Secrets and Fries at the Starlight Diner

by Helen Cox

  ‘Plenty. Is he a Beatles man or an Elvis man? Can he play an instrument, and if not, when’s he going to learn? What was his favourite song growing up and when did he first hear it? You don’t want to be walking down the aisle with somebody and later find out their favourite record is “Mickey” by Toni Basil,’ I said with a little shudder.

  ‘Well, I’d listen to Toni Basil with him any day. Your number seven with no toast is ready.’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said, picking up the plate and stepping back out into the diner. I’d barely got to the other side of the swing doors when I slammed into Jimmy, or rather, he slammed into me, and the breakfast I was carrying tipped up and splatted down the front of my apron. My eyes widened and my body stiffened. Jimmy cringed as I held the plate where it was, flat against my chest, before slowly lowering it to reveal my uniform stained with crushed egg and smeared butter.

  ‘Great. Thanks for that,’ I said. ‘That customer already just loved me without waiting an extra ten minutes for his food.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Jimmy said, scratching the side of his head and looking down my front. ‘But it was an accident.’

  Sighing, I pushed the swing door open again and called through. ‘Lu, gonna need a repeat on that number seven with no toast. I just had a collision with Jimmy.’

  ‘Sounds like fun, you just got all the boys after you today,’ came her snide reply, closely followed by, ‘I’m on it.’

  Jimmy’s eyes narrowed at Lucia’s comment but I didn’t have time to humour his weird mood swings.

  ‘Oh man,’ I said, looking down at my stained uniform and shaking my head. ‘Bernie’s not gonna like this.’

  ‘Bonnie,’ Jimmy said, with an edge to his voice, trying to distract me from my costume drama. ‘I need to talk to you. It’s kinda urgent.’

  ‘Yeah, alright, but so’s an egg stain, just let me get a cloth,’ I said, dodging around him and moving back behind the counter.

  ‘You alright?’ Nick asked, watching on as I did my best to clean up.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ I said, feeling the blush creeping my neck at once again looking an idiot in front of a guy I liked. ‘My, uh, friend, was in a bit of a hurry. No big deal.’

  ‘Bonnie,’ Jimmy said, glancing at Nick before looking over at me. ‘I need to speak with you now.’

  ‘I know, I’m sorting myself out as quick as I can,’ I said, giving the stain an extra few scrubs more than it really needed out of spite over him hustling me.

  ‘I’ve got something, and it’s big,’ he added.

  ‘Really?’ said Mona, looking Jimmy up and down. She shot a stare at Angela, who giggled, and I had to clamp my lips together to stop myself from joining in.

  ‘Would you stop kidding around?’ snapped Jimmy. He lowered his voice. ‘This is gonna change everything.’

  ‘Alright,’ I said, glancing over at Nick and pretending I couldn’t see the confusion creasing the skin around his eyes. ‘Why don’t we talk, over there?’ I pointed to the small passageway between the diner and the kitchen, where the payphone was. Being a murder suspect didn’t exactly do much for your popularity and I had to be sure that Nick, and anybody else for that matter, couldn’t hear what we were talking about.

  ‘So, your new boyfriend doesn’t know about your delicate position?’ Jimmy said, once we were alone.

  ‘Oh, and I suppose you tell everyone your life story the moment you meet them, huh?’

  Jimmy lowered his gaze to the lino. ‘Yeah, alright, fair point.’

  ‘Look, I’m working,’ I said in a gentler tone, though he hadn’t much put me in the mood to be gentle. ‘What is it you need to tell me?’

  Jimmy spoke in a low voice. ‘While I was in Atlantic City, I completed a little surveillance exercise on Officer Larry Harris.’

  ‘The guy who said he saw me run from the alleyway?’ I asked, my eyes widening with hope.

  ‘Yep,’ Jimmy said, with a small smile on his lips, likely at how quick my tone of voice and expression had switched. ‘I now have a very good idea about his whereabouts on the night the murder was committed.’

  ‘Really? That is huge.’

  Jimmy took a step closer to me and lowered his voice again, even though there wasn’t anyone else around. ‘I’m going back to Atlantic City for a couple of days to gather evidence. If someone can verify Harris’s true whereabouts I’m going to have to file for witness anonymity on their behalf. We can’t risk Frankie getting to them before they get to court.’

  ‘Are the Chronicle OK with you taking off like that again? I don’t want you to get into any trouble on my account,’ I said.

  Jimmy looked at me a little longer and harder than usual. ‘The Chronicle encourage their staff to get into trouble. How d’you think I got this job?’

  The desire to smile bubbled inside but I kept it at bay. The idea of getting into trouble with Jimmy wasn’t a horrible one, even after the way he’d acted. I looked him up and down for a second in spite of myself. He was wearing jeans and a black sweater, with his sheepskin jacket hanging loose over the top of it. It’d be quite cosy in there, pressed up against him. My head resting on his shoulder. My hand on his heart. If only he’d let me get that close.

  ‘Well, if you’re sure it’s gonna be OK,’ I managed to say to the red stars stencilled across the white wall behind him.

  ‘It’s fine. I’m just going to fax in the couple of articles I’m working on,’ he said. Even in my peripheral vision I could feel him staring at me.

  ‘Well, thank you. I appreciate it,’ I said, looking him in the eye for the first time since the conversation began.

  ‘I know,’ Jimmy said, looking back into my eyes.

  ‘Order up!’ Lucia shouted through the kitchen door.

  ‘I gotta go,’ I said, looking through the window to see the repeat order and Nick’s eggs sitting on the steel surface next to the grill, waiting to be delivered.

  ‘Alright, well, you take care,’ Jimmy said, walking away.

  ‘You too,’ I said after him, tearing my eyes from the back of his head with some reluctance and pushing through the swing doors to collect the order.

  Jimmy must’ve made a pretty sharp exit as he was gone by the time I came back out to deliver the order to the construction worker. Though I got it to him as fast as I could, he still groaned about how long it’d taken. Guess I could pretty much kiss my tip goodbye there. I then marched straight over to Nick and delivered his breakfast.

  ‘Thank you, this looks great,’ he said, picking up his knife and fork. ‘Was your friend alright? He seemed a bit overexcited.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. He’s working on…’ I looked at Mona to see if she could help me out with a convenient half-truth. She looked back at me but didn’t offer any suggestions so I finished with ‘this big project at work. And he’s just had a breakthrough. Something that could really make a difference to his work.’

  ‘That would sound more exciting if you weren’t being so vague about it,’ Nick grinned.

  ‘Oh, yeah. Well, he’s an attorney. He’s working on this big case at the minute and it looks like he might be on the road to cracking it.’ I smiled and then, desperate to change the subject, added, ‘is there anything else you’d like?’

  ‘Well,’ Nick said, heaping some egg onto his fork, ‘I’d like to take you out to dinner.’

  ‘You would?’ I leaned in a little closer to him. I felt my heart quicken but it was more of a terrified thudding in my chest than the romantic flutter I would’ve expected. Maybe if I wasn’t keeping a terrible secret from this guy, or still dealing with the trauma of looking into a dead man’s eyes, I could’ve enjoyed the moment. Not to mention the fact that not five minutes ago I’d been daydreaming myself into somebody else’s arms. Somebody who I had no chance with at all.

  ‘Yes. One night this week if you’re free?’

  ‘Oh, um…’

  No, Bonnie, I told myself. He’s handsome, yes. Charming? Sure. But he’s not worth breaking the conditions of your ho
use arrest. Nothing is.

  ‘I can’t go out the next few weeks,’ I said.

  ‘You’re that busy?’ Nick asked, and he had that wounded look in his eyes I’d noticed the day before in the store. On top of that, Walt was observing our exchange over the top of his newspaper, and having been at the New Year party he knew exactly why I couldn’t go out for the next few weeks.

  ‘No… Yes… It’s difficult to explain. I can’t really talk about it right now. God, I know this sounds weird,’ I said, trying to pretend I couldn’t feel the blush sweeping up my neck. Angela and Mona, who’d been chatting, had stopped now and were both watching on too.

  ‘No, no, it’s fine,’ Nick said. ‘In your defence, you did say just yesterday you couldn’t get into anything.’

  ‘Interesting choice of words,’ Mona mumbled under her breath, as she walked past me to go and top up some coffee cups.

  ‘Right, I did say that.’ I smiled at Nick, hoping he didn’t catch that quip from Mona. ‘I just need a little space right now.’

  ‘Alright, I hear ya. Can’t blame a guy for asking though,’ Nick said, before flashing his toothpaste-commercial smile at me.

  ‘Ask me again, in three weeks,’ I said, smiling.

  ‘That is a deal,’ Nick grinned.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Ten days passed quietly, perhaps too quietly, but with the court trial now just over a week away, I didn’t question the calm. Instead, I savoured every moment, very aware of the fact that if I was found guilty, I wouldn’t know peace for a very long time.

  The hush was broken by a phone call at Esther’s apartment.

  A phone call I’d been dreading.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ I said to Jack, who was sitting with his feet up on the sofa, half-reading a book of Esther’s called I Capture the Castle. I’d just been getting a glass of water from the kitchen, so was nearer anyway.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Bonnie? That you?’ My father’s flat, Midwestern vowels sounded down the receiver.

  My eyes widened. ‘Dad?’ I managed, before glancing over at Jack who was, given that it was his phone, waiting to see who it was. On realising it was my father, a small, tight smile formed under his beard and his eyes flitted back to his reading. ‘I… You got my message then?’ I said into the phone.

  ‘Yeah,’ Dad replied, and then paused. He was the master of long pauses. He knew just how uncomfortable he was making you with his silence.

  ‘Just wanted to thank you. For the bail money,’ I lied. That wasn’t the reason I’d left the message at all. I left the message because in a little over a week I could go away to prison for twenty years or more. And I didn’t want that to happen without talking to my family one last time, even though the lack of any contact from their direction had made it pretty clear they didn’t want to talk to me.

  ‘I didn’t have much choice in the matter of paying bail. Not exactly going to let my daughter sit in a cell, no matter what I think of the choices she’s made,’ he said with a deep sigh.

  A small, angry flame ignited in my chest. That’s all he had to say to me? Knowing how scared I probably was right now. Knowing what I was about to endure.

  ‘Well, if it’s any consolation to you, after all this I’ll certainly never play another casino bar as long as I live,’ I said, giving my voice as much of an edge as I dared, given that I’d hoped this phone call would be a reconciliation of sorts.

  ‘What have you been doing for money? Busking out on the streets?’

  ‘Actually, I found a job waiting tables at a restaurant, the Starlight Diner.’

  A hollow laugh rattled back at me, fanning the flame in my chest.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’ I asked, and started chewing on my thumbnail.

  ‘So that’s where a Princeton education gets you these days? I guess it’s a step up from a casino. Anything would be.’

  ‘Dad—’

  ‘I’m sorry, Bonnie, but if you think I paid all that money for school so you could wipe down tables and wash dishes then I don’t know what to say to you anymore.’ His voice was cooler than I’d ever heard it, which was only getting me more worked up. ‘I never should’ve let you major in music. Business. That’s what I should’ve insisted on when I was footing the bill.’

  ‘Haven’t we been over this enough?’ Though I wanted, more than anything, to scream at him, instead I lowered my voice and turned my back to Jack. ‘In less than two weeks I could be sentenced to life in prison for a crime I didn’t commit. Don’t you care? About how I’m feeling? About what could happen to me?’

  Another painful pause.

  ‘Of course we care.’ The words he’d selected were kind but his tone remained frosty. ‘Why do you think this is so damn hard for us? If we didn’t care about you, we could’ve saved ourselves a lot of heartache. But all of our choices have consequences, Bonnie. You’ve not paid us any heed for a long time and maybe now life is trying to tell you something, the hard way.’

  If only I was surprised by Dad’s take on the situation, but he’d talked this way to me my whole life. There was always a better version of me in his head that I wasn’t quite matching up to. Thinking about it, maybe there always had been. I’d been pushing against the overcautious limits they’d set for me for as long as I could remember. I guess, at first, they thought all kids did it. But then Karen was born. Compliant Karen. The daughter they’d hoped for. I didn’t fit into the neat suburban life they’d spent their lives working for. I wanted to do my own thing, and no matter how hard I worked at it, that’d never be good enough for them.

  ‘You can’t seriously believe that I deserve what’s happened to me just because I want to play guitar rather than trade on the stock market?’ I said, the idea seeming sort of laughable as I said it out loud. Not that I’d dare to laugh just now. Not when I could practically hear his frown down the phone.

  My dad sighed into the receiver and then said, ‘Deserve is the wrong word. But who you associate with in this world, well, you’ve gotta be careful about it. You chose to go to that place, a town full of gamblers. Where the hell did you think that was going to get you?’

  ‘Everyone’s gotta start somewhere, Dad. I wanted a steady job doing what I love. Not just playing guitar whenever the local bars had an opening.’ This was just the beginning of a rant that was sure to get me into trouble, but I was cut off by a hard tap at the front window, which looked out from the fourth floor over Ludlow Street. It was early evening, and dark outside. We’d already closed the drapes about a half hour ago and so had no clue what had made the noise.

  Jack, just like me, was staring at the long, coffee-coloured curtains. ‘Was that someone throwing a stone at the window?’ he asked. ‘Or was it a bird?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, shrugging.

  ‘Bonnie?’ Dad said, with a note of irritation that I’d been distracted from the call.

  ‘Sorry, Dad, I think there are some kids throwing stones up at the window or something,’ I explained, as Jack walked over and pulled open the drapes. The orange glow of a street lamp burned beyond the glass and Jack looked up and down the street, pressing his head up against the pane to see as far as he could in either direction.

  ‘Bonnie? Everything alright?’ Dad asked.

  Jack turned back to me; the skin around his eyes was crinkled, reminding me that he was that bit older than Esther – even if he did keep himself in shape, being an actor and all. He pressed his left hand against his flat stomach for a moment and then said, ‘I’ll leave the curtains open in case it happens again. We might be able to see what it is.’ And with that he walked back across to the sofa and picked his book up.

  ‘Bonnie?’

  ‘Yeah, Dad. We’re just trying to work out what was at the window.’

  ‘It’s not safe in New York, you know.’

  ‘Well, Detroit isn’t exactly a safe haven Dad. You remember how many times I came home with cuts and bruises?’

  ‘Yes, well.’ He paused for
a second. ‘I notice that never happened to Karen.’

  I scrunched my eyes shut tight and bit my lip. Why did he always have to compare me to my baby sister? I got that I was the screw-up of the family, really I did. I didn’t need constant reminders.

  ‘Yeah, well, we can’t all be Karen, Dad,’ I said through gritted teeth.

  ‘That much is true.’

  I was just about to say something I’d probably live to regret when the sound came again.

  Thud. Thud.

  Jack looked up from his book and I whipped around to face the window but there was nothing to be seen. Only darkness and the orange halo still beaming around the street light.

  I looked at Jack.

  He frowned at me and then crossed the room again to investigate.

  ‘Bonnie?’ Dad’s voice was sounding rougher around the edges by the second. He never did have any patience, particularly with me.

  ‘Yeah, it’s just that noise again,’ I explained.

  ‘There’s nobody down there,’ Jack said, but he still stood at the window a moment longer than he had before, waiting a good minute before walking back towards me.

  Thud. Thud. It sounded out again.

  ‘Right, that’s it,’ I said. ‘Hang on a minute, Dad,’ I stood the receiver next to the phone and started pacing over to the window.

  ‘What’re you going to do?’ Jack asked, watching as I stomped passed him.

  ‘Shout obscenities out the window, like I’ve seen New Yorkers do on TV.’

  Jack chuckled. ‘I would give you a hand but I don’t think there’s anything intimidating about a British accent.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you leave this to someone raised in a city where it pays to be obnoxious from time to time.’

  I was just a foot away from the window when it happened. When the smile on my face evaporated. When something shot through the glass, skimming past my ear, and leaving a small hole in the window, tiny splinters cracking around it.

  I yelped and jumped backwards in surprise. A frown of disbelief was in the process of forming on my face but before I could make any sense of what had just happened I heard Jack shout, ‘Bonnie, get down!’ He leaped in my direction, pushed me to the floor and in his haste fell hard on top of me. In the time it took me to hit the carpet something else had shot through the glass. And something else after that.