over a stack of chafers. Ah! Here it is.” He clicked on the mag light and went to the fryers first to lift out the baskets. Big Joe walked in then, carrying two large candles in glass jars that he had found in the manager’s office.
“Here. We can light these. But the girly smell is gonna suck.” He placed one on each side of the grill and lit them. One of them had three wicks and seemed unusually bright in the darkness. That’s when Beth Ann saw that the blue glow came from the gas flames which were still burning in the grill. She tried to quietly clip the new order onto the turnstile without being seen.
“No new orders, Beth Ann, unless we can grill or broil it,” Big Joe said, grabbing the flashlight out of Kenny’s hand and leaning across the prep counter to read the ticket. “Or people can eat off the salad bar. That’s it until the electricity comes back on.” For a change, Big Joe didn’t sound mean, just matter-of-fact. During the workweek, the cook with the most seniority was the acting manager until a “real” manager came in mid-afternoon to close. Like it or not, today it was Joe.
She left to give Kristen and Sally the message, and the three of them checked on all their tables, changing orders as needed, and letting people know they would have to pay in cash if the registers weren’t up and running by the time they finished eating. The fountain drinks weren’t working, so they made pitchers of iced tap water. After about ten more minutes, the three waitresses found themselves huddled at the hostess station.
Sally asked, “Did you notice that no one else has come in since the electricity went out? We were getting slammed...now nothin’. I wonder what’s going on?” She abruptly turned and walked out the front door. Beth Ann smiled at Kristen; they both liked working with Sally. A middle-aged single mother who had worked at the diner since it opened, Sally was a hard worker and a good cleaner. She was a quiet type, but she had a quick smile and an empathy that made her a favorite among the patrons.
Sally came back in, shaking the snow out of her hair and stamping the slush off her shoes. “It might be a car accident. There are cars sitting in the middle of the intersection, and some people standing around. If someone hit a pole, the electricity might not come on for a long time.”
Kristen shrugged. “Shouldn’t the police be here by now? Do you think we should call?”
“I’ll call 911,” Beth Ann volunteered and the other two went back to doing whatever they could to help their customers through the current mess of lunch. Thankfully, no one seemed too upset.
Heading back to the kitchen to place the call, she heard the cooks arguing over the flame. Joe was accusing Kenny of turning down the flame, but Kenny was denying it. She picked up the phone: no dial tone. That’s weird, she thought, landlines are supposed to work when the power is out. She pulled her phone out of her apron pocket. It was off. She tried to turn it on. Nothing. Stupid battery; had a full charge this morning. Turning her attention to the dueling cooks and randomly noticing that the kitchen was cold from the open back door, she asked if one of them could use his cell phone to call the police.
“Sally said there were cars in the intersection down the street, so maybe it was an accident. I can’t get a dial tone on the landline and my cell phone battery died,” she explained. Kenny said he was too poor to have a cell phone and Big Joe said he had left his at home by accident that morning. They turned back to the grill. Good grief, she thought. Good thing this isn’t a real emergency.
Knowing that Kristen would have her phone with her, Beth Ann went back to the dining room where she noticed several half-frozen stragglers coming in the front door. She asked Kristen to use her own cell phone to call the police, and then quickly darted off to seat the new customers. Beth Ann greeted them cheerfully and explained that they did not have any electricity; they could still eat, but with limitations. They didn’t seem surprised, yet no one spoke until she tried to seat them all together at the mega-sized corner booth; then they protested. Since they had come in together, she had assumed they were a group. Apparently there were several “singles” and one couple. She seated the husband and wife in Kristen’s section, two of the single tables in her own section, and the last two single tables in Sally’s section.
Beth Ann waited semi-patiently while the last person, an elderly woman, very slowly removed an outer scarf, then her heavy wool coat with a long row of buttons, and then a thin inner scarf that must have been wrapped around her neck at least five times. As she slowly spread them neatly across the empty chair...one by one...and awkwardly got herself and her bulky handbag situated, Beth Ann felt compelled to make small talk.
“I noticed that it’s still snowing. Are the roads getting bad?” Beth Ann asked, thinking that this poor woman probably shouldn’t be driving even in the most ideal weather conditions.
“Oh, deary, they’re a bit slippy now.” Her brow furrowed. “But my car just quit while I was pulling out from the stop sign. Oh, my. I don’t know what I’m going to do. That nice man over there helped push it to the side a little. And now I’m going to miss my doctor’s appointment.” She truly seemed distraught to have walked away and left her car in the street.
“We thought there was an accident, so we called the police. When they come, I’m sure they can help you. You just stay inside here until they arrive. Maybe you should try some lukewarm soup from the salad bar to warm you up,” Beth Ann teased, trying to ease the woman’s suffering somewhat.
It didn’t help. The lines in the woman’s forehead grew deeper, if that was possible. “Well, I think there maybe was a fender-bender, but the big problem is all our cars just up and quit. I can’t understand it.”
“All of whose cars?” Now Beth Ann’s brows furrowed.
The woman waved a gnarled hand towards the entrance of the diner in agitation, as if Beth Ann should already know this. “All of us who came in together. They all tried to help each other, looking under the hoods and what not. But we just got too cold to stand out there any longer.”
“Oh. That’s weird.” Beth Ann wasn’t sure what else to say, and she wondered if the woman was just confused...or slightly crazy. Also, she really had to hurry back to her two new customers. “Sally will be your server, and she’ll bring you some water, okay?”
As Beth Ann turned, she noticed that the man sitting at the table beside the elderly woman suddenly flipped the corner of his newspaper up. She knew that he had been listening to their conversation, yet now he was trying to hide it. She shook her head to clear the fuzz–what a day this was turning out to be. 1:30 could not possibly come fast enough.
***
Pouring drinks for her new customers, Beth Ann explained to them what the lunch options were. They both chose the salad bar and Beth Ann led the way, knowing that some of the items would need to be refilled. She made a list of toppings and sides to pull from the cooler on her order pad and swung through the side door into the kitchen slowly, remembering that it would be dark. The candle glow from the cooking area at the far side of the coolers helped a little, but she still had to feel her way to the walk-in door.
As she held the latch and gazed into the pitch-black cooler, she wondered how to identify what she needed without light. For as long as she could remember, she had always hated the dark. She thought she would outgrow it, but in twenty-two years she hadn’t. She forced her breathing to slow, knowing that there was nothing to fear in the walk-in.
Suddenly, something gripped her arm. She screamed like the girl that she was.
Instantly a light blinded her and the vice let go, followed by laughter. “See? You’re jumpy!” It was Kenny. “I saw you come in, and I thought you could use our flashlight. I was just trying to be kind and thoughtful, Bethie.” He was working hard to control his laughter...and not succeeding.
“Okay. First of all, don’t call me Bethie. And second, scaring me to death does not fall under either of those categories!” She realized she was raising her voice as her fear turned to anger.
“Stop flirting and get back to work, kids!” Big Joe called from the other side of the long, narrow kitchen.
“We are NOT flirting!” Beth Ann clarified loudly as she grabbed the flashlight out of Kenny’s hand and entered the cooler. From inside the cooler, she heard Kenny laugh all the way back to the grill.
Before she could pull the first stack of tubs to refill the crocks at the salad bar, Kristen burst in. “Here you are. I’ve been looking for you!”
Even in the partial darkness, Beth Ann could see the wild look in Kristen’s eyes. “What? Why?”
“Well, I tried to call the police, but my phone isn’t working either. I asked around at my tables, but....” She stopped.
“But what?”
“No one’s phone works. No one’s.”
The electricity...the landline...the cars...the cell phones.... What in the world was going on? Beth Ann felt a shadowy dread creep up on her the way it had when her parents left. Something wasn’t right.