Midnight Diner 3

by Edoardo Albert

  When Mabel was Sarah’s age, she’d been mostly a beautiful woman, blond and happy, always wearing yellow dresses on rainy day, refusing the gods of weather the right to dictate her mood. She was a bit wild, fat bottomed, and had the most beautiful breasts he had ever played at, sucking at them in the grass behind her father’s house while her family pretended not to know what they were getting up to. When she agreed to marry him, she hitched her skirts and invited him in and in the middle of the act made him promise to never leave her, never cheat on her, and never look at another woman. He eagerly agreed to all three.

  As a traveling salesman he had only ever managed the first two. His roving eye had devoured the world’s beauties wherever he found them. And one evening, cold and lonely and looking for whisky and cigarettes, he came closer to an affair than he liked to admit. She had smoky eyes and a tiny laugh. He’d made the right choice though, and left before damage was done.

  Mabel frowned and glanced around the small diner off the I-95. She disapproved of Going Out and having a Good Time. He’d spent days and weeks on the I-95, stopping in on clients, making sure they knew of the latest and greatest in photocopier inks. Outings reminded her of the hours and days and weeks she had at home by herself or with the children, the silences stacked up on each other like magazines in a basement. So they became the masters of the dinner party and the game night and summer BBQs.

  The old man was enjoying his burger, not eating so much as meditating on it, eating it slowly and making note of each bite. Mabel inherited her mother’s skills of over-cooking vegetables to baby food consistency and meats to shoe-leathery goodness. He stayed on the road as long as possible in order to eat well at the pantheon of diners strung out across America’s east coast.

  His late-wife drifted away from their table, a grey smudge in the air that only he could see. She brushed past the delicate skinned waitress who gave a quick involuntary shudder. He knocked his head to the side, inquisitively, as if to ask what she was up to.

  Mabel drifted around the room. Outside, the neon flickered and exhausted travelers spilled from their cars to come into the diner and ordered heaps of deep fried foods. Mabel’s grey smudge of self took it all in: the dim fluorescent lights, the chipped tile, the off-center photos of celebrities who may or may not have eaten here.

  The clock over the door said 6:00 but it had said 6:00 for the two hours the old man had been seated and, he assumed, for several days or months previous. He looked at his own watch, surprised to see that it was really 6:00 in the evening. Sighing, he took out his briefcase and popped open the latches. Inside were the usual: a newspaper, a pad of paper, calculator and several other, more personal items, such as his father’s pocket knife. He hadn’t worked for some years but still enjoyed the feel of being out on business, even if it was a ruse.

  This was not his regular diner. He had gone out tonight, up the I-95 in look for something new. Even aging as he was, adventure and excitement were still powerful draws on him. Mabel had been against going out while living, but in death she had no choice. He smiled at that before scratching his grey head and letting a deep scowl crawl across his face. He dipped a fry into a spot of mayonnaise and shoved it in his mouth. Mabel was staring at the waitress and the pot of coffee she was carrying to their table.

  "Bit cold in here. Keep getting drafts," she said, pouring a perfectly arched stream of coffee. She was an artist, and the perfect pour was her art form.

  "Ghosts," he said, winking slightly for the waitress and a bit for his wife.

  "Yea? I guess so. My brother said ghosts leave cold spots. Maybe it’s the ghost of a former manager, angry that we changed how we made the apple pie."

  "Really? Why would you do a thing like that?"

  "Apple Pie, from the former, now deceased owner of the diner, was based off of his mother’s recipe. And it tasted like cardboard. Johnny—that’s him back there, he went to cooking school and knows food, so he says, thought the pie should be edible." All this was in one breath. "And I agree. The pie is good."

  "I’m sold," he said, smiling, placing one hand on top of the breathless waitress’s hand. "Excuse me?" She let her hand linger for a moment before removing it to adjust the pencil behind her ear. The old man was surprised at how much he enjoyed the touch of the young woman, soft and warm life in her voice.

  "The pie. I’m sold. It sounds fantastic. I will have a slice and, if you promise to not tell my doctor, a scoop, one solitary scoop, of vanilla ice cream."

  "You got it, hon." And she was away, behind the counter preparing his desert. It felt good in his chest, and in his pelvis, to have a young woman looking after his needs. Mabel was hovering nearby.

  "Sit down woman!"

  The pie was not exceptional. Which was not the fault of the pie itself. And it did not taste like cardboard; it just tasted like old pie. But the single scoop of ice cream did taste lovely. Mabel’s eyes were sharp and worried. He waved her away, all her unaskable questions and lied, promising they would go home soon.

  This, he noted, as he had noted on several other occasions of his haunting, did not seem to make her happy. Sarah came back and he declined a third refill of his coffee and thanked her for the meal.

  "Lovely. Just lovely. And the food wasn’t half bad either." Too which she laughed.

  "Ain’t you just a cute one? You live around here, mister, or you just visiting?" Mabel’s grey smudge of a self left her seat, leaned in on one elbow to the young girls ear, and whispered words none of them could hear.

  "Visiting. Decided I should have an adventure. You live in the area?" "I do. All my life. I go to school at the community college."

  "Good for you! What are you studying?"

  "All sorts of things that I ain’t made my mind up on yet."

  "Good for you," he said, laying one had on her shoulder. "Don’t make up your mind until you have to. It’s true for school and it’s true for love."

  "You’re cute. Make sure you come back this way." She shuddered as Mabel’s hand passed through her. "I’ll try to get this draft fixed. Sorry we sat you right in it."

  He waited until it was almost closing and then packed up his briefcase, digging through it at the last minute to find his keys and one other thing he needed. Mabel was restless, a grey fog dancing around the room erratically. He placed his last cigarette carefully in his front shirt pocket.

  A half hour later he was in the parking lot, sitting in his car, road map open across his lap. He watched as the staff cleaned, turned off lights and began the long march home. His late-wife sat still, silent and cold in the passenger seat. He was startled as Sarah knocked on his window.

  "Still here?"

  "Just reading the map. Want to get home safe and sound. Though I had hoped to be on the road by the time the sun went down."

  "Well, come out here and I will help you with the map. Push comes to shove you can stay with me tonight." He blinked at her twice and opened his door to join her. Mabel was already standing by the car’s hood. He felt in his jacket pocket for the last thing he had taken out of his briefcase.

  He spread the map over the hood, and pointed out where home was. Sarah chuckled, told him a story of a boy she had dated from down that way once and said she could give him directions home no problem. Mabel was leaning into the girl, whispering, as she always did. And as always she had to admit defeat.

  "Too bad, I was looking forward to having my very own cute little old man hanging around the house in the morning." She gave him a long slow wink and then paused, coughed and looked startled as his father’s pocket knife slid through the soft skin of her throat. She gurgled once and spat blood before falling to the ground.

  "I don’t cheat. I promised Mabel."

  He had only once ever been tempted to cheat and he had only ever once seen that young woman again, and it had gone badly. Over the years so many of them thought they could make him stumble, make him swerve from his promise. He had always taken measures to protect himself, to protect Mabel, a
nd to protect his vows. He took the third cigarette from his pocket and threw it away in disgust when he saw that it had broken, leaving little flakes of tobacco in his pocket, on his fingers.

  Mabel was weeping, long tired ghost tears. Her mouth was working in large unarticulated syllables, words only she could hear. He watched her for awhile as she mouthed the secrets of life and death and redemption. Satisfied he had kept his vows he got back into the car, started the engine and went home.

  He always went home.

  The Last Door

  Edoardo Albert1

  I was being stared at. In the noise and bustle of the model railway fair, someone was watching me. Theo, my son and reason for being here, was locked in conversation with the owner of a layout that even I, train neophyte that I was, found impressive. Satisfied he was all right, I continued looking until my eyes met...her.

  We had been going to stations, viaducts, bridges and, latterly, model railway fairs for—it felt like forever, but must actually have been something like six years—ever since the train bug had not so much bit Theo as bored under his skin and taken over the running of his central nervous system. In that time she had been an all but constant presence. From the biggest event at Alexandra Palace, with over 50 layouts and stands to match, to a church hall hosting a handful of models belonging to the local club, she was there. "The eminence grease," I nicknamed her to my wife.

  Look, let’s be honest here. You go to a model railway fair and you don’t see too many people who’ve drawn a full hand in the beauty shuffle. That’s not to say everyone is ugly, but observation suggests a higher than average proportion of the aesthetically challenged, with comb-overs, jumpers tucked into trousers, tank tops, an unhealthy preponderance of anoraks and other fashion disasters contributing to the general lack of cool.

  But this lady left all of them sashaying down the catwalk. If it was just the clothes—and I know that sacks have their uses but couture is not among them—it would have been bad enough, but it was her face and hair that did it. Oh, and her body probably wouldn’t have helped, but thankfully the sack concealed most of it. Lank, grey hair, greasy tresses framing a face of protruding, beetle brows, positively luxuriant eyebrows (in contrast to her hair) and a chin that would make Desperate Dan jealous. This was the face to send a thousand ships onto sandbanks. And it was staring straight at me.

  Or maybe somebody behind? I checked. Nope. Still staring. This was getting uncomfortable. I approached Theo crabwise and suggested that maybe it was time we left. I don’t think Theo even heard me, so deeply was the conversation delving into arcane matters of railway modeling.

  Yep, still staring. "Theo, come on."

  Theo finally looked round, his eyes wide in betrayed amazement.

  "But, Dad, we only just got here," he said, which was true enough by his standards. By my watch we had arrived one hour and forty-seven minutes previously—we were good for another two hours at least.

  "There’s lots more layouts. Let’s go and look at some of them at least."

  "But Dad, this man," Theo paused to peer short-sightedly at the name tag, "Mr. Wix, he’s telling me all about the different tube trains and lines."

  "Good lad," chimed in Mr. Wix. "Very clever." I looked around briefly. She had gone.

  "All right," I said, relaxing. Funny how unsettling it is to be stared at. Still, given what an oddball that woman was—even by the generous standards set by railway enthusiasts—she was probably just staring into space and I happened to be in the way.

  Free from scrutiny, I did what I normally do at model railway fairs: I wander. Theo, once he’s set on a layout, won’t move unless dynamited, so I just need to keep him in sight, a task made easier by his blond hair standing out in most crowds. Despite my stubborn lack of interest in trains—and I’ve tried to develop some passion for the subject, if only to stave off incipient madness after six and a half hours at the Ally Pally show—there is much on show of at least passing interest. I paused to look at an alpine layout, with precisely modeled Swiss trains emerging from a tunnel through the mountains and climbers groping up rock faces, when I saw her. She was talking to Theo.

  "Hey," I said, having pushed past a number of startled modelers in my hurry, "What are you doing?"

  I should have guessed from her reaction that something was unusual. Through Theo’s protestations that all was fine, and Mr. Wix’s warrants for the grey lady’s probity, I saw the...the bruised look in her face as she turned, startled, towards me and then as rapidly hid her face. For a moment I wondered what it must be like to go through life with a face like that and then my thoughts were lost as Theo protested and Mr. Wix flapped, and the grey lady slipped silently away.

  "It’s only Lily," Mr. Wix said. "Everyone knows her. She comes to all the fairs." "Dad, she’s all right," said Theo.

  "I’ve told you, I don’t want you talking to strangers." "I was talking to Mr. Wix," Theo pointed out.

  "He’s not a stranger," I said. "He’s got a name tag."

  "I think you’ll find Lily has one too," said Mr. Wix, in a particularly unhelpful manner. "Besides, I’ve talked to her before," said Theo.

  "You have? When?"

  "At that fair with the N gauge Tokyo layout."

  "Oh, that fair. I’ve never seen you talking with her." "You don’t see everything, Dad."

  Put in my place, I resumed my wanderings, although their radius was shorter than before. As a result, I got bored more quickly.

  "Come on, Theo, please can we look at something else?"

  Finally sated with the Metropolitan and District lines, or whatever he was looking at, Theo produced his mobile, took a couple of pictures and then accompanied me around the rest of the show.

  "What was that lady talking to you about?" I asked as casually as I could manage. "Nothing," said Theo. "Not trains."

  That Abbey Road layout was definitely the best and I promised Theo, as we settled down in the canteen to eat our lunch, that we’d go back to take another look.

  But when we got back, Mr. Wix was gone and in his place, operating the trains, was Lily.

  "Where’s the chap who was here before?" I asked as Theo bounced around excitedly at the sight of a Metropolitan line tube pulling in to the station.

  Her voice was the next surprise of the day. It was clear, pure and as brilliant as starlight on frost. It was the sort of voice to call a thousand ships to their doom on the rocks. Struck by the sound of Lily’s voice, I missed the content of her reply and had to ask the question again.

  "He’s at lunch."

  Both times she spoke she kept her face averted.

  "Oh, right." I retreated to apparent mooching around the nearby stalls, while keeping a surreptitious eye on proceedings. Theo was engaged in conversation with Lily. From the fragments I overheard it mostly revolved around the various London tube lines and their priority, with Theo excitedly telling her which was first (the Northern), the last ( Jubilee) and the dates of all those in between, with a special diversion down our own local Piccadilly line.

  Time was dragging on and what interest I could muster in the nearby stands was soon exhausted.

  "Theo, it’s time to go."

  Caught in contemplation of a Metropolitan line train leaving the station, Theo didn’t even hear me. But Lily did. She glanced up, the eyes beneath those beetle brows looking surprisingly lively, and said, "Would you like to see my layout?"

  Taken utterly by surprise I searched desperately for some bearings and grabbed hard on to the wrong end of the stick.

  "It’s really awfully kind of you and, of course, normally I’d be delighted to oblige, but I’m a married man, you see, and it’s really not possible…"

  The sentence trailed away before her now all too direct gaze. "I meant, would you like to see my model railway," she said.

  "Oh, your railway. Of course. Your layout, I see. Yes, sure, I’d—we’d—be delighted, some time when there’s time…"

  "It’s not far."

  If I
hadn’t been both embarrassed and confused as a result of my faux pas I’m sure I would have thought of some excuse why we couldn’t go. Instead, two minutes later, we were trailing Lily through the suburban streets of north-east London. The houses here were Edwardian, the suburb more railwayville than metroland, although a later tube line had filled in the few remaining spaces with 1930s semis.

  "Dad, it’s raining," Theo said. I’d felt it myself: occasional drops landing on my face and hands. We both peered up, through the haze of feathery new leaves and flowers, into a blue sky that was as good as saying, "Who, me?"

  "Can’t see anything," I said.

  "Maybe it’s from a plane," said Theo.

  "I certainly hope not." There was only one source of liquid I could think of in a plane and I

  would rather it was not falling on our heads.

  There was a musical, bubbling sound, which sounded like sunlight rippling through leaves, and then I realized it was Lily, laughing.

  "It’s from the trees. As the new leaves bud, aphids suck the fresh sap and secrete a sweet residue, honeydew."

  "Oh, right," I said, but Theo, quicker on the uptake, looked up in horror at the lime green canopy.

  "We’re being pooed on by insects, Dad." He tugged my hand. "Let’s walk in the road."

  It gives some indication of how much I disliked the idea of being crapped on by invertebrates that I seriously thought about the idea. It was a quiet residential road, after all, with little traffic and the regularly pruned trees did not reach beyond the line of parked cars. But then a BMW swept past, swirling debris in its slipstream, and I resigned myself to aphid excreta. "Is it much further?" I asked in feeble protest.

  "Very near." Lily pointed to the next junction. "That’s my road."

  Theo dragged me eagerly on, while I mumbled something about not being able to stay long, taking a quick look and returning another time.