All at once his face closed off. He didn’t argue or get mad or anything, he just closed up shop and the conversation was over. “I suppose so,” he said. “I’ll just have a club sandwich today, and a diet something.”

  “Coming right up,” she said.

  It really annoyed her that he’d shut her down like that. Didn’t he know how small this town was? He’d been to college, hadn’t he? Which meant he must have lived away from this town sometime in his life. Have some perspective, Spaulding, she said to him silently. If your kids aren’t dying to get out of here now, just give them a couple of years and they will be, and what’ll you do then?

  As he sat there eating, looking through some papers from his briefcase, it began to grate on her that he was so pointedly ignoring her. What right did he have to judge her?

  “What put a bug up your behind?” asked Minnie.

  “What do you mean?” said Rainie.

  “You’re stalking and bustling around here like you’re getting set to smack somebody.”

  “Sorry,” said Rainie.

  “One of my customers insult you?”

  She shook her head. Because now that she thought about it, the reverse was true. She had insulted him, or at least had insulted the town he lived in. What was griping at her wasn’t him being rude to her, because he hadn’t been. He simply didn’t like to hear people badmouthing his town. Douglas Spaulding wasn’t in Harmony because he never had an idea that there was a larger world out there. He was a smart man, much smarter than the job of small-town accountant required. He was here by choice, and she had talked as if it was a bad choice for his children, and this was a man who loved his children, and it really bothered her that he had closed her off like that.

  It bothered her so much that she went over and pulled up a chair at his table. He looked up from his papers, raised an eyebrow. “This a new service at Jack & Minnie’s Cafe?”

  “I’m willing to learn,” said Rainie. “I’m not a bigot against small towns. I just sort of took it for granted that small towns would feel oppressive to kids because the small town I grew up in felt oppressive to me. If that’s a crime, shoot me.”

  He looked at her in wonder. “I don’t have an idea on God’s Earth what you’re talking about.”

  “A minute ago when you shut me down,” she said, really annoyed now. “You can’t tell me that shutting people down is so unimportant that you don’t even remember doing it.”

  “I ordered my breakfast is all I did,” said Spaulding.

  “So you do remember,” she said triumphantly.

  “I just wasn’t interested in continuing that conversation.”

  “Then don’t shut a person down, Mr. Spaulding. Tell them that you don’t appreciate what they said, but don’t just cut me off.”

  “It honestly didn’t occur to me that you’d even notice,” he said. “I figured you were just making small talk, and the talk just got too small.”

  “I wasn’t making small talk,” said Rainie. “I was really impressed with your kids. It’s a sure thing I was never that way with my father.”

  “They’re good kids.” He took another bite and looked down at his paper.

  She laid her hand on the paper, fingers spread out to cover the whole sheet and make it unreadable.

  He sat up, leaned back in his chair, and regarded her. “The place isn’t crowded, the lunch rush is over, so it can’t be that you need my table.”

  “No, sir,” said Rainie. “I need your attention. I need just a couple of minutes of your attention, Mr. Spaulding, because in your car yesterday I caught a whiff of something I’ve heard about but I always thought it was a legend; a lie, like Santa Claus and the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny.”

  He got a little half-smile on his face, but there was still fire in his eyes. “Since when is Santa Claus a lie?”

  “Since I was six years old and got up to pee and saw Dad putting together the bike on the living room floor.”

  “It strikes me that what you saw was proof that Santa Claus was real. Flesh and blood. Putting together a bike. Making cookies for you in the kitchen.”

  “That wasn’t Santa Claus, that was Dad and Mom, except that my Mom didn’t make cookies for me, she made them for her, all neat and round and lined up exactly perfect on the cookie tray—Lord help me if I actually touched one—and Dad couldn’t get the bike together right, he had to wait till the stores opened the day after Christmas so he could get the guy in the bike shop to put it together.”

  “So far you haven’t proved that Santa Claus was fake, you just proved that he wasn’t good enough for you. If Santa Claus couldn’t be perfect, you didn’t want any Santa Claus at all.”

  “Why are you getting so mad at me?”

  “Did I invite you to sit at this table, Ms. Johnson?”

  “Dammit, Mr. Spaulding, would you call me Ida like everybody else?”

  “Dammit, Ms. Johnson, why are you the only person in town who doesn’t call me Douglas?”

  “Begging your pardon, Douglas.”

  “Begging yours, Ida.”

  “All I was trying to say, Douglas, when I brought up Santa Claus, Douglas, was that in your car I saw a father being easy with his children, and the children being easy with their dad, right in front of a stranger, and I never thought that happened in the real world.”

  “We get along okay,” said Douglas. He shrugged it off, but she could see that he was pleased.

  “So for a minute in your car I felt like I was part of that and I guess it just hurt my feelings a little when you shut me down back then. It didn’t seem fair. I didn’t think my offense was so terrible.”

  “Like I said, I wasn’t punishing you.”

  “All right then. More coffee?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Pie? Ice cream?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Well, then why do you keep calling me over to your table?”

  He smiled. Laughed almost. So it was all right. She felt better, and she could leave him alone then.

  After he left, after all the lunch customers had gone and she was washing down the tables and wiping off the saltshakers and emptying the ashtrays, Minnie came over to her and looked her in the eye, hard and angry.

  “I saw you sitting down and talking with Douglas,” she said.

  “We weren’t busy,” said Rainie.

  “Douglas is a decent man with a happy family.”

  Now Rainie understood. In her own way, Minnie was just like the guy who rented her the room over the garage. Always assuming that because she was a good-looking woman, she was on the make. Well, she wasn’t on the make, but if she was, it wouldn’t be any of Minnie’s business or anybody else’s except her own. What was it about this place? Why did everybody always assume that sex was the foremost thing in a single forty-two-year-old woman’s mind?

  “I’m glad for him,” Rainie said.

  “Don’t you make no trouble for that good man and his good wife,” said Minnie.

  “I said something that I thought maybe offended him and I wanted to make sure everything was all right, that’s all. I was trying to make sure I hadn’t alienated a customer.” Even as she explained, Rainie resented having to make an explanation.

  “Do you think I’m a fool? Do you think I’m such a fool as to think you’re a fool? Since he first laid eyes on you he’s been in here every day. And now you’re going over sitting at his table arguing with him and then making him laugh. I’ve got half a mind to fire you right now and send you on your way, except I like you and I’d like to keep you around. But I don’t like you so much I’m willing to have you making things ugly for people around here. You can make a mess here and then just walk away, but me and my customers, we’ll have to keep living with whatever it is you do, so don’t do it. Am I clear?”

  Rainie didn’t answer, just furiously wiped at the table. She hadn’t been reamed out like that since . . . her mother was the last one to ream her out like this, and Rainie had left home over it, and it made her so mad to have to listen to it all over again. She was forty-two years old and she still had some old lady telling her what she could and couldn’t do, laying down rules, making conditions and regulations, and claiming that she liked her while she was doing it.

  Minnie waited for a minute till it was clear Rainie wasn’t going to answer. “All right then,” said Minnie. “I’ve got enough in the register to give you your pay. Take off the apron, you can go.”

  I don’t need your money or your job, you poor old fool, I’m Rainie Pinyon, I sing and write songs and play the piano and cut albums, I’ve got a million-dollar ranch in the Horse Heaven Hills of eastern Washington and an agent in L.A. who calls me sweetheart and sends me checks a couple of times a year, checks large enough even during the bad years that I could buy your two-bit cafe and move it to Tokyo and never even miss the money.

  Rainie thought all that, but she didn’t say it. Instead she said, “I’m sorry. I’m not going to mess around with anybody’s life, and I’ll be careful with Mr. Spaulding.”

  “Take off the apron, Ida.”

  Rainie whirled on her. “I said I’d do what you wanted.”

  “I don’t think so,” said Minnie. “I think you got the same tone of voice I heard in my daughter when she had no intention of doing what I said, but promised to do it just to get me off her back.”

  “Well, I’m not your daughter. I thought I was your friend.”

  Minnie looked at her, steady and cold, then shook her head. “Ida Johnson, I can’t figure you out. I never thought you’d last a week, and I sure never figured you for the type who’d try to hold on to a lousy job like this one after the tongue-lashing I just gave you.”

  “To tell you the truth, Mrs. Wilcox, I never figured myself that way either. But I don’t want to leave.”

  “Is it Douglas Spaulding? Are you in love?”

  “I used up love a dozen years ago, Mrs. Wilcox, and I haven’t looked to recharge the batteries since then.”

  “You mean to tell me you been without a man for twelve years?”

  “I thought we were talking about whether I was in love.”

  “No such thing.” Minnie looked her up and down. “I’ll bet you didn’t wear a bra during the bra-burning days, did you?”

  “What?”

  “Your chest has dropped so low you could almost tuck ’em into your belt. I don’t know what a man would find attractive about you anyway.”

  It was such an insulting, outrageous thing to say that Rainie was speechless.

  “You can stay, as long as you don’t call me Mrs. Wilcox. That just drives me crazy. Call me Minnie.”

  Things went right back to normal, mostly because Douglas Spaulding didn’t come in again for more than a week, and when he did come back, he wasn’t alone. He was part of a group of men—most of them in suits, but not all—who came into the cafe walking on the balls of their feet like dancers, like running backs. “You’re all full of sass,” said Minnie to one of the men.

  “Time to feed the baby!” he answered.

  Minnie rolled her eyes. “I know. Jaynanne Spaulding’s gone out of town again.”

  “Dougie’s Christmas present to her—a week with her folks up in Racine.”

  “Present to himself,” said Minnie.

  “Taking care of the kids for a solid week, you think that’s a picnic?”

  “Those kids take care of themselves,” said Minnie. “Douglas Spaulding’s just a big old kid himself. And so are you, Tom Reuther, if you want my opinion.”

  “Minnie, honey, nobody ever has time to want your opinion. You give it to us before we even have a chance to wish for it.”

  Minnie held up a ladle of her Cincinnati chili. “You planning to eat your lunch or wear it, Tom?”

  One of the other men—a mechanic, from the black stains on his overalls—piped up from the two tables they had pushed together in the middle of the room. “He’s already wearing every bit of food you ever served him. Can’t you see it hanging over his belt?”

  “Under my belt or over it, Minnie, I wear your food with pride,” said Tom. Then he blew her a kiss and joined the others.

  Douglas was already sitting at the table, laughing at nothing and everything, just like the others. He really did seem to be just a big old kid right then—there was nothing of the father about him now. Just noise and laughing and moving around in his chair, as if it might just kill him if he ever sat still for more than ten seconds at a time. Rainie half-expected to look down and see him wearing too-short or too-long jeans with holes in the knees, showing one knee skinned up and scabbed over, and maybe raggedy sneakers on his feet. She was almost disappointed to see those shiny sensible oxfords and suitpants with the hems just right. He didn’t not look at her, but he didn’t particularly look at her, either. He was just generally cheerful, being with his friends, and he had plenty of good cheer to share with anybody who happened to come along.

  “You going to order separate checks and make my life miserable?” asked Rainie of the group at large.

  “Just give the bill to Doug,” said Tom.

  “You can make one total and we’ll divvy it up ourselves,” said Douglas. “It’ll be easy, because we’re all having exactly the same thing.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Beans!” cried Tom.

  “Beans! Beans! Beans!” chanted several of the others.

  “We gots to have our daily beans, ma’am,” Tom explained, “cause we gots to feed the Baby of Love!”

  “I got a double batch of chili with extra cinnamon!” called Minnie from behind the counter. “This time somebody had the brains to call ahead and warn me!”

  Tom immediately pointed an accusing finger at Douglas. “What is this, Spaulding? A sudden attack of maturity and consideration for others? Malicious foresight? For shame!”

  Douglas shrugged. “Last time she ran out.”

  “Chili for everybody,” said Rainie. “Is that all? Nothing to drink?”

  “What is the drink of the day?” asked one of the men.

  “Whose turn is it anyway?” asked another.

  “Tom’s turn,” said Douglas.

  They turned toward him expectantly. He spread his hands out on the table and looked them in the eye, as if he was about to deliver the State of the Union address. Or a funeral prayer. “Seven-Up,” said Tom. “A large Seven-Up for everybody.”

  “Are you serious?” asked Douglas. “And what’s for dessert—toothpaste?”

  “The rule is no alcohol at lunch,” said Tom, “and beyond that we’re free to be as creative as we like.”

  “You’re giving creativity a bad name,” said Douglas.

  “Trust me,” said Tom.

  “If all we get today is Seven-Up,” said the mechanic, “you are going to spend the entire evening as primordial slime.”

  “No, he’s going to spend the night in Hell,” said another.

  At the soda machine, spurting the Seven-Up into the glasses, Rainie had to ask. “What in the world are they talking about?”

  “It’s a game they play,” said Minnie. “It’s notorious all over town. More satanic than Dungeons and Dragons. If these boys weren’t so nice they’d probably be burnt at the stake or something.”

  “Satanic?”

  “Or secular humanist or whatever. I get those two things mixed up. It’s all about feeding beans to the baby and when you win you turn into God. Pagan religion and evolution. I asked Reverend Blakely about it and he just shook his head. No wonder Jaynanne leaves town whenever they play.”

  “Aren’t you going to serve up the chili?”

  “Not till they’re through with whatever nonsense they do about the drinks.”

  Rainie loaded the drinks onto the tray and headed back to what she was now thinking of as the Boys’ Table. Whatever it was that Douglas Spaulding and his friends had turned into, it was suddenly a lot more interesting to her now that she knew that at least some groups in the town disapproved of it. Evolution and paganism? It sounded like it was right up her alley.

  She started to load off the glasses at each place, but Tom beckoned her frantically. “No, no, all here in front of me!” With one arm he swept away the salt and pepper shakers, the napkin dispenser, the sugar canister, and the red plastic ketchup bottle. “Right here, Miss Ida, if you don’t mind.”

  She leaned over Tom’s left shoulder and set down the whole tray without spilling a drop from any of the glasses. Before she stood up, she glanced at Douglas, who was right across from Tom, and caught him looking down the neck of her dress. Almost immediately he looked away; she didn’t know whether he knew she saw him looking or not.

  My boobs may have sagged a little, Minnie, but I still got enough architecture to make the tourists take a second glance.

  There were other customers, but while she was dropping off their orders she kept an eye on the Boys’ Table. Tom had been creative, after all—he had packets of Kool-Aid in his suitcoat pocket, and he made quite a ritual of opening them and putting a little of every flavor in each glass. They foamed a lot when he stirred them, and they all ended up a sickly brownish color.

  She heard the mechanic say, “Why didn’t you just puke in the glasses to start with and avoid the middleman?”

  “Drink, my beloved newts and emus, drink!” cried Tom.

  They passed out the glasses and prepared to drink.

  “A toast!” cried Douglas, and he rose to his feet. Everybody in the cafe was watching, of course—how often does somebody propose a toast at noon in a small-town cafe?—but Rainie kept right on working, laying down plates in front of people.

  “To the human species!” said Douglas. “And to all the people in it, a toast!”

  “Hear hear!”

  “And to all the people who only wish they were in it, I promise that when I am supreme god, you will all be human at last!”

  “In a pig’s eye!” shouted the mechanic joyously.

  “I’ll drink to that!” cried Tom, and with that they all drank.

  The mechanic did a spit take, putting a thin brown Kool-Aid and Seven-Up fog into the air. Tom must have had some inner need to top that; as he finished noisily chug-a-lugging his drink, Rainie could see that he intended to throw the glass to the floor.