Then, stupidly, she realized the hot carafe was still sitting on Frank’s table. She grabbed it up, sending the dark brown coffee sloshing inside and almost out of its spout.
“Well,” she said to Frank without looking directly at him, and then blurted “Back to work for me have a nice afternoon Mister Moort.”
And she was gone. Back into the kitchen where she blew an exhaustive breath and leaned on the prep counter as she’d done a while earlier after seeing the sweepstakes numbers in the Press. She realized her hands were shaking but she steadied them. Around the corner from her, Miguel tore back bacon into long pink and white strips then threw them on the griddle with a loud sizzle as each made contact. He was humming a tune, presumably one from his homeland, against the tinny transistor radio he had hanging up on a nail back there. It was fighting with his song, playing a new tune by Don Mclean: American Pie.
Again, Teeny saw the beautiful smiles—some of sheer joy, some of jealousy—that would greet her in the body of the café if she were to explode from the kitchen with her sweepstakes ticket clenched in a fist above her head. It was such a luxurious feeling, this thought, like warm water poured down her scalp, neck and back.
“Daydreamin’ again, Teeny?”
Helen was chewing gum and snapped a pink bubble of the stuff behind Teeny, startling her out of imagining a public sweepstakes win in the Highliner Café’s dining room.
“Holy Mother of the lord, Hel-EN! You ‘bout nearly gave me a heart stoppage, girlie,” Teeny said. “What are you doin’ here?”
“Came for my check,” she said pulling the stretched gum back into her mouth and then chomping on it some more. “Hey, can you cover my Saturday shift? Tommy’s gonna be on shore and we, uh, we wanna have some time before he goes back to work.”
“Oh, Helen, you know I take Mama to her game night tomorrow.”
“I know, I know. But pleeeeease. Just this one time.” Helen’s voice went low and her eyes went sideways to make sure Miguel the fry cook wasn’t close enough to hear. “You know me and Tommy’re tryin’ to make a baby.”
Teeny slumped her shoulders. “Yeah, all right—”
“I’ll get you back, little girl, you know I will. Thanks one hundred million, doll.” And Helen leaned forward and gave Teeny Tina a quick but formidable squeeze.
With that, this girl—just a year younger than Tina and already married a year—snagged her pay check from a sleeve on the wall over the counter and whirled around to head back out the rear kitchen door. “Bye-bye, doll.”
Teeny rolled her eyes, not with sarcasm but with frustrated disbelief. What was she going to tell Mama? She liked Helen—liked her a lot, truth be told—but it was always louder girls, more boisterous ones that made their agendas trump anything Tina had planned or hoped for. But her time was coming. The sweepstakes ticket meant she’d be in charge. Totally in charge of her own life, as she saw it. She put her hand in the pocket of the apron to get out her ticket and look at it again.
But it wasn’t there.
3.
The panic in Tina’s face was evident even to the likes of Frank Moort, who had just stood to put on his suit coat, straighten his tie and perch his hat on his head when she emerged from the kitchen, sending the swinging doors both slamming into the walls at either side. She rushed down the aisle of empty booths towards him, one arm outstretched in an almost comical fashion.
He had just counted out coins to cover his tip and had gotten up from the bench to leave when he’d noticed the rectangle of paper lying face down under his table. He’d no sooner bent down and touched his two fingers and thumb to the small black print on the back of the sheet when Teeny, now close enough for him to feel a hot exhale on his neck, breathlessly said, “That’s mine, Mr. Moort. Must’ve dropped it—”
He returned to his upright position, fully erect like a steeple, his hat now slanted low on his forehead and shadowing his eyes. His lower lip was pursed out in a gesture of curiosity. Was it a little love note to some boy? Was it just an order slip? He turned over the paper and saw that it was a recent sweepstakes ticket, crumpled on cream-coloured paper. These were new, only legal for the last year and a half or so. Frank had only ever seen them in black and white on the supper news cast.
Fuelled with rich cake, fruit and coffee holding several spoonfuls of sugar, Frank Moort was not the kind of fifty-eight year old male who needed a nap right after lunch. And, right now, he was as sharp and as quick as a fruit fly on a carcass. “Well, well,” he said, to no one in particular. Teeny smoothed her wayward hair back against her scalp then ran hands down her skirt to ensure it was pressed against her legs and not flipped up in some ridiculous flapping mess.
“Looks like you must have a winner here.”
“Why would you think that, Mr. Moort?”
“Oh, I dunno,” Frank said coyly, drawing smoke from the end of his customary lunch cigarette. “People round these parts don’t generally get worked into such a lather over a losing sweepstakes ticket…I wouldn’t think—” Then he turned to face her, his own eyes and bridge of the nose in heavy shadow under his dress hat and clouded with smoke. “—Would you, dollface?”
“Suppose not…but really, Mr. Moort—” Tina thought she should say, I haven’t checked the numbers yet. But she knew she couldn’t lie. A girl like her doesn’t tell lies. That’s the first step down a garden path and one she would never travel. “—Can’t I just have it back?” She reached for it, a genuine, honest attempt to take it back. He moved his hand away, a mechanical gesture, as though he’d staged her attempt himself.
The strain was in her eyes, deep down in them, like it had re-coloured them, made them a different shade. Teeny was getting visibly upset. Moisture formed in the red corners of her wide eyes. Cords in her neck were pressing outward, taut, like heavy gauge wire.
Then Frank Moort did the unthinkable. He pulled his black leather wallet, worn and faded, from his pants pocket and opened it. “I think I’ll just hang on to this. Y’know. So it doesn’t get mislaid.”
“Mr. Moort—”
Then he turned at her, leaned down on her. “Don’t you MISSSTER MOORT me!” This came out in a snap. The ‘s’ was an exaggerated hiss, even more than Miguel’s drawn out enunciations. Tiny dots of his spit burned on her face like a spray of acid droplets and she blinked back from him.
His demeanour went back to calm. In a flicker, he was Frank Moort again. This bipolar display made Teeny’s mind whirl. What was happening here?
He gestured for her to sit—back down in the spot she had been a few minutes earlier when he’d demanded that she sit a spell. “Now,” he said, calmly. Even as if he was capable of rational conversation, “Please do me the pleasure of joining me for a chat about this…development.”
She hesitated. Her wide eyes took in the depressed vinyl spot on the bench as if it was a stay of execution’s short remains.
“I’ll not ask again.”
They both sat, she in an empty-faced fugue, almost as if under a strained hypnosis.
“Now then. You’d like your sweepstakes ticket. I surmise that it’s worth a bit more to you than a cup of coffee—” He waved a hand at the bill and few coins sitting on top of the lunch order ticket on the table’s surface between them. The coins moved and tinkled, rattling together loudly in the quiet café. Teeny’s eyes danced down at them, then quickly back to his face, as he sat down across from her. “—Let’s discuss this rationally.”
Her body was tight, clenched. Coarse, chunky blood throbbed in her neck veins. She was hot. Her reddened face felt sunburned.
“What to do, what to do. dollface. Dear, dear dollface.” Frank leaned forward, his eyes coming out from the shadow cast by his brim. “Any…suggestions?” He raised an eyebrow at suggestions as though it was a dirty word.
Teeny stuttered. “W-w-what are you asking me, Mr. Moort?”
“I’m not asking for a thing, doll. Just looking for suggestions.”
“I probably dropped th
e ticket when I reached into my pocket for my notebook. You don’t really think it’s yours—”
He interrupted her. “—Ah, but it is, my dear. Finders keepers, losers weepers, and all that. You need to be more careful. I tell you what…”
She didn’t say anything. Only held back tears. She couldn’t believe that this had gone sideways. Only a little while earlier she had pictured everything shy of a ticker tape parade down Main with her golden ticket in hand. And now this.
“You visit me back there—” His eyes flicked towards the men’s room door back by the kitchen over Teeny’s shoulder. “—and we’ll just see if you can come up with a suggestion. Y’know. One that solves our little impasse.”
Teeny blinked hard. “Mr. Moort—”
Low, in a growl through gritted teeth, he said, “Stop calling me that.” He banged his open hand on the table between them. Percussive, it jarred her. The coins jangled and one rolled to the edge before dropping to the floor and lolling around and around, wowing to a rest. It was the only sound in the Highliner Café. Why couldn’t Miguel come out from the kitchen? Why couldn’t Dab pop in from one of his other business ventures across town?
She hesitated. Regrouped her thoughts in a confused jumble. “Y-you’re married. I’m not—I’m not sure I understand. Can’t you just give me the ticket?”
“I can, dollface. And I will.” Then Frank Moort’s voice became a childish mock. “Can’t yuh just gimme duh ticket?” He was taunting her and again his eyes flew over her shoulder to the men’s room door. “Meet me. And we’ll get this wee little itty bitty ticky-wicky back in your pretty litto hanny-wannies.”
Frank’s next comment really bit into her skin. He said, “You want to get off this island.”
Then he added, “Ya told me you did.”
Tina felt bile rising in her throat. In a flash, she imagined being in the men’s room—which she occasionally had to visit when it was low on paper towels or toilet paper. She was standing over Frank Moort, bashing the man over the head with one of the towel dispensers—a big, rusting steel box that she wouldn’t have to work hard at to pry from the tiled wall and hoist it up in the air to bring down on him. Bashing him, bashing him, again and over again. She yanked herself away from that image of him crumpled below her, back to the booth where she sat across from present-tense, flesh-and-blood Frank Moort and covered a gasp with her hand. Her wide eyes gave her away, but Frank only assumed her look meant she finally took his meaning. Took it and understood it.
“That’s it, dollface. Now we’re cooking with gas.” He winked. “I’ve got to be back across the street at my desk in thirty minutes. Plenty of time. You’ve got two minutes. I’ll be waiting. Ticket will be too.”
He got up fast and his suit coat flapped.
It was twelve-thirty.
4.
Del Shannon was on the tinny speaker coming from the kitchen where Miguel the fry cook was probably sitting on a stool, picking his nose and reading a car guide. Shannon’s tune from a few years back, “Runaway” was playing and the sound wafted from the kitchen to the pass-through and right up to Tina who was taking furtive, soft-toed steps toward the closed men’s room door. It was painted in a robin’s egg blue and at the steel hand plate there were dirty smears where countless men had pushed it open to get inside and relieve themselves. Frank Moort had done the same thing moments earlier.
Teeny treaded a few more soft-soled steps. She didn’t know why she was trying to be so quiet. It’s not like she’d actually do anything to him, not like she was trying to sneak up on him. Or was she? Would she go in, grab the towel dispenser off the wall, and bash him with it like she’d imagined she would? Get him good and bloody, make sure he was too woozy to follow her and then just grab his wallet and take back her sweepstakes ticket while he lay on the floor.
All she wanted was the ticket. The ticket. Why couldn’t he just give it to her?
She heard the urinal flush. She stopped cold. Would he come out? Would he wonder what was taking her so long?
Then the fan inside the men’s room switched on. She heard it grind to life, wobbling at first and then getting up to an even speed. Tin-ting-tin-TING, as the uneven, loose blades cut the air and rubbed the metal housing up inside the ceiling. She recognized the sound of the fan, rarely used, but unmistakable. The ladies room had the same fan and it was in better repair. It sounded fine compared to this one. Was Frank turning it on to try and cover the noise they would soon be making?
She shuddered at that. She couldn’t imagine what he intended to have her do. She thought of the steel stall walls and the cold, pale green tile floor inside that room, beyond the light blue door she now faced. She moved towards it at a glacial pace. She’d never had any kind of…relations, not with any man. Nothing but some kisses, and truth be told, not many of them either. One boy, Donnie Dunbar, in senior year had cupped her left boob after a dance then she’d made him take her home but that’s it. For a week after, Teeny had thought she could still feel Donnie’s hot hand around the under-curve of her left side and it was not a good feeling, given what she knew about sex.
Maybe that’s all Mr. Moort wanted. Maybe he was just a lonely man who didn’t get attention from his wife anymore. Maybe Teeny would just sit on his lap in the stall for a few minutes and that would be that. He’d hand her the ticket, make one of his usual comments about her famous Tahitian pineapple–maybe something a bit racier—and that would be it. Next Monday he’d be at his usual booth, eating a chicken salad sandwich and watching her bum move as she went to the register. Maybe he’d get a side salad to mix it up.
But she knew that wouldn’t be it, couldn’t be nearly all of what he was after. Damn her all to hell for yanking that ticket out of her apron and not noticing it fall. But it was his fault. Not hers. He’d gotten her all flustered at the table, trying to make her stay when he knew she shouldn’t be sitting at a table with a customer. This was Frank Moort’s fault. All of it was.
She raised her hand to push open the door, now just inches away from it, steeling herself to flinch back if the door sprung open on its own and there was Frank Moort standing naked there gaping at her in flush-faced anger.
There was a new noise. Separate from the fan, from the tiny buzz of fluorescent lights, this was a ticking. Or maybe a clacking. It was minute, far away. It was from inside the bathroom, no doubt, but Teeny didn’t know it, couldn’t place it. More, more, more, it was steady, melodic.
Now she imagined Frank Moort had disappeared into the men’s room and transformed into a giant salt-and-pepper coloured bird, filling the room from wall to wall, the size of six or seven big men all together. Dirty, dark feathers, each as large as one of her hands, would shuffle as it shifted. Shoulders hunched against the ceiling, the epic bird would be inside with its large beak ticking on the tile wall then lean down to peer at the door as she opened it. The door would swing inward and the massive Moort Bird would glare at her for a half-second, then descend on her with sudden force, its talons and sharp, brazen beak tearing into her flesh, taking its meal from her bones while she screamed.
She pushed open the door, the real one, the robin’s egg blue one. The ticking grew louder but there was no large black and white, feathered bird. No wide eyes and gleaming yellow beak. Only another door ahead, the green one on the stall. The pale light flickered. There were black lines at either side of the stall’s door jam, heavy dark lines—and a shadow on the floor.
Still that ticking. Louder. She stepped through the men’s room doorway, two sinks to her left, urinal to the right with a yellowed salt cake and the remnants of a flush still dribbling down its wide, white throat. She took another step.
The ticking, no it wasn’t like a ticking sound anymore, not on this side of the door. It was a rubbing sound. Yes, something rubbing and clacking against something else. Tina thought of her dad some years gone by. The memory came without warning, like a short burst of something cold on her skin. It was a visual flash of Dad rubbing the bla
de of a knife up and down the length of an old piece of thick leather. He was sharpening it to handle the culling of a farm pheasant in the fall.
Still that rubbing sound from behind the stall door. Heavy, thick shadows of Frank Moort. They made him look bigger from this side. She took more steps into the belly of the room. She smelled his cigarette. He must have been smoking in here. The overhead light flickered and that Tin-ting-tin-TING seemed to recede, to grow away from her ears. She pushed open the second door on her journey. The metal hinges squeaked.
There, sitting on the toilet was Frank Moort, legs spread, working away on himself. His open brown leather belt was rhythmically bobbing up and down like a beastly, dark tongue. The buckle was clacking against the toilet paper holder on the metal wall beside him. He was concentrating and his eyes were closed but the squeak of the door pulled him from that black place where his mind was.
He opened his eyes. He looked up.
She’d have probably done what he wanted. If only he hadn’t smiled in that moment. But it was his smile, that dastardly, self-satisfied smile of teeth that hadn’t been white in some years. She looked at him and his face seemed only an inch or two from hers. She thought she could feel his heavy breath on her lips but was maybe imagining him closer than he truly was. Instead, it was probably a blast from the noisy fan overhead. She doubled forward, dry-heaved and wretched but nothing came out. The room was tight around her, dimly lit and noisy in her ears with its silence. Except of course for the rubbing of the leather belt, the clacking of the buckle and the overhead fan blade.
“Come’ere, dollface. Let’s hear your suggestion.”
She ran from the room, blasting through the robin’s egg blue door with force. It was most definitely that wide, conniving grin that made her bolt. She’d almost wished he’d had a blade swiping up and down a leather strap—instead of that godforsaken grin.
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