by Scott Colby
“Good morning, tough guy,” Abelia chirped as she trundled into the dining room with a fresh skillet of eggs, wearing only a man’s button-down shirt that barely covered the tops of her thighs. Her hair was pulled back in a loose bun and she had yet to apply any makeup. A lit cigarette dangled from her lips, adding an undertone of spicy smoke to the room. “How’s your head?”
Kevin sighed. “It hurts.” Truth be told, the scene in the dining room had made it even worse.
His mother dumped the scrambled eggs onto an empty platter and returned to the kitchen. “I’ll make you a mimosa,” she called back over her shoulder. “In the meantime, try to eat something.”
For a few moments, the only sound in the Felton dining room was the steady scrape of Oscar’s knife across the nooks and crannies of his English muffin. Kevin stared at the wall to his left, trying to subdue the tide of rage bubbling up inside of him. He frowned when he noticed the square spot of discoloration where Abelia’s favorite portrait of Jesus should’ve hung. Glancing to his right, he found the shelves that typically held Abelia’s ceramic Mary and Joseph figurines empty. The hutch in the corner stood devoid of the array of crosses that should’ve been propped up atop it.
Suddenly Kevin realized what Driff had taken away from his mother. He’d always wished she would spend less time on her religion and more time on the real world, that she’d somehow wake up and seize life by the horns and really make something of herself. This, though—this forcible removal of something she probably hadn’t wanted to lose—felt wrong. For all of Driff’s high-minded talk about responsibility, his ethics surely left a lot to be desired.
But there was a more pressing issue to address.
“I’m only going to ask you this once,” Kevin said slowly so Oscar would understand. “Did you sleep with my mother?”
Deliberately, Oscar lowered the English muffin to his plate, set his knife down, wiped his hands on his napkin, and leaned forward to rest his arms on the table. Kevin could see the wheels churning in Spuddner’s mind as he struggled to find an explanation that wouldn’t get him punched in the face. “Your mother,” Oscar said slowly, “is a grown woman capable of making her own choices. She’s decided to embark on a journey of self-discovery that—”
“Cut the shit, Spuddner,” his mother snapped as she whirled back into the room. She set a pint glass of mimosa down in front of her son. “Yes, Kevin, I fucked your friend. We were both bored and a little drunk and in need of a release, so I figured…why the hell not?”
Kevin’s jaw dropped. This creature standing before him with her legs exposed and her face bare may have borne a passing resemblance to Abelia Felton, but this was not his mother.
“I actually propositioned that Mr. Driff first,” she said thoughtfully. “The way he took down Sweatpants Bob after that big bastard knocked you out was hot. It was almost like he appeared out of nowhere. Whoever he really is, he’s certainly a good friend to have.”
Kevin fought back the urge to vomit.
“I was your second choice?” Oscar sputtered pathetically. “But you said I was special!”
Abelia snorted. “You were my first lay in twenty-seven years. I probably said a lot of things. For a consolation prize, I suppose you were all right. Now shut up and eat your eggs. I’m kicking you out in half an hour.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Oscar mumbled, returning his attention to his breakfast.
“How the fuck did this happen?” Kevin muttered as he lowered his face into his hands.
Abelia took a seat at the head of the table and inhaled a piece of bacon. Abelia never ate with her fingers, and she certainly never even looked at a piece of food without draping a proper napkin over her lap and saying a few words of thanks. “You know that conversation I had with Mr. Driff on the common the other day? It really got me thinking about things. Things I hadn’t thought about for a long, long time—like life, the universe and my place in it, and what I want for myself.”
“You always told me that God’s plan was enough for you,” Kevin said, “that His plan should be enough for anybody.”
His mother harrumphed and rolled her eyes. “He should’ve put more sex and beer in His plan.”
“Those both figure prominently in my plans!” Oscar said around a mouthful of scrambled eggs. Neither of the Feltons paid him any attention.
Kevin leaned forward and looked his mother square in the eye. He spoke softly and precisely, giving voice to a story he’d never told and only ever heard once. He didn’t think his mother suspected he knew it. Uncle Fred, his tongue loosened by a few too many sips from the flask he kept tucked in the waistband of his wrinkled khakis, had told Kevin all about it at the end of his high school graduation party. “Twenty-seven years ago, on a warm spring evening, you left me on your sister’s doorstep and drove, alone, to the Almeida Shopping Center. My father had just left you for that Kelly bitch he met in Peoria. You parked in the very last row, in a spot where you could look out through your windshield at the stars glittering over the mall’s roof. You washed down a bottle of vicodin with a handle of cheap bourbon and went to sleep. The next morning, you were woken by the most beautiful pink and orange sunrise you’d ever seen. It was like the roof of the mall was on fire, you said, and in those flames, you saw your own rebirth in God’s love.”
“No, I didn’t,” Abelia snorted, wrinkling her nose and mouth like she’d just smelled a rancid fart. “What in the hell are you rambling on about?”
That was it, then—the memory Driff had taken away with his dirty fucking dust. Without that life-altering experience, Abelia’s faith had no center, no foundation. Her religious fervor had flaked away like dead leaves in an autumn breeze, revealing the cold, hard ground beneath.
If the dust could destroy something as seemingly solid and unassailable as Mrs. Felton’s faith, what chance did Kevin’s feelings for Nella have?
“Never mind,” Kevin said sadly. “Forget I mentioned it.”
She already had. “Eat up, then. You start your new job in two hours.”
Kevin blanched. “My new what?”
“After Mr. Driff tackled Sweatpants Bob, one hell of a melee broke out. I clobbered a couple of assholes from Norton myself.”
“They wanted to hit me,” Oscar said meekly.
“But I didn’t let ’em, now did I?” Abelia said proudly, cracking her knuckles. “But old Buck got waylaid pretty good and broke his hip. Poor guy’s out of work for the next few months—maybe for good.”
“What’s this got to do with me?”
Abelia smiled evilly. Kevin had never seen his mother look so prideful, so like a clever little girl who knew she’d gotten away with something sneaky that would bring her a huge payoff.
“That supposed ‘job’ you got with Mr. Driff ain’t gonna cut it. I will not have any freeloaders living underneath my roof,” she snarled. “You’re the new fry cook at the Harksburg Bar and Grill.”
— CHAPTER FIFTEEN —
Becoming a fry cook in a small-town dive had never been on Kevin’s to-do list, but he decided that working at the Burg would be better than being trapped all day with that thing that used to be his mother. Fran Kesky personally drove his new employee to work in his cherry-red Corvette, jabbering merrily about last night’s drama as his foot applied a little too much pressure to the gas pedal. “One hell of a donnybrook,” he called it, and “exactly what the town needed to blow off a little steam.” A few hundred dollars worth of broken glass and wrecked furniture and a disabled fry cook were worth it, he implied, if it meant giving his humble watering hole’s reputation a kick in the dangerous—and therefore interesting—direction.
Kevin briefly considered pouring out all his troubles to Fran and letting the big man spin them into something positive. That threat of death at the hands of the local reaper? Just a story to tell the grandkids! But how would he be able to tell the grandkids without finding a way to evade that massive dose of memory-wiping dust waiting for him if he somehow found a way
to survive? Well, at least he wouldn’t remember that time he got shot by an elf! Best friend hiding a dark secret? That’ll make Kevin seem more alluring and mysterious by association!
That got him thinking about Ren again. His friend had never been much good in a fight; he had probably bolted for the door as soon as the melee started. The thought reminded Kevin of an incident in third grade: that time Jerry Lyon and the Billups twins cornered Kevin and Ren on the playground. Ren took off like a rocket, leaving Kevin to take the brunt of the assault. But then two days later a gang of sixth graders broke Jerry’s arm and sent the Billups boys screaming home. Ren paid them handsomely for their services and bought Kevin a new bicycle. People with grandiose ideas about morality and friendship probably would’ve vilified his friend’s actions as a piss-poor attempt to make up for his cowardice, but Kevin didn’t have a problem with it. Ren picked his spots, and he picked them well.
Which, Kevin realized, made getting back on the same page as his best friend all the more important. Whatever Ren was hiding, it had to be brought out into the open so they could deal with it and move on. Ren Roberts, Kevin knew, was the only person in town with a snowball’s chance in hell of outsmarting that damn elf. Kevin’s memories of Nella depended on it.
There was a small crowd of people waiting outside the Burg when they arrived, locals who came for breakfast every Saturday morning and had nowhere else to go and nothing better to do. They didn’t look happy. Fran parked in his private spot behind the building and quickly shuffled Kevin in through the back door.
“I’ve never been a short order cook before,” Kevin said. He felt the need to be honest with Fran, and he figured setting the bar low with his new employer would make his life that much easier.
“I’m sure an educated man-o-the-world like yourself will do just fine. Shit ain’t rocket science. You think old Buck would’ve been able to do the job if it were difficult?” Fran said with a smile. His sad eyes betrayed his true feelings; he was going to miss his regular cook. “Just make what the menu says. Scrambled eggs and home fries is scrambled eggs and home fries. If people want spices, point to the salt and pepper and ketchup on the table in front of ’em.”
Kylie would’ve had an aneurysm at the thought of ketchup as a spice.
The Burg’s back room looked like it had been the scene of a bombing. Tables and chairs were scattered here and there and turned on their sides, save one set in the middle that had somehow survived the carnage. A splash of blood stained the blue velvet atop the pool table, and a heavy dent in the dart board looked like it would fit perfectly around a human skull.
“Going to hang that busted board behind the bar for posterity,” Fran said as he tiptoed over a scattering of broken glass—no small feat for a man his size.
“Who’s going to clean all this?” Kevin asked, a sinking feeling in his chest. He sure as hell didn’t want to do it.
“I’ll hire Waltman and Jimeson. Those two losers never have any work. Think they know which end of the broom to use?”
“They might be able to figure it out if you leave them the manual.”
Fran guffawed and almost slipped on a piece of fabric that turned out to be a pair of blue boxer shorts. “Kids these days,” he muttered as he kicked the shorts away.
The Burg’s owner spent all of thirty seconds getting his new employee acclimated to his surroundings—“spatula’s in the drawer, food’s all pre-cut in the fridge, an’ that hot thing’s where you cook”—and then he unlocked the front door and disappeared through the back. While the regular customers streamed inside to claim their usual seats, Kevin helplessly watched Fran’s convertible scream away down the road. Being left alone on his very first day of work was neither something he’d expected nor something with which he found himself particularly comfortable.
He wasn’t sure how long he stood there gaping and staring out the window. Mr. Spicolli, a septuagenarian with a crooked smile and a wispy comb-over who’d been Kevin’s second grade math teacher, snapped him back to reality with a polite sentence. “I’d like scrambled eggs with a side of bacon, hash browns, and wheat toast when you have a moment, Mr. Felton.”
Kevin blinked a few times and took a deep breath, steeling himself. “Coffee with that?”
“Please,” Mr. Spicolli said warmly, “and a glass of water.”
“Coming right up.”
Kevin whirled into action, taking care of his old teacher’s beverages before collecting the orders of the various other blue hairs seated at the counter. Once everyone was set with a coffee or an orange juice or a glass of water, he turned his attention to the grill and got to work on the food.
The paper hat was surprisingly itchy. Buck’s old apron, stained a splotchy shade of beige by decades of splattering grease, weighed heavily on Kevin’s shoulders. The plastic grips on all the spatulas had been worn down to accommodate fingers narrower than his own. As Kevin tended the grill, staring intently at a mound of hash browns and a pair of the Burg’s supposedly world-famous cheddar and Spam omelets, he could feel the judgmental glares of the patrons at the counter burrowing into his back. Kevin Felton was not old Buck; he knew it, and he’d be the first to admit it, so why did everybody and everything in the place insist on reminding him of it every damn second?
A few minutes later, after Kevin proved he wasn’t going to immediately burn down the entire place, the regulars turned their attention to their primary pastime: kicking the infamous Harksburg rumor mill into high gear. The previous evening’s festivities, such as they were, provided more than enough raw material.
“I hear Charlie Casserlin took out four boys from Norton all by himself,” Mrs. Eichmann exclaimed to Roger Thorn, the groundskeeper at the elementary school. “And then he went home with Jenny Reilly!”
“Fran’s going to have to tear down the entire back room,” Bob Roman said sagely to no one in particular. “Structural damage. Can’t be saved.”
“Town jail was so full last night, they just left a few drunks locked up in the back of the cruisers,” Willy Howard said in disgust. “Didn’t even crack a window!”
“That crazy old bat, Mrs. Felton?” Cordelia Walton whispered to her husband in between bites of French toast—or, at least, thought she was whispering to her husband. “Word is she stopped praying to Jesus and started gettin’ down on her knees for anyone that asks.”
Without saying a word or even looking at the fat old woman, Kevin sauntered over to the Waltons’ booth, picked up Cordelia’s plate, and carried it back behind the counter. After scraping its contents into the garbage can, he returned to his work at the grill.
“Well, I never!” Mrs. Walton stormed out of the Burg and headed for the car. Her husband smiled at Kevin and kept eating his oatmeal.
Kevin quickly found himself getting into a steady rhythm. Take an order, cook, check for customers looking for a coffee refill or for their check. Lather, rinse, repeat. It wasn’t hard work, but it demanded a certain constant attention to detail he hadn’t needed to maintain while working in a cubicle. If a report was wrong or incomplete, well, most of his superiors were too busy to notice, but if someone ordered scrambled eggs and got fried, as accidentally happened when he delivered Mr. Loomin’s breakfast—well, there was going to be a complaint, but that complaint wasn’t trimmed in a politically-correct-sounding-yet-blatantly-passive-aggressive wrapper like those he typically received from his coworkers at Noonan, Noonan, and Schmidt. No, the complaints he received were just that: statements of wrongdoing, devoid of anything personal and free of bullshit beyond the occasional slight implication that Buck would’ve done it right. Kylie would’ve found their directness rude, but Kevin appreciated it.
Sometime around eleven, after the first round of customers had left and Mr. Spicolli had finished the third free mimosa Kevin had shoved in front of him, all conversation in the diner suddenly stopped. The soft jingle of the bell attached to the front door announced a newcomer. Kevin turned to find Driff approaching the counter, pr
oudly wearing a bright shiner around his right eye. Magic rounded his pointy ears.
“I thought your mother was fucking with me,” the elf said as he took a seat opposite the grill. “She knows you’re working for me, right?”
“Unless you dusted that memory out of her, too,” Kevin snapped. “Apparently she wants me doing something with better long term prospects than ‘running around town with a freak show.’ Who gave you that souvenir?”
“Sweatpants Bob is meaner than he looks,” Driff replied with a scowl. “He got his elbow up just as I brought him down. Thought he broke one of my ribs, too. He’s sleeping it off in the town pen.”
“How’d you avoid that fate?”
Driff cocked an eyebrow. “Really?”
“Right,” Kevin muttered. Dodging Harksburg’s finest probably wasn’t particularly difficult for a man who could turn invisible.
“Shouldn’t you have handed me a menu by now?”
Kevin grabbed the greasiest menu he could find from under the counter and whipped it at Driff’s hands. “Coffee?”
“Please,” the elf said as he examined the sheet of laminated paper, holding it delicately at arm’s length as one might a dirty diaper. His head suddenly jerked up and around to scan the silent room. Many of the other patrons looked away in embarrassment. “You can all go back to your business now. The stranger who kicked Sweatpants Bob’s ass last night isn’t going to do anything rash.”
A low murmur returned to the Burg as the other costumers followed Driff’s suggestion. Mr. and Mrs. Horton hastily left a twenty on their table and headed for the door.
“You don’t seem happy with me,” Driff said as Kevin poured him a cup of coffee.
“What gave you that idea? Cream and sugar?”
“No, thanks. I’m not the one who punched you in the face, you know. Nor did I give Sweatpants Bob the idea. You can thank your mother for that one.”
“I’m pretty sure I can thank you for all the strange shit that’s happened to me the last few days.”