While Bob lay awake in the early hours, his wife, Elma, who was reported to be skeletally thin and a model of robust health, made pies in the kitchen of their nearby house. She rarely set foot inside the diner.
The three Ruiz brothers manned the counter and the kitchen and helped Bob and Elma’s daughter, Avril, wait on tables when she was overwhelmed, which tended to happen the most during lunchtimes.
When the Tidy Diner needed one more pair of hands, Justin worked the lunch shift, five days a week, loading the dishwasher, unloading the dishwasher, making pot after pot of weak yet stewed coffee, then pouring cup after cup of the cursed beverage, wiping down the tables, setting the tables, sweeping the floors, and all the while languishing in love unrequited, for the fair Avril, who was blissfully unaware of her effect on the romantically stunted Justin.
It was the customer closest to the front door who would deliver the four words that would precipitate the second blow of the day to Justin, who was still recovering from his earlier loss of income, but whose plucky British Expeditionary Force had held the young and inexperienced German army at bay earlier this morning, incurring only the most limited of casualties during the hostilities.
“Avril’s going to college.”
As with the downsizing of the Clarion, this second piece of news wasn’t earth-shattering. Avril Tidy was smart and ready for college. She was already two years out of high school and had worked in the diner to help her parents. She had done well on a battery of aptitude tests and written the requisite essays. Some scholarship money was forthcoming. It wasn’t going to be quite enough, but it would have to do.
“Who’s going to work the diner?” Justin managed to choke out.
“The Ruiz boys have a little sister.”
This was news to Justin.
It was still early in the summer.
In a daze, he washed his hands and found a clean apron. The dirty dishes were stacked on the counter beside the dishwasher as he started to fill the gullet of the industrial-size machine.
He’d lost a low-paying job that he hated and needed in equal measure. He’d lost the girl he had never really possessed in the first place. On the plus side, he’d managed to hold the might of the empire-thirsting German army at bay.
On balance, it wasn’t nearly enough.
At the end of the shift, he collected his paycheck from Bob and said his goodbyes to Avril and the Ruiz brothers. Their sister showed up, and Justin forced a smile and made himself say hello. Gabby was perky and cute, and everyone in the diner would love her and quickly forget about Avril, and Justin decided to hate her on principle. Today was Friday. She would start on Monday. Bob and Elma were throwing a party in the diner on Sunday evening to say goodbye to Avril who was going to stay with an aunt out east and then come back for a few days before heading off to college.
Justin stood by as Avril and Gabby bonded. Avril told her who the worst tippers and the best customers were. Gabby wanted to know what it was like to work with her three horrible brothers. Avril said she loved them all and would miss them, and Gabby snorted a response, but they both kept laughing.
As the customers paid their bills, Bob stopped a few favorites to invite them to say goodbye to Avril on Sunday. Avril told her father not to spend too much money on the party. She would need a car. The campus was not easy to get around. She wanted to come home as often as she could. The bus service to Chester was terrible. There was no direct train.
Her father looked pained at the mention of a car, and he shook his head.
Someone asked whether Bob’s wife, Elma, would be there on Sunday. Bob said he wasn’t sure, but she had promised her husband her finest pies.
Bob said that he would miss having Avril around and that Chester sure was a hell of a mess, and no one argued either point with him.
Avril gave everyone big hugs and said that she would miss them all.
Under normal circumstances, Justin would have been able to convince himself that her eyes lingered the longest on him as she spoke. But these were not normal circumstances. Justin was suddenly aware that he had spent too much time manufacturing subliminal flirtations.
Justin was opening the front door of the diner when Avril asked, “Are you coming? On Sunday?”
“I’ll try to,” he lied.
“I won’t see you tomorrow.”
“No,” he said. Justin didn’t work on Saturdays.
“I don’t know why we open. It’s only breakfast. Hardly anyone comes in. I think Dad does it for the regulars.”
“What will you study?”
“I’m undeclared. I didn’t know when I applied. Now I want to do something with the environment. Nature. Conservation. Some biology. But not too much regular science. More like earth science. Wildlife. Marine life. Animals.” She laughed at herself. “I’m all over the place.”
It had taken him until now, until she was leaving, to find out that she liked the things he liked.
He tried to imagine her as a marine biologist. It wasn’t hard.
“So maybe undeclared is best for you right now.”
“I think so.” She changed the subject. “You went.”
“Just junior college.”
“Still college,” she said. “You should go back.”
Justin smiled at her. “Money.”
“Tell me about it.”
Justin grew scared of what he might blurt out next. So, he left.
The remaining third of Justin’s trifecta of unskilled servitude was his sporadic evening shift as barback and occasional bartender at the Dripping Tap, formerly known as Sandy’s Tap. After Sandy died, the current owner, Andy, bought the place in cash with money his dad had given him. Andy wanted to rename it after himself but the names were too close, and Andy worried that customers might be confused.
Andy’s dad was none other than Larry Charlton, weldmaster and the nearest thing to a criminal mastermind in Chester. Despite his lineage, Andy Charlton was well liked. He was never stumbling drunk and never sober and uptight; instead, he was always half hammered. He enjoyed early morning shots with the delivery guys to get the day started. A half-consumed glass of beer was a fixture on a shelf behind the bar, where Andy would stand and half help out if and when the place got busy.
All employees were allocated two shift drinks, but Andy never kept count. At the end of the night, two became four, with shots on the side. When everyone tried to stumble out into the parking lot behind the bar at the first sign of morning, Andy intervened, paying for cabs home out of his own pocket.
Andy always stayed until closing, and after. Sitting at the far end of the bar, with the last of his half beers in front of him.
The next morning, Andy was there first. The first half beer tapped. If there had been a delivery, he would have done his first couple of shots already.
Did he ever leave? Or did he just put his head down on the bar counter for a couple of hours between the last shift drink and the morning beer truck?
No one was sure. His clothes looked the same. But there was a box filled with bar T-shirts that everyone took and wore. He never looked like he had shaved.
Justin usually worked three nights a week. He wasn’t much of a bartender, because he wasn’t much of a drinker, and his lack of interest in the subject matter showed. He was paid less than minimum wage, and, since he was employed mostly as a barback, the reverse pyramid of tip money left him at the short end of the financial stick. Some weeks he did better than others. A handful of the bar staff liked him, and he made more on the evenings when he worked with them. Between his three jobs, Justin survived, but most of the staff only worked at the Tap, and they didn’t make enough to get by.
It helped that Andy was known to offer cash advances that he didn’t always remember to collect.
A lot of people in town wondered how Larry Charlton put up with Andy. But the Tap was the nicest bar in a shitty town full of sad people, so it couldn’t help but make money. Most people figured that the senior Charlton was
in for a major cut.
Larry seldom entered the place. When he did, it was usually very late at night, near closing time. His face always darkened as he looked around.
Justin dried glasses and watched Larry.
Larry Charlton studied the bar, like he was calculating all the ways Andy was not making money properly. Not watering down the drinks enough. Not allowing hopeless drunks to get drunker and run up easily padded bar tabs. Not dealing drugs in the bar when the place was rife with hapless suckers.
Larry always drank a whisky-and-honey liqueur that the bar was obliged to stock, even though no one else drank it. He never had more than two. He sat at a table alone. If all the tables were occupied, he would wait for one to clear. The bar staff knew that Larry was to be given a heavy pour and was not to be presented with a bill. He was also not expected to tip.
Against the downward momentum of the day, Justin had a good night. The bar was packed, and the staff were slammed. Everyone served and bussed, and the tips peaked as the nearest big college basketball team triumphed in an overtime buzzer-beater. Andy bought a round of shots for the whole bar.
At the end of the night, Justin picked up his paycheck, which he signed over for cash, and two hundred more in tips for the night, mostly in ones and fives.
Justin passed on the shift drinks, as he usually did. Andy patted him on the shoulder as he slipped him another fifty in fives and tens. Justin left the bar a half hour after closing time and drove home. He stopped at an ATM to deposit his diner paycheck. Andy would have cashed that for him, too. He hadn’t thought to ask.
At the start of the evening the Tap had been quiet, and Justin was able to do some calculating. He had three more rent payments to make. They were automatic withdrawals from his account. After that, the lease was up. He calculated his share of the utilities. The three roomies shared internet/cable services. He was good for one-third of that amount.
When he finished calculating his liabilities, he took what was left out of his checking account. It came to around two grand. There was another seven hundred in his wallet. Another three hundred in the apartment.
The apartment was quiet when he got home. Both sets of loving couples had retired much earlier.
Justin canceled his phone service. He had prepaid for the month and had a small credit coming. He wrote a check for everything he could think of that would come due and left it on the kitchen table where his roommates would find it. He thought he might be short. His furniture and his clothes were worthless. His computer was the best one in the apartment. They could keep it or cannibalize it for parts. He thought that might be enough to settle his account.
Finally, he found the car title and signed it over to Avril Tidy. She had said she would need a car at college. He left that on the kitchen table as well. His roommates would take it to the Tidy Diner for him.
He was sorry to be missing the party for Avril. The pies would be excellent.
He pulled his money out of his packets and spread it on the table. Under normal circumstances it wouldn’t last him long. But these were not normal circumstances. He would make it last as long as he could.
He was leaving town in the morning.
COLIN
In the grief-wracked days that followed, Colin Tugdale puttered aimlessly around his home in the city. He thought often about his concluded wife. But it seemed to him that he spent almost as much time thinking about the four numbers on the lock; about two, and three, and eight, and one.
The lock was purely tactile and talismanic. He sat at his kitchen table. He drank his coffee. He held the lock in one hand. He put his coffee cup down to open it, to close it, and then to open it again.
When he thought about his wife it was hard to keep away from the end. When he did think about her conclusion, it was to reflect upon the fact that, as always, she had managed to think of everything.
Colin Tugdale had returned to their house in the city three days after her death. In what was once the cozy clutter of the family room, almost all of his late wife’s books were gone, pulled down from the shelves, boxed and abandoned in a series of waterproof containers outside a local resale shop, along with her tiny cache of newer, fancier clothing. Ruby had insisted on doing this task herself.
He found one remaining cardboard box of her newest books. She had used a blue marker to write an address on the top, and Colin had dutifully driven there.
The city boasted numerous little free libraries—pretty wooden cases, brightly painted, for the housing and trading of books. This particular one was clearly brand new. Colin carefully placed the titles inside. He noticed that some of the books were also brand new. They were unread. Some were children’s books. Some were written by authors he knew Ruby had little time for, and he could only surmise that she had chosen the contents of her little library with others in mind.
Now as he glanced at the mostly empty shelves, he saw that there were a few other books that she had left behind, stories he recalled her telling him about over the years, stories she thought he might like. She had carefully arranged the few volumes that remained, cleaning the shelves, artfully spreading out the knickknacks, trying to make the gaps in the collection as inconspicuous as possible. It had been a noble but unsuccessful endeavor.
Colin told himself he would commence his new reading life very soon.
She had left one item in their bedroom closet, a garment he had long assumed to be her old college sweatshirt. Ruby had been a member of the field hockey team.
Colin had asked her to leave it there when she packed up her things.
He recalled that it had languished there forever, before Colin had accidentally knocked it from a hanger one morning. When he had picked it up, he was surprised at how large it was. He tried it on. It fit perfectly. It was much too large for his wife because, as she finally admitted, it had been purchased as a gift for a college boyfriend, or would-be college boyfriend, a bashful young gentleman who had looked panic stricken when she presented him with this token of an affection he was unwilling to reciprocate.
“So, you got me instead.” He was smiling as he spoke.
She smiled back, “It would seem so.”
“Don’t I get the sweatshirt now?” he asked playfully.
She shook her head. “You don’t ever wear sweatshirts.”
“Was he the sweatshirt type?”
“I thought so.”
Ruby let him keep the sweatshirt.
In the years that followed, Colin wore the sweatshirt on occasion. His wife’s name had been Jarvis, which was silk-screened on the back, along with her number, which was 59. Ruby Jarvis had played all four years of college, mostly in the midfield. She had loved field hockey.
Ruby had placed the rest of her regular clothes, the casual things she wore most days, in a box on the garage floor. He moved it up onto a high shelf when she declared the collection much too threadbare for even the bargain racks at the Goodwill. He hadn’t argued with her.
When he returned to the house, after her conclusion, Colin decided that the box would go out on the very next garbage day. He had told himself that. He had been quite firm. That had been yesterday morning. The box was still in the garage. He had now hoisted it high up in the rafters.
Two days before the trip east, they had argued over a framed poster, one she somehow knew he had long disliked. She told him it should go. But Colin had uncharacteristically dug in his heels. It was still on the dining room wall. And it would stay there. He had won that particular battle. Even if he did hate it.
They had sold her car to a local man with a teenage daughter. It was new, with few miles, and it was well maintained. Ruby told him to put the money toward replacing his car. His car was older, she reasoned, and much too fast, and it slurped gasoline hungrily and lacked most of the latest safety features. But he had refused. The car money had been dropped into their bank account, which was already too swollen for him to ever find the time to spend in the year and a half that remained for him.
&
nbsp; The Tugdales owed next to nothing to anyone. Their small house in the city was paid for long ago. They had considered buying a cottage up north, on a small lake surrounded by other small lakes. But then Tony had up and done that for them, picking the location well, then handing over the keys unexpectedly one sunny afternoon. It was a six-hour drive, even in Colin’s fast car, crossing three state lines, actually re-crossing one line. It was in a stark and beautiful place, alluringly desolate in the short blink of summer, dauntingly desolate and frozen in the extended haul of the winter. They had made their son promise to share it with them.
Tony Tugdale had dutifully smiled and agreed, but he had seldom made it up there.
Colin and Ruby, especially Ruby, had adored the place, as much for itself as for the fact that their clever son had given it to them.
Just prior to her conclusion, Ruby had made a last solo trip north to the cottage, where she had carefully siphoned her existence out. It would be fair to say that Ruby Tugdale had sponged her life away, as much as she was able, and in the immediate aftermath of her conclusion, the government had seen to the few areas she had been forced to leave unwiped.
“Can you please verify the location of your wife’s conclusion, Mr. Tugdale?” The woman had said her name was Eloise at the beginning of the call.
He spoke slowly. His voice wasn’t steady. “We had gone for a walk along the cliffs. On the edge of town.” Then he added pointlessly, “it was beside the water.”
“I see.” Eloise spoke, and Colin could hear her type simultaneously.
Calling the department was just a courtesy. All welded people were monitored. Colin knew that Ruby’s death had already been recorded, had been recorded seconds after it occurred. He had already used his phone, visited the department website, and confirmed Ruby’s conclusion, all in a matter of minutes after she was gone. But for the sake of form, Colin was calling this in, as the Department of Conclusions required. More importantly, Ruby had told him to make the official call.
Conclusion Page 3