Vinnie's Diner

by Jennifer AlLee

  I frown and press back into my seat as if he just dumped road kill in front of me. “What’s this?”

  “It’s all your stuff.”

  It’s been one heck of a hard day. I’ve been thrown around in my car, stranded in the desert, befuddled by Vinnie, traveled back in time, and watched myself in an out of body experience. I’ll be the first to admit my memories might be a little like Swiss cheese. But I know what I packed in my trunk when I left this morning. I packed the same two things I always pack when I go on a trip: my black pull-along suitcase with the florescent yellow tape wrapped around it to make it easier to spot in a crowd, and my small bright blue bag containing my blow dryer, hair care products, makeup, and other essential toiletries. I am one hundred percent sure that I did not pack this chest. So there’s no way it could have come out of my car.

  I shake my head. “That’s not mine.”

  The unknown man scratches the stubble on his chin. “Oh, it’s yours all right. You’ve been lugging this stuff around with you for years.”

  He’s so certain it belongs to me that I can’t argue with him, even though I want to. So I look down at the thing sitting on the table in front of me. It’s hard to explain how an inanimate object can taunt a person, but I feel like it’s daring me to figure out a puzzle. Because I haven’t had enough of those today. With a sigh, I decide to give it a go.

  Okay, so what would a person keep in a locked chest? Something valuable. Something you want to keep safe.

  Or something you want to keep hidden.

  My stomach flips, and something clicks into place. I look at Vinnie. This can’t be right.

  Vinnie reaches across the table and pats my hand. “I’m afraid you’re going to have to open it and go through what’s inside before you can leave here.”

  I stare at the chest. In the background, the music that came on when the stubble-faced stranger walked in the door is growing fainter and fainter. But before the last notes fade away, I’m finally able to name the song.

  “Here Comes the Sun.”

  8

  Vinnie’s Diner

  In my trivia studies, I’ve read a lot of weird stories about a lot of weird people. Including those “walking into the light” kind of stories. Some people claim when you experience a traumatic event that brings you close to death, your life truly does flash before your eyes. Lots of them say it reminded them of random images flashing on a movie screen, similar to early eighties music videos. But others report having much more detailed experiences. A poet in Moose Lake, Montana, said her loved ones appeared to her one at a time and spoke in nonsensical haiku. A third grade teacher in Wichita, Kansas, who happened to moonlight as a square dance caller, said everyone he’d ever known had gathered together in a barn for a hoedown.

  Now, sitting here in this unreal diner, those stories don’t seem quite as weird as they used to. Maybe this is how it works. My accident induced, nonresponsive state certainly qualifies as a life-endangering trauma. Apparently, all those trivial facts I’ve absorbed over the years have reduced my life to this: a room filled with entertainment memorabilia and a flock of dead celebrities.

  It’s sad, really, that not one member of my family is here. Not that there are many to choose from. My family is small and just barely classifies as functional. Still, it’s too bad Aunt Bobbie couldn’t have shown up for this party. She’d be in her element hobnobbing with Elvis and Norma Jeane.

  Of course, I still don’t have an explanation for Vinnie. Or the guy who brought in the mystery chest.

  I look at the thing, sitting innocently on the table, varnished wood glowing warm, polished brass shining. It’s not big enough to contain very much. Still, I don’t think the old saying that “good things come in small packages” holds true here.

  I lean across the table toward Vinnie, making sure I don’t accidentally brush against the chest, as if the mere act of touching it might set some terrible events in motion. “Are you absolutely certain I’m not dead?”

  “Yes.” His answer is so quick, he almost speaks over me. “I’m certain. You’re not dead yet.”

  I jump in my seat like he shot me with a Taser gun. “Yet?”

  Vinnie shrugs and lifts his palms to the ceiling. “Sure. Everyone dies. You will, too. The question isn’t if. It’s when. And how.”

  Irritation builds and bubbles like the contents of a soda bottle that’s been shaken with gusto. “I know everyone dies. And if I could decide when to go, I would. But it’s not like I have any control over it.”

  Mr. Twain slips from a stool at the counter and walks over to the booth. With his arms hanging straight at his side, he looks down at me, a rascally expression on his face. “Am I to understand that you are not a believer in free will?”

  I shake my head. “That’s not what I was saying. I—”

  “So then you do believe we have the power to make choices in this life?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Then you concur that your destiny resides squarely in your own hands and is not left to the whim of fate.” He looks very pleased with himself. “As a matter of fact, you could say that—”

  “Just a minute!” It’s my turn to grab the reins on this conversation. “What I’m saying is that I don’t believe there’s a plan in the grand scheme of things. Sometimes you get to make choices, but other times there’s no choice to make. Life just dumps on you, and if you’re lucky, every once in a while you can jump out of the way before you get too dirty.”

  Twain puts his hand to his chin. “So what you are saying is . . .” He holds out his hand, palm up, inviting me to finish the sentence.

  “I’m saying that life sucks. I can do everything I know to do to stay out of trouble. But if someone decides to kick me, there’s not a lot I can do to stop him.”

  That answer seems to satisfy Twain and gives him something to think about. He walks away with his hands clasped behind his back, nodding his head and making “mmm hmm” sounds.

  The unnamed man sitting next to me moves his mouth into a sad smile. “You have control over more than you think.”

  I twist my body on the cushion so I’m facing him dead-on. “Look . . .” This is ridiculous. I’m talking to a man who’s part of my near-death experience, and I don’t even have a name for him. Well, since I’m in control of so many things, I’ll just take care of that. “Look, Joe . . . you don’t mind if I call you Joe, do you?”

  His smile becomes amused, and he shakes his head. “If that helps you, go right ahead.”

  “Great. Joe, if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that my life has been a long string of uncontrollable events. If I’d had the ability to change most of it, I would have. But when you’re a kid, adults make the decisions and you have no choice but to go along for the ride.”

  “True, you can’t control the actions of others,” Joe says. “But your response is another thing. You can always control the way you respond.”

  My breath catches in my chest. I can control the way I respond? So what is he saying, that my life is what it is because I didn’t respond in the right way? Who does this jerk think he is?

  “You have no idea what kind of things I’ve been forced to respond to.” It’s surprising how calm and even my voice is since my insides have turned into a quivering mountain of angry Jell-O. Still, I lean forward until less than six inches of space separates us. “You don’t know me, so don’t pretend you can understand me.”

  Joe doesn’t back down. In fact, he leans closer still, crossing the invisible boundary line into my personal area. “You’d be surprised.”

  The empathy in his voice pushes me back in my seat. Is it possible that he does know about me? About my past? About the choices I’ve made? The thought scares me more than anything else I’ve encountered so far.

  I don’t want to talk to Joe about this anymore.

  I turn back to Vinnie. “What’s going on in the real world right now?”

  It’s obvious from the frown tugging down h
is eyes and mouth that he’d rather stay on the current path. He looks at Joe. Joe nods. Then Vinnie looks back at me.

  “You’re being taken care of.” Vinnie lifts his chin, looking past me and motions with his head. “Norma Jeane, would you be a dear and turn on the radio?”

  “Sure thing, honey.”

  I crane my neck and see Norma Jeane mince her way to a huge radio on a table against the wall. It’s an old Philco, the kind with glass tubes inside and a polished wooden case with a rounded top. I’ve seen one of these in person once, when my mother took me to my grandma’s house after she died. Mom said we were going there to clean it out, but she didn’t keep anything. Instead, she made lists, threw out trash, and put Post-It Notes on things for the estate sale people she’d hired. I have no idea what happened to the radio. It probably ended up in the home of some antique lover.

  Norma Jeane turns a knob, and the radio hums for a few moments before coming to life. At first, all I hear is scratchy static and a high pitched whine, but she turns another knob and soon something different is coming out of the speakers. Hissing. Electronic beeps. The sound of rubber soled shoes squeaking on tile. A far off voice on a PA system paging Dr. Roberts.

  I look back at Vinnie. “I’m in a hospital?”

  He nods.

  “But how did they get me there so fast? It can’t have been more than fifteen minutes since I saw them pull me out of the car.” Now there’s a bizarre sentence.

  A man with a wild shock of white hair pops up from the opposite side of the booth and leans over, almost resting his chin on Vinnie’s head. “Time is relative, my dear. We all have our own perception of time and its passing. You perceive it differently here than you would in another plane of existence.”

  I pinch the bridge of my nose and squeeze my eyes shut. Of course. I shouldn’t need Einstein to help me figure that out. I’m about to say something cutting and witty when I hear a man’s voice coming through the radio.

  “I’m here, Allie. I’m not leaving you. You’re going to get through this. I’m praying.” There’s a long pause. “I love you.”

  I stare at my hand. It tingles.

  I feel the warmth of skin on skin, pressure on my fingers.

  I gasp.

  Even though I’m sure he already knows the answer, Vinnie asks me, almost in a whisper, “Who is that?”

  “It’s my boyfriend. I mean, my ex-boyfriend, Jake.” I almost can’t get the rest out. “And he’s holding my hand.”

  9

  Vinnie’s Diner

  Norma Jeane has been staring at the radio, listening along with the rest of us. But now she whirls around and exclaims, “Ex-boyfriend?” She seems amazed that anyone sweet enough to stand by my death bed could be an ex anything.

  I look down at my hand. The moment’s over. The feeling’s gone now, so I wiggle my fingers at her instead. “It’s a long story.”

  She pouts, but doesn’t press the issue. Joe is not as considerate.

  “We’ve got plenty of time.”

  “Do we, now?” I spit back at him and twist around in my seat, away from the hospital noises that still come from the radio. But now I’m facing the ill-named treasure chest. I am so sure there’s nothing good in that thing.

  Einstein wags his head, making his hair dance. “Of course we do. Remember—”

  “Time is relative.” The two of us say it together and are joined by most of the people in the diner. Lassie barks, providing the punctuation mark at the end of the sentence. We end up sounding like a bizarre Greek chorus. “Yes, thank you professor. You may go.” He nods again, smiling, hair jerking, and disappears back behind the booth.

  “Soooooo,” The word stretches out of Vinnie like taffy being pulled on a hot day. “What about Jake?”

  I want to put him off, jump to another subject. But one look at Vinnie and I can tell he’s not going to let it go. There’s no way I’m getting out of this without saying something. Besides, if I talk about Jake, it means he won’t be pressuring me to open the chest.

  “Jake and I dated for about six months. And things just didn’t work out. So I broke up with him.”

  The order-up bell dings from the kitchen window and fry cook Elvis leans out, waving a big metal burger flipper in the air. “Was he cruel to ya?”

  I laugh, both at what I’m seeing and the mere idea of Jake hurting anybody. “No. Not at all.”

  “Did he take you for granted?” Norma Jeane stands behind Joe, eyes wide. She’s nodding, as if she fully expects me to start rattling off a list of all the times Jake stood me up or used me for his own nefarious purposes. She must be drawing from her own experience. But that’s not how things were between Jake and me.

  “No.”

  From the counter, Mr. Twain spins around on his stool, holding a coffee mug aloft. “Was he not in possession of his mental faculties?”

  I shake my head. “Jake is very smart. And completely sane.” Other than the fact that he fell in love with me.

  Vinnie cocks his head to the side. “So what’s wrong with him?”

  I sigh. Why am I even bothering with this? They will never understand. The problems between Jake and I hinge on too many other things. Things that have nothing to do with him and that I refuse to talk about. But one look at their expectant faces tells me they’re not going to drop the subject. I have to tell them something, so I offer up the easy, surface explanation. “It’s not what’s wrong with him. It’s what’s wrong with me.”

  “Ahhhhh.” The syllable vibrates through the air as it simultaneously escapes from the lips of everyone in the diner. Apparently, they think they do understand. Their reaction makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time. Story of my life.

  A commotion of sounds comes from the radio, dragging my attention back to it. Being that I’m from a generation that’s always had television, I’m used to seeing who’s doing the talking. But now I find myself listening to an old time radio show without a narrator. At first, it’s just a jumble of anonymous voices. Even though there’s nothing to see, I stare at the speakers as I strain, listening carefully, trying to pick out anything familiar. Finally, I’m able to make out who’s who.

  Aunt Bobbie: “Who are you?”

  Wait a minute, if Aunt Bobbie didn’t call Jake, then what’s he doing there?

  Jake: “I’m Jake. Her boyfriend.”

  And why is he still calling himself my boyfriend?

  Aunt Bobbie: “She told me about you. She said you broke up.”

  Good for you, Aunt Bobbie. Let’s see what he has to say to that.

  Jake: “She had me in her cell phone as her only ICE person, so I’d like to think she still has feelings for me.”

  Okay, that explains why he’s there. He must have been called by the EMTs, or whoever it is that gets saddled with that lousy job.

  Aunt Bobbie: “Maybe she does.” Pause. “How did you know to call me?”

  Jake: “She talked about you all the time. But I didn’t have your number, so I called Sandy.”

  My now ex-roommate. Who should have been on a plane heading for her new career at the same time I went rolling across the road.

  Aunt Bobbie: “I thought Sandy was flying to London today.”

  Jake: “She is, but she got bumped off her flight and was waiting in the terminal for the next one.”

  And that explains how he was able to get a hold of Sandy. Lucky for me she was able to get the call.

  Jake: “If I hadn’t gotten in touch with her, I wouldn’t have known how to contact you.”

  Aunt Bobbie: “Thank God.”

  Jake: “Exactly.”

  Mom: “Wait a minute! How do you know so much about Allie’s life?”

  Ah, so my mother did make it.

  Aunt Bobbie: “We talk. A lot.”

  Mom: “And why didn’t she list me as her emergency contact? Why was I the last to be called?”

  This is typical for my mother. She hasn’t yet asked how I am or what happened to me. Nope, the m
ost important thing is to find out why she isn’t the center of attention.

  I turn from the radio and am surprised to discover everyone else is staring at it, too. Elvis leans out the kitchen window. Norma Jeane sits nearby, her elbow on a table and her chin propped against her fist. Everyone is leaning forward, totally caught up in the verbal soap opera emanating from the radio speakers. When they realize I’ve caught them eavesdropping, a few have the good graces to look embarrassed, but most just turn to me with the same expressions of rapt interest. I can’t say I blame them. If I hadn’t lived with that kind of drama my whole life, I might be interested, too.

  With a wave of my hand toward the radio, I say to everyone around me, “Welcome to my family.”

  10

  Vinnie’s Diner

  When I was a little kid, I used to sit cross-legged on the living room floor in front of our square box TV, watching black-and-white reruns of the old Felix the Cat cartoons on PBS. Felix had a big black bag of tricks, and he could pull just about anything out of it, from a monkey wrench to a jet plane. Whatever Felix needed was right there at his fingertips. His bag was much bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. I always wished I had a bag like that.

  And now that I do, I don’t want anything to do with it.

  Nobody has said so, but I have a feeling the chest on the table is my own personal bag of tricks. I’m afraid that once I open it, there will be too much stuff inside for me to ever get it closed again. There’s no good reason I can think of to go near the thing. Because really, does a person who’s in stable—but I’m guessing, critical—condition need that kind of stress? I don’t think so.

  Not that the drama playing out in the hospital room is any better. Through the radio speakers I can tell that all three of them are talking at once. The female voices are getting faster, higher-pitched, and slightly frantic. I hear Jake, who manages to sound calm and controlled in the middle of the commotion, say the words driving and flipped. He must be telling them what happened.

  An unexpected wail pierces the air, and I pull my shoulders up to my ears in an automatic cringe. I know that sound. That’s my mom’s how could this happen to me sound. She uses it whenever she feels that she’s being treated badly, whether by people or by life in general. I’ve heard her use it when a husband walked out on her, when she accidentally broke her pinky finger in the process of slamming the door on a boyfriend she never wanted to see again, when the toaster caught on fire, and when she found out one of her favorite TV shows had been cancelled. It’s a multipurpose sound.