The Man at the Window

People who choose a booth by the front window are looking for something. Often it’s an old friend rolling in at the bus station across the street; they got here early, traffic was lighter than they expected. Sometimes it’s a full face of sun, eyes closed in ecstasy, or gazing into the nearly pupilless eyes of their loved one across the table, glowing blue or green or brown in the brilliance. They might be searching for fellowship, or at least proof that it exists, in the hustling crowds only a foot away through insulating glass.

The tables in the back are selected by people who are hiding, from themselves, from others, from the world. They want to read a book, finish a project. Finally confront their spouse about late nights at the office in a safe place that hugs the line between public and private. They, also, might be looking for companionship, in a parallel play sort of way, absorbing the nearby conversations and perfumes, the transferred body heat.

My assessment affects how I approach them. I think it’s why I’m good at my job. Jobs, really: waitress, actress. Sometimes I go in hot. Loud and in their face. Occasionally, when the vibe is right, I even scootch in next to them on the bench. It’s a big hit. Sometimes I’m just a dazzling smile on legs, your favorite auntie’s hug in a waist apron. Calm, comforting. You do your thing, I gotchu. Other times it’s all business. I get in, I get out.

It’s not about me. I offer them what they need. It’s up to them if they take it. Honestly, it can be exhausting, but I can’t help myself.

And I’m almost never wrong.

The man who called himself Ferris came in after ten, shaking his umbrella and camel trench near the door and folding the latter over his arm. He spied the “Please Seat Yourself!” sign and moved, no hesitation, to the middle booth at the window. After laying out the damp coat and propping the umbrella on the opposite bench, he plopped down and turned his head to the glass.

I grabbed a roll-up and our evening menu (which is the same as our daytime menu, except with moon and stars instead of sunshine and flowers) and strolled over.

His colors were muted.

“Hello.” I slid the roll-up to his right and held the menu out in front of him. “I can hang that up if you’d like.”

He turned. At first he seemed surprised that a waitress would approach him in a diner, but he quickly recovered and took the menu, his icy hand brushing mine in the transfer.

“No, thank you. It’s just a drizzle.”

“Sounds good. I’ll come back with water. Coffee?”

He tilted his head, really thinking about this important question. Would he be able to sleep tonight? With a friend arriving, maybe he didn’t want to sleep tonight.

“Please.”

“I’ll be bahk,” I said in my best Arnold Schwarzenegger. I brought water and coffee. “Do you need a minute to look at the menu?”

He glanced out the window again. “Yes, thanks.”

“Picking someone up?”

In the window, his reflection smiled faintly. “That’s the plan.”

“They coming far?” I said, tipping my head at the bus station.

“Not far,” he said, and turned back to me. A clump of damp hair flopped down on his forehead. He left it there. Then he said, “How long was your trip out here?”

“Uh…”

“I mean, a lot of people take the bus to New York City, right? Chasing their dreams?”

“I guess so. You got me pegged.” I chuckled. “Yeah, it was almost 100 hours. My butt kept going numb.”

“You gotta get out at every stop, stretch ‘em.”

I nodded. “I did most of the time. And the woman sitting next to me part of the way—Hillary?—kept talking about compression stockings. But she was also popping pills, like a lot of pills, so I wasn’t sure if she was really someone to take health advice from.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Ha, yeah.”

“Anyway, I’ll let you look at the menu.”

The only other people in the diner, other than Darius in the kitchen, were a harried mom and her two kids, seated near the back. I checked on them. The two elementary school age boys had settled down a bit since their food had arrived, and mom was taking deep breaths. Her colors were jagged, but steady. She asked for ranch. I got that for her, popping in to check on Darius on the way. His girlfriend was out with friends and wasn’t responding to his texts. He was spiraling. I assured him it didn’t mean anything and chucked him on the shoulder. It seemed to help.

After dropping off the ranch I went back to the man at the window. He had set down the menu and was staring out the window again.

“Ready to order?”

“What’s good?” he said, meeting my eyes. “What do you think I’d like?”

That lock of hair was still glued to his forehead. I wanted to whisk it away.

“Ooo, a challenge. I’m actually pretty good at this.”

I was good at that. My sister, too, maybe even better. It wasn’t anywhere close to what someone would label as “reading minds”. It was more like a feeling, a feeling about feelings. Imagine a person as a shape built of glowing lights, some big, some small, all possible colors, each exquisite and important. Every light tells me something about who they are, what they need, how they’re feeling, what’s their pain. They can try to mask the lights with clothes and makeup, or filter them with facial expressions, posture, and words; most are terrible at this, but some people are frighteningly good.

Do you see that too?

Anyway, oversimplifying, but a teal light near his left knee suggested he wanted corned beef hash and a side of eggs, over easy, which I told him.

Now that was a genuine smile. “Bravo! That sounds delicious!”

“Comin’ right up!” I said, and pivoted.

“Now tell me my name.”

I turned back. “Ha, I’m not that good!”

“No?” He appeared to be truly disappointed. “Ferris.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Your parents were looking for trouble.”

“And they got it!”

“Brynn,” I said, pointing at the magnetic name tag on my Nova Diner t-shirt. I went to put in his order.

In the back, the boys’ volume steadily increased. I didn’t mind, but the mom was nearing her breaking point. I don’t have kids, but I’ve observed many parents and I recognize the signs.

“How you doin’, mom?”

Her body was closed, her eyes flat. She gave me a tight, false smile. The dark-haired boy smacked the light-haired one on the back of the head and a half-chomped fry flew across the table. Gales of laughter. All of mom’s muscles tensed up. I pulled two sets of crayons and two coloring sheets from my waist apron and slid them on the table. The boys immediately snatched them up.

Mom gave me a smile, a real one this time, but her eyes were still dead.

I wanted to tell her nobody cared about the noise. I wanted to tell her nobody was judging her, and that all kids are friggin maniacs sometimes and we all knew that. That she was a beautiful, whole person. But would she hear that from a childless thirty-something wait/actress?

I trusted my read and squeezed her shoulder, whispering, “I see you.”

Something flickered in her eyes. Did I get through?

When I turned around I caught the man at the window staring at me. I smiled, and he returned it.

“Should only be a few minutes,” I said upon approach. “Need anything in the meantime?”

“You’re good with people.”

“Thanks! It helps in this job.”

“In acting too, I’d wager.”

“For sure.”

Had I mentioned acting?

“Where do you think that comes from?” He tore the paper ring on the roll-up and unrolled the napkin and utensils.

“Dunno, always been able to.”

“Hmm,” he said, smoothing the napkin flat and laying out the utensils: fork, spoon, knife. “Just Madson magic, I guess.”

“Order up!” Darius called from the kitchen.

A wave washed over me. It was like when I touched the balmy waters of the Gulf of Mexico for the first time after growing up playing with my sister in the iciness of Crow Creek.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“Magic?”

Had I misheard him?

“Is that mine?” He pointed past my shoulder at the kitchen.

“Oh! Yes, yes,” I stuttered. I went to grab his plate. “Darius. Darius!” I whisper shouted, leaning into the kitchen.

Darius, slouching against the freezer, didn’t look up from his phone. “What’s up?”

“Guy by the window’s giving me weird vibes.”

That got his attention. He knew my vibes. He peeked out.

“I think you could take ‘im,” he said.

I chuckled. “Probably. But keep an eye out, okay?”

“I gotchu.”

Across the street, a bus arrived and disgorged its passengers. Ferris was watching them intently when I returned with his plate.

“Is that your friend’s bus? I can wrap this up to go.”

“No, I’m not waiting for a bus.”

I guess I already knew that.

He tapped the window. “So many people from all over the country. The world. Leaving home. Coming here.”

“That’s why I like it,” I said. “It makes the city beautiful, strong.”

“I wonder what that means for home, though, if its strength is drained away. Stolen away.”

My heart sank. Was this turning into one of those exhausting conversations that happened more and more lately? If so, I’d read this man entirely incorrectly.

“That’s not what I mean,” I said. “It’s the coming together that creates the strength.”

“Ah,” he said, meeting my eyes. “Then could this strength be brought back home?”

“A valid question.” I considered, and decided to take the leap. “I grew up in a tiny, rural, conservative, extremely White town a loooong way from here. Good people, mostly farmers. But other than books, tv, and eventually the internet, I had no way of knowing how small it was until I came here. And now I’ve changed. So yes, I think Madson would be stronger if more people moved away and then back. Or, really, if new people just moved in.”

“So we agree,” he said with a finality that felt like our conversation had turned the corner, revealing our secret destination. He wiped the errant hair from his forehead, at last, and said, “Do you know why I’m here?”

His colors shifted.

The elevator floor dropped beneath me. I placed a finger on the table to steady myself.

I did know.

“Yes,” I said.

“Tell me.”

“You want me to go back to Madson.”

He nodded, snapping a business card onto the tabletop near my hand. “We need you.”

The card read:

TIMELESS TREASURES

Antiques Emporium

Since 1975

“I’m an agent for the proprietor. He’s leading the charge, preparing Madson for what’s to come.”

I drew my finger across the silvery embossed letters. “What’s coming?”

He sat back, considering. “Ever wonder what makes you so special? I mean, other than your scintillating personality?”

“I–”

A paper airplane, scribbled with crayon, sailed between us and tinked off the window, landing on the bench opposite Ferris. The boys cheered and pounded the table.

“You grew up next to Crow Creek,” he said.

“Yes.”

“On the banks of Crow Creek. Laura Ingalls Wilder could have sued for copyright infringement.” He chuckled at his own joke. He picked up the fork, speared the yoke, and squeezed it with the back of the tines. The golden liquid oozed out, collecting along the rim of the plate. “Crow Creek is dying. Barely a trickle in the winter and spring, dry the rest of the time.”

“We used to play in it almost every day. The water came up to our knees in some places,” I said. “Well, kid knees.”

Ferris smiled, but he seemed distant.

“Heck, I think we even drank it.” I grimaced, picturing Syd and our stuffed animals on a towel, circling our pink and white plastic tea set.

“It made you special. Well, all of Madson, to some extent. But you and others that lived right along the creek especially, in different ways. It’s the source of Madson’s magic.”

I guess I knew. Not about Crow Creek, but about Madson. But every kid’s hometown is kind of magical, isn’t it?

“Dark times ahead,” Ferris said. “We need you to come home.”

“Stop that! Sit down!” It was the mom, on the precipice of losing the battle. The dark-haired boy was standing, bouncing on the bench, launching his squealing brother in the air with each impact.

The spell was broken.

I hooked a thumb over my shoulder. “I should–”

“Of course,” he said, sliding out of the booth and dropping some cash on the table. “I have others to find. Think about it, please.” He grabbed his coat and umbrella and moved to the door. “But not for too long.”

Outside, he hurried past the window, holding the coat over his head.

And he was gone.

“Check, please!”

I slid the business card off the table, flicked it once, and stashed it in my pocket.

“Check, please, miss!”

“Yes, sorry!” I pulled the card machine from my hip and hurried back to her table. I punched some keys, pulling up the table’s order and finalizing it. Before I could turn the device she jabbed her credit card out at me, so I took it and tapped it on the screen.

The name on the card was:

MARGARET L. FALL

TOWN OF MADSON

My eyes flicked up from the card. Three sets of eyes stared up at me from the booth. The boys sat quietly, one hand on their lap, the other holding their brother’s. Margaret’s colors swirled confusingly. She smiled like a long lost friend, but her eyes were still dead.

“Hello, Brynn. I’m here representing the Mayor of Madson. Sorry for being so tricksy about it. It’s funny, I was a couple of years ahead of you in school, I thought you’d recognize me. Simon’s sister?”

I nodded dumbly. “I remember…”

“Anywho, we’d like to offer you an opportunity to come work with us, for Madson.”

Her colors continued to shift. She was having trouble maintaining the mask.

What was she hiding?

“Great benefits! Free membership to the town pool!”

I should have called for Darius, but wonder, curiosity, and…something else…held me silent.

“Come on now,” she said, reaching out. “What do you say?”

The boys started to slide off the bench.

She touched my hand.

And I saw her true colors.

~~~

A silver sedan with rental plates slows as Highway 32 transitions to Main Street at the Madson town line. It rolls past the Creekside Inn and several blocks of aging but mostly well-maintained single-family homes; one is desperately purple, another is almost completely obscured by the cacophony of foliage bulging from its lot. A bank on the left, the combination New City Hall/Public Library/Community Center on the right. Finally, in the middle of downtown, the car turns left onto Oak Street and pulls up to the curb outside Timeless Treasures.

A thirty-something woman with sharp black hair and heavy, smudged eyeliner kicks out one worn, fringed boot, then the other. She stands, her traps and biceps straining the indigo “Fairbanks Fiends Roller Derby” t-shirt she’s wearing above torn jeans. Dabbing her eyes with a tissue, she draws a deep breath and blows it out. Another. Then she clenches both fists and marches through the door.

The sweet tinkling of the bell heralds her arrival but not her rage. She strides past the counter, aimed at the smartly-dressed man dusting a vase in the middle of a maze of antique clocks and furniture and salt and pepper shaker sets. Her boot heels on the tile floor sound like serious business.

She stops in front of him, shoulders squared. He straightens his bow tie and smiles up at her.

“Can I help–”

Her left hand shoots out. It’s holding the scorched remains of a business card.

“I’m Sydney Paladine,” she growls. “My sister Brynn is in a hospital in New York, in a medically-induced coma, with burns over seventy percent of her body.”

“Oh, my.”

“They say it was a kitchen fire at the diner she works at, but that just doesn’t…feel right.”

“Your sister–”

“This was found in what was left of her pants,” she chokes out, flicking the card off his forehead. He flinches, but continues to meet her eyes.

She blows a couple of slow breaths from her nose, a bull about to charge.

“Now what I need to hear,” she says, slowly, through gritted teeth, “is who the fuck are you, and why I shouldn’t tear this place down around your FUCKING ears and feed it to you.”