Again he wondered what kind of restaurants he might have frequented in his past life. Casual diners and independent little places like this? Chains? Upscale, fancy places? Nothing jumped out at him. Nothing made him think the restaurant in front of him felt wrong in any way.
The mood inside struck him more like a diner than a family restaurant. More people sat at the counter than in the booths, but he wanted a booth to help support him. A sign said, “Please seat yourself,” so he chose an end booth and sat down facing away from as much of the restaurant as possible. He wanted to be around people, but he also did not want them seeing his face more than necessary. Just another anonymous person easily ignored, all he wanted to be just then.
A middle-aged, blonde waitress with a red-and-white checkered apron greeted him, coffee pot in hand. Her nails were a darker red than her apron. Not the nails he expected from a mom-and-pop restaurant waitress. All close to the same length, even edges. Maybe just recent.
“What can I get you hun? Our soup is cream of broccoli, and our strip steak is on special tonight.” Her smile looked natural. Still somewhat rehearsed and faked, but she didn't see him as a homeless man. That helped.
“I’ll have the steak then,” he decided. “Medium-rare. And yes on the coffee,” he said, turning over one of the upside-down mugs on the table. Again he was pleasantly surprised at how naturally the motion came to him.
“Cream and sugar?”
“Probably....” Deciding to have coffee had seemed a natural thing but how he liked it was something he couldn't find. I’ll never get used to this.
“I’ll get that in.” Her voice was soft and cheery, and she smiled as she poured. Was that a flirty smile now? For him? No, it couldn’t be. There was something else there, something that didn't fit with flirty. The smile seemed less genuine now. Some loose strands fell out of her ponytail and framed her face nicely. Big, light eyes with smile lines centered a face showing years and stress but still holding a friendly optimism.
She left, and came back with a little pitcher of cream and a shaker of sugar. She held his gaze longer than was comfortable, maybe longer than appropriate, but neither of them spoke. Her smile was gone. He still wasn’t sure what to make of it when she turned away without a word. Something changed.
He took inventory of his posture. Nothing seemed out of place or weird. He looked over at the only television he saw when he turned almost completely around—did all restaurants have them? Where did that thought come from?—but a muted football game was all it offered. Not his face, no police bulletin about him. He couldn't shake the thought he'd said or did something wrong or suspicious. Maybe he was just being paranoid.
He tried the coffee black first and decided it needed sugar. Then he tried it with a little more sugar, which didn't seem to be helping enough. He added cream, which helped a little more. Maybe he just wasn't a coffee drinker.
He paused for a moment to wonder how he knew to order steak medium-rare but didn't know how he liked his coffee. He decided that lent credence to him not being a coffee drinker, then. Tea, next time. He should have asked questions when he had access to a neurologist and the different rehab therapists. He could have asked about how memory works, and then maybe he’d understand why he could find some of his preferences, or recognize street names, but have no idea if he'd ever eaten something or been to a street before.
The master planner can’t figure out how to order his goddamned dinner. He wanted to heave a big, dramatic sigh. But, no. He stared at the coffee mug, catching himself before envisioning it flying across the restaurant into the brick wall. Even his imagination he had to be careful with. Picturing things happen was too close to all he had to do for those things to happen.
And he still didn’t have a plan past the most basic needs! He had money now. Food, water, clothes, shelter. He could handle those now. Wasn’t there some pyramid thing that listed different needs by which ones had to be handled first? No, the pyramid was nutrition. Hierarchy of needs, he remembered. Pavlov’s hierarchy of needs? No, Pavlov was the dog guy, right? His eyelids drooped. His jaw was tight.
“There ya go, hun,” the waitress said as she dropped off the steak. “Anything else?”
Had he been just sitting there? For how long? Maybe he needed the food more than he realized!
With the steak came pale mashed potatoes and steamed green beans. “No, I think I’m okay.”
The steak was just okay, but after mushy hospital food and then cold baked beans for a couple of days he rather enjoyed it, even if it was a little tough. The potatoes needed salt, and the green beans, crisp and not mushy and overcooked, were dull and unseasoned. He enjoyed them least. But he ate it all.
Since he couldn't see any other customers from where he was, out the streaked window was the only place to watch anything. He could track the motions of the other diners, and heard the murmur of conversations just far enough away to be indistinct. Their tones sounded casual, relaxed.
Cars passed outside, some faster than others. He didn't even need the window. He sensed things more clearly than he would have seen them anyway. A passenger in a car with dark tinted windows drummed on the dashboard in a car cruising by thumping bass he heard inside the diner. The motion was clear to him regardless of the conditions in between.
A couple took seats two booths behind him. A heavy, wide woman and a tall, slender and lanky man. He waited until she was settled before sitting and piling both their jackets on the seat next to him. Whipped.
He paused at that thought. In just those simple actions he'd already judged and labeled? Was he a judgmental person? He thought back to other people he'd encountered. The ugly homeless whores—another judgment keyword, and a strong one. The impersonal, compassionless nurses. The self-important doctor who never really took time to explain things. Apparently Steven was a judgmental person.
That seemed shallow. That was not the person he wanted to be! He'd observe them through his dinner, to see what snap judgments his brain made, and then try to set those judgments aside.
The waitress came back to check on him, still smiling and friendly on the surface but no longer convincing. He simplified everything down to, “Fine, thanks.”
The woman complained, the man listened. She complained about traffic being detoured by “all the damned construction.” About the “trash Mexicans” still moving in for the construction jobs. About not trusting the government and how the government was surely hiding all kinds of alien technology for secret projects and not believing them when they kept reassuring people the alien wreckage was safe and not leaking some unknown radiation mutating people and giving them “freaky powers.” A friend of a co-worker had a relative who'd been hurt when a traffic light went completely out. Supposedly a man hurling lightning from his hands shorted out the power for the whole block.
The man listened, nodded, through in the occasional yes and uh-huh. He didn't protest the stereotyping, but he didn't seem to agree with them. He pointed out they'd heard about a handful of people with weird powers. If there was alien radiation spreading, shouldn’t there be a whole lot more?
Steven was not impressed with either of them, but tried to let them just be random diners without trying to label them. It only worked a little.
He passed on dessert, wishing the waitress had been flirty. That would have been more interesting than the couple.
He stopped at the register to pay on the way out, aware of the camera mounted to the ceiling behind it. He wondered if it was seeing him at all or if it focused more specifically on the register.
“Everything okay?” a younger, Asian girl with her hair in a thick side ponytail asked from behind the register. She was cute. Crisp eyeliner and long, dark lashes further emphasized green eyes he assumed were colored contacts. Coppery-brown hair framed a soft face. She looked down at the register, breaking eye contact.
“Oh, yeah. Thanks.” Getting the money out of his pocket was more awkward than normal, and the wad of it fell from his finge
rs. He almost lifted it off the floor directly before remembering to bend down to pretend to use his fingers. Still, his actions were clumsy and more disconnected than normal. She giggled.
Once he stood again, his eyes came back to her face and for just a moment he pictured his finger tracing the thick lips of her narrow mouth, the finger slipping in for her to suck on. He saw the other hand slip around the back of her head, grabbing a fistful of that hair to make it clear what he wanted from her—
Whoa. Then it was his turn to look down. His hands hadn't followed the image, but he felt the longing, the urge to control her. Where did that come from?
He slammed all his attention into counting out the money and sliding it across the counter. He turned and ignored her question about wanting change. The door flew away from him, the little bell hanging on it banging back and forth on a ribbon.
He stopped outside with his eyes closed. A car rolled by, four bright little pistons pumping in a row pushing out a whine too loud for the small hatchback.
Was he the type that liked being rough with women? She was young, probably only barely old enough to drink. Did he like them young like that? That would be pretty creepy for a man his age, wouldn’t it?
But that was the old him. He couldn’t do anything with a girl like that even if he wanted to. So the new him didn’t have to be attracted to anyone.
His mind went back to where it had been going and he pulled it back. It wouldn’t work anyway. She could even agree and be willing, and he wouldn’t feel anything she did to him. Never again. Better not to be attracted at all. Then he’d never have to be confronted with how much he was missing, or how badly he might miss it. No, he needed his mind on something else.
He still needed a plan. What would he do with his life? What could he do? He didn't even know what he wanted to do right now, how could he plan for the future?
CHAPTER 26 – REUNION
He decided he wanted to find somewhere to just hang out for a while with a drink. Somewhere with some music. That seemed a normal thing, and he craved normal. He supposed the more out and about he was the greater the risk of someone recognizing him and ending up calling the police. Yet he had to take the risk, at least some. He couldn't survive emotionally as a shut-in. He didn't even know what kind of music he liked. He also wanted company—something at least vaguely social. More social than a restaurant where people tried to ignore each other.
The first place he found that looked like a bar had mostly motorcycles outside it, and he decided that might not be the best place for him. He saw a chicken-wings-and-sports bar, but kept walking without having a solid reason why.
He passed two which seemed to be strip clubs more than bars and decided at some point he was going to have to get himself to a better part of the city. Pungent marijuana smoke wafted out one propped-open door.
After what seemed like quite a lot of walking he found a promising-looking place. The glowing signs in the windows suggested a beer-and-shot hall. It sat at the corner of a building with the door right at the corner and a sign sticking out calling it Malley’s. He pulled open the door, almost forgetting to include his hand and arm in the act, and stepped inside.
Subdued lighting mostly came from colored lights: green ones over a pool table, red and blue ones over small bar tables and the three booths the place had, yellowish ones shining on a dartboard with all the darts clustered together as if stabbed onto the board in two fist-fulls. The only white lights hung over the bar, LEDs shining on the rows of bottles on glass shelves on an otherwise mirrored wall.
He guessed the music was some kind of rockabilly, realizing he knew the term, although he wasn't sure it was his kind of music. But it was pleasant enough and at a volume he wouldn't have to strain to be heard over. Good enough for now.
He walked up to the bar and put himself on a stool. The only other person seated at the bar was a younger man sketching something on a notepad and chewing his lower lip. About a dozen people filled about a third of the space and some of them gave him odd and suspicious glances. Most of them seemed the denim jacket and motorcycle boots type, so his first thought was maybe he just looked out of place. His second was perhaps this was the kind of bar where most of the people were regulars, and strangers were tolerated at best. That felt like an odd thing for him to realize, and he wondered how memories and his very identity could be gone but he could still recognize and identify things.
He also had to consider maybe people had seen him on the news, or he looked familiar to people because of it, but they were having trouble placing where they had seen him. He'd been on the news, although he probably looked at least somewhat different now. He knew he needed a shave pretty badly.
“What’ll it be?” the bartender asked, interrupting his train of thought. Her brown hair was mostly tied back in a ponytail except for her bangs and some long, wispy curls along the side of her freckled face. Similar to the waitress except for the bangs and color, although this one was younger and more attractive. Black bra straps showed alongside the straps to her black tank top. Even her shoulders were freckled. She was attractive, too, in a different way than the Asian register girl. More mature, more woman than girl.
He hadn't thought that far; he had no idea what kind of drinks he liked. He looked at the rows of bottles, feeling a little intimidated by the range of choices, until his eyes settled on the row of beer taps.
“Beer, I guess,” he said, picking one one on tap. Faceted crystal earrings glittered in the light as she turned and poured it into a tall, narrow glass. He set a ten on the bar and slid it forward and off to the side a little bit.
“Change?” A large, silver, man’s watch sat prominently on her wrist as she swiped up the bill.
“Nah, keep it,” he suggested. Her watch? It fit right, so he suspected so. She probably endured a lot of flirting in her job, and he doubted she’d appreciate more. He wasn’t really in the mood anyway.
“Cool, thanks,” she said, shrugging, and went back to work cutting limes into wedges.
He sipped at the beer and decided he liked it. He still wasn't sure about coffee, but he could be a beer drinker. The foam in his mouth and on his lip felt comforting and familiar.
A TV suspended from the ceiling behind the bar, muted, showed a battle between a giant and the armored vigilante, the Messenger. The footage, zoomed in from a news helicopter—the BCC logo of Bay City Communications overlaid in the corner—was from somewhat above and shaky. A Toyota dealership sign rose in the background. Messenger jumped around over cars; the giant, easily twice the height of a minivan, threw them like basketballs. A thrown, already battered, minivan knocked Messenger down but didn't pin him.
The giant stomped forward and raised a foot to crush the helmeted figure. Hands rose protectively and made a shoving gesture, and the huge assailant flew backwards and landed on a sleek coupe, smashing deep into it like a fluffy pillow. Messenger moved behind a larger sedan as cops stalked into the scene with guns drawn.
The giant stood up and hoisted up another car only to have the sedan, shoved, take his legs out from under him. He stood again and Messenger leaped up, kicked him in the head, and knocked him out. The giant shrunk down to a normal person’s size and Messenger leapt away over a half dozen cars.
Captions in black bars throughout offered, “This was the scene last night as the vigilante Messenger battled the criminal referred to as Growing Man, who is accused of multiple robberies throughout the Upper East Side, in a battle that destroyed approximately two dozen cars at this Toyota dealership.” Steven wasn’t the only one who’d come up with the uncreative name.
The footage changed to a reporter interviewing a police official.
“Captain, now that you have arrested this man, what plans does the city have to be able to successfully contain him?” The captions scrolled jerkingly in their black bars.
“That’s an issue the city council is working on. In the meantime, this suspect will be kept under partial sedation until the nature of
the threat he poses can be properly evaluated.”
“What about claims that the police department is inadequately equipped to handle threats like this Growing Man represent? What about claims of a man who controls electricity?”
“First of all, remember that rumors and urban legends spread quickly, and that while all such reports are followed up on, not all of them turn out to be true. Those that do exist seem to be consistently involved in criminal acts, and the BCPD will respond with appropriate measures to protect this city, its citizens, and their property.”
The commercial for a Toyota pickup truck that came next was either ironic or clever timing.
A man came over and sat next to him, interrupting his thoughts about the fight, and sat sideways on the stool to face him. Maybe in his forties, he had short, sort of wavy black hair and a bulky gray jacket with more pockets than anyone should need.
“You’ll have to ‘scuse Lee,” the man said. “She’s new.”
“Huh?”
“Lee,” the man repeated, hooking a thumb towards the bartender scooping ice into a metal mixing cup. New? What did that have to do with anything?
“She’s new.”
“You said that, yeah.” Who is this guy?
The man nodded and put an elbow down on the bar. “Yeah, yeah, okay. She’s new, so she doesn’t know any of your usuals.”
“Usuals?” Oh, shit. Was I a regular here or something?
“Usuals. Yeah. ‘Ey, um,” the man said, “we heard what happened to you, and we’ve been trying to find you since you left the hospital.” The H sound at the beginnings of words didn’t make it out of his mouth. “There was talk you lost your memory, but they also said you was paralyzed.”
“I guess you can’t trust everything you read on the internet? I’m sorry, do I know you?” He looked toward to door. There wasn’t anyone in the way except this guy. “And who is we?” His brows furrowed, concerned. Obviously, police were looking for him. Or somebody had seen him before and recognized him. Or this was someone he had worked with. If he really was a bank robber, then it seemed likely anyone else looking for him might not be someone he wanted, or felt safe, to associate with.
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