Bobby's Diner (2 page)

still hate me so much?”

 
“Oh, hell, I could care less about you.” She
turned away
 
and looked out over the
burgeoning desert. “How’s this gonna look to the folks around here? Did you
ever think about that?”

“I just put my husband in the
ground. I guess I haven’t had too much time to worry about what people are
thinking.”

“He was my husband too.” She
scowled when she looked at me. I couldn’t very well argue her point and decided
by the look of her, saying nothing was best. Vanessa turned her head away.
“Fuck.” She spoke it like a tire going flat.

We looked at each other for a few
seconds. I’d been sitting on the planter outside the door across from Vanessa
the whole time and my ass felt numb, so I stood. Face-to-face with her, it was
uncanny how much Vanessa and I looked like each other. She was older, of course,
and had severely short, dark copper-colored hair. Her eyes were almond-shaped
and emerald green, like mine. She was tall and had some meat to her, like me.
Her skin was radiant
 
pink with freckles.

Here, standing in front of me,
was the
 
only
 
other woman Bobby had ever loved. We stared
into each other’s eyes. I can only guess what she was thinking. The scowl on
her face was worth a thousand words. Time seemed to stall out and we began to
feel ill at ease.

Through it all, a strange feeling
welled-up deep inside me. For the life of me, I don’t know why I did what I did
at that moment. I stuck my hand out like I was making a deal.

“So, what d’ya say, partner?
Shall we give her a go?” I said it emphasizing my Georgian drawl like an actor
in an old western.

And, Vanessa did quite the
unexpected thing. She grabbed my hand and gave it one hard shake downwards.

As we walked together toward the
restaurant’s door, she shook her head in disbelief and grumbled, “Dear God,
help us.”

***

Old Spice cologne always makes me
think of funerals and vice versa. The scent wafted through our house from my
parent’s bedroom down the hallway into mine on the shower’s steam. That smell
only lasted until I was about eight years old when Momma and Daddy had a huge
knock-down-drag-out. Daddy left the house in a snit and drove his station wagon
straight into the face of a telephone pole. He was killed instantaneously and
left Momma and me all alone.

I was just a young girl when
daddy died. We lived near the
 
historic
district in a small town called Milledgeville. On
 
family outings, we’d take horse- drawn
carriage rides through lolling lush gardens and pass by a dead author’s home.
We rode the trolley by the Old Governor’s Mansion even though we lived close
by, in walking distance. That was daddy’s treat to momma and me at least once a
month. He’d repeat the tale about
 
the
history of Milledgeville where he was born and raised and where his momma was
born and raised, his momma’s momma, hers, and hers the same year Milledgeville
was incorporated, in
 
1804. Daddy was
just thirty-five when he died. We moved away from lolling hills filled with
scented gardens and ended up in the smelly metropolis of Atlanta. Atlanta! The
armpit of Georgia where mother got job after job in crusty bars serving drinks
to strangers and taking home a few in the process.

For daddy’s interment, momma had
the coroner dress him in his favorite blue seersucker suit, with a cracked
pocket watch, and his cologne on him. I wanted that pocket watch so bad it
 
hurt but momma said it belonged with daddy.
The immediate family members were the only ones who could witness daddy’s body
before the closed-casket funeral was to begin. No one smiled during the
viewing. People cried, in fact, yet made insincere comments about how good he
looked.

You see, puzzling his face back
together had proved a difficult proposition for the mortician. The impact of the
car coming in contact with the pole sent daddy through the window. Safety glass
split his head in more than thirty pieces and after mortaring his bones,
seaming his skin, and reattaching his hair, the mortician had to reconstruct
his nose and chin, after which he layered him
 
unnaturally in a thick application of foundation makeup. It didn’t look
like daddy at all. But, at least, it smelled like him.

That was the first time I ever
got to ride in a limousine.

Old Spice and limousines—they
remind me of funerals.

Nowadays limos are white instead
of morbid black.

Limo drivers are still tranquil,
still wear a chauffeur’s hat, and still help you in and out of the car, but
around here the black limo has gone the way of the dinosaur.

That changed shortly after my
husband’s, Bobby’s, death. For the past forty years, I’ve been to far too many
funerals. Now this.

Sunnydale has lost one of its
finest people. Earlier this morning, when we pulled up to the graveside it
showed. There were swarms of people. Roberta, Bobby’s daughter, said she’d
received over fifty bouquets and ten funeral arrangements. That says something,
doesn’t it? You must be pretty amazing to have almost the entire town show up
for your funeral.

* * *

I arrived in Sunnydale, Arizona
in the heat of the summer.
 
Stepping off
the cold bus into the morning warmth made me wither under my thick cover. A bus
ride originating the night before in cool mountain air and ending up in the
heat of the desert left me peeling off my day-old sweatpants revealing under
them a short summer dress made of thin butter-colored rayon. The inside of my
thighs felt dewy.

A bag lady pushing a grocery cart
had dropped her coin purse and instinctively I dropped to my hands and knees to
help her collect the quarters, nickels, and dimes that went
 
rolling in all directions. That’s when this
trucker noticed me.
 
I
 
could see him imagining me slipping out of my
clothes entirely. He had that look. His tongue maneuvered a toothpick around
from one side of his gaping mouth to the other and he kind of smirked as he
watched me. He leaned on the ticket counter and talked to some lackey who
worked behind the desk. Both men saw me. Only one had a use.

The smell of diesel was oily in
the air. My long strawberry curls fell over my face when I pulled the grey
sweatshirt over my head. I shook my hair back a little. That’s when I slipped
off my sweatpants. That’s when
 
both
gentlemen stopped talking. I shoved the garments into my backpack, found a
stick of cinnamon- flavored gum and folded it over and over three times with my
lips and tongue. It made my mouth water. I walked up to them real smart,
chewing my
 
gum. Standing next to them, I
could look both men square in the eyes. In Milledgeville, where I grew up, I
was one of the bigger girls at school.

I asked “toothpick” if he had a
car or something. He bragged about his big-rig as if it were wrapped inside his
zipper—a
 
Peterbilt, no less. I giggled
because I needed a lift and it was a little funny. The sound of my laughter
carried across the room and the echo bounced- off bright windows and a cold
tile floor.
 
The bus terminal sounded
like a big tin drum and I was aching to end my journey. With just a couple of
hundred dollars in my
 
pocket, a $45 bus
trip would have taxed my savings. A cab was out of the question. This guy
seemed like a good prospect. He
 
seemed
willing. I only had one hundred miles or so left to get to Phoenix.

I never made it.

After listening endlessly to this
yahoo talk about his wife and seven boys, and how he’d never do anything to
break up their
 
happy home, we neared a
little

nowhere spot along a long dusty
highway. He was unzipping his pants while I watched lazily out the window with
my hand propping up my head.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been
to the Arizona desert but the heat can melt you. It’s a hell of a lot different
from the damp, cool air of a coastal town. I watched mesmerizing waves
 
pulse off the desert basin. A landscape of
green saguaros, spiny yucca, curly barrel cactus, and cholla painted the red
rocky sandstone. I could smell tar-pungent-creosote baking
 
under the weight of the sun. It seemed to
stick to my skin. I remember yawning at the tranquility of it all.

His droning turned into a nervous
chatter and broke me from
 
my spell when
he said, “how about a little mouth job.” I almost didn’t hear him, but looked
over in

his direction involuntarily. He’d
pulled out his penis and was massaging it to get it hard.

I screamed.

“Oh my god . What the fuck do you
think you’re doing?”

By then, we were cruising along
at about sixty-five when I clamored for the door handle. I don’t know what I
would have done—jump? I don’t know. Fortunately, I didn’t need to jump. When I
screamed, he nearly jackknifed his precious Peterbilt when he slammed onto his
brakes.

The wheezing hydraulics gasped
for air in a high pitch. I
 
thought we
were going to crash. Actually, it wasn’t because I screamed that we nearly
crashed. It was because when I saw his dick in his hand I grabbed my backpack
and started thrashing his lap with it. That’s when I turned to see if I would
survive a jump from the semi.

No one ever told me how useful a
backpack could be. You can keep your valuables in it, carry it around with some
modicum of ease, and use it as a weapon if need be.

Well, he reacted like any man
would who wanted to protect his penis—he forgot what he was doing. I could see
cars reflected in my side mirror slowing behind us as the big truck squirreled
from one lane to the next.

The trailer he pulled wagged in
and out of sight. Vehicles split off of the road behind us. As I clutched my
backpack tight, I could feel the outline of the only book I was carrying with
me, the Bible. When I looked up again into the mirror and saw those cars peel
off onto the roadside it reminded me of a bad version of Moses in the Old
Testament parting the Red Sea.

Then, I held on for dear life to
the seat and the dashboard in front of me. We slowed to about forty- five when
we careened off the shoulder next to the fast lane. He ended up burying those
big truck tires deep into the thick silt of the
 
median. Through the whole thing, his dick was out.

Can you imagine what they would
have thought had we crashed and died? Christ. I wanted out. That’s all I was
thinking. I unbuckled my belt, held my backpack tight,
 
and jumped from the high seat nearly into a
tumbleweed that had partly jammed under the front tire. He was tucking his
Johnson back into his pants and yelling at me like it was my fault. Calling me
a slut and words like that.

I waved down traffic to let me run
across to the other side and set off on foot for nearly three miles. After
about five minutes, I heard state patrol cars approaching. They passed me fast
coming from the opposite direction en route to the accident behind me. My momma
always told me not to hitch rides with strangers. Guess she was right.

I swear I was getting a tan as I
walked farther south.

And, the shoes I wore that day
weren’t meant for too much walking. They were espadrilles with a floral design
and a yellow that matched my summer dress. I’d found them in a Sears catalog at
this little gin joint where I served drinks in a dreary overcast fishing town
along the northern California coast. When I saw the outfit on that pretty
model, I made my decision right then and there to leave for a warmer climate.
That’s how I came to Sunnydale.

* * *

Fifteen years passed and a
lifetime passed with them. During the early spring of 2007, at forty, I buried
my only husband.

Bobby was quite a bit older than
I was. He was fifty when I walked into his diner and I was twenty-five. I met
him the first day I sauntered into Sunnydale. I didn’t feel like catching
another ride to some place I’d
 
never
 
been
 
before,
 
and
 
I
 
wanted
 
a
 
glass
 
of lemonade
 
with lots of ice in it like a hot-weather person might drink.

My dress clung to me like gauze
sticking to a honey jar. Bobby noticed me through the window (he told me a few
nights later when we first made love). I fell for him hard and he returned the
favor—something his wife and daughter didn’t quite appreciate. But, he was my
first real love. He’ll be my last too. I miss him like a child misses hard
candy at Christmas time.

His seducing eyes and soft touch
make me quiver just to think about. He liked to wash my hair and brush it out
after it dried. He treated me like an angel. Bobby used to tell me my skin
reminded him of cream-freckled coffee. He said my big boobs were too big but
that he could learn to live with it.