CHAPTER FIVE
“A max burger all the way with a large fry,” said the taller of the two truckers seated at the table.
“I’ll take the same,” said the smaller trucker. “But hold the cheese and the onions on mine.”
“No Che and O for you,” Joy said as she wrote their requests on her order pad. “And all the way for you,” she said to the taller trucker. “Got it.”
As she threw her order pad in her apron pocket and began gathering up their menus, what looked like a brand-new, bright-red Chevy Corvette pulled into the parking lot just outside of the window where the truckers were seated.
“Nice ride,” said the male trucker.
“I try my best,” said Joy. The truckers looked at her. “Oh you meant that car,” she added with a smile, and they both laughed.
“Is that a Camaro?” Joy asked the truckers.
“Camaro my ass. That’s a Corvette. And a brand new one at that.”
“Cool,” said Joy. “I’m gonna drive me a fancy car someday.”
“Sure you are,” said the taller trucker. “And I’m Julia Roberts.”
“You might be. I saw you sashaying those hips.” His partner laughed. “Be right back with your order, fellars,” Joy added as she headed toward the kitchen to place their orders.
Outside, a dark blue Volkswagen Jetta pulled up alongside the Corvette and William Skeffington stepped out, stretched, yawned, and looked around.
He was in Bridell, Indiana, a town he’d never visited before, and he loved the smell of that farm-fresh Indiana air.
He’d been on the road for over nine hours.
It was high time he took a longer break, got himself a meal, and then made the final three hour leg of his journey to Chicago.
He grabbed his bomber jacket hanging from the backseat hook, put it on, and locked his car.
As he headed for the entrance, he almost pulled out his phone.
He knew he had to have at least a hundred missed calls.
He was also certain Bobby was already apoplectic, and his senior executives would be also once they found out, but he didn’t care.
Had he told any of them that he was going to drive himself back to Chicago alone, they would have had hidden security all over the place regardless of what he ordered them not to do.
He understood why they would be so concerned.
They didn’t want anything to happen to their meal ticket.
But they worked for him, not the other way around, and it was high time they understood that.
“Welcome to Maylene’s,” the older woman at the reception podium said as he walked in. “Just one, sir?”
“Excuse me?”
“Just one at your table?”
“Oh. Yes. It’s just me.”
She grabbed a menu and took him to a booth seat midway along a line of booths.
The restaurant itself was only about a third full, and although it was a far cry from the Michelin-starred, James Beard award-winning restaurants he was accustomed to fraternizing, it looked clean enough and efficient enough. It would do just fine.
He sat on the banquette and the hostess placed onto his table the menu and a fork and knife wrapped up in a white napkin made of paper. As if they were trying to be fancy without the expense of fanciness. “Your waitress will be with you shortly, sir,” she said.
“Where’s your restrooms, young lady?”
The woman, who was older than William, smiled. “Right down this aisle, sir, and to your left.”
“Thank you very much,” William said with a slight bow of his head and then she smiled again and headed back up front.
“What you smiling about?” Joy asked Helen, the hostess, as she made it back up to the welcome podium.
“We got us a looker today girl,” Helen said, a white woman in her mid-fifties. She was among those who started working there as a teenager too. “And when I say good looking, I am understating it.”
Joy was looking around. “Who are you talking about?”
The hostess pointed toward William, who had decided to head to the restroom before he placed his order. “The man walking toward the restrooms in that brown jacket.”
“Him?” She hunched her small shoulders. She was unimpressed. “He looks like a regular old white man to me.”
“What old? Netta, you don’t know what you’re talking about. That man can’t possibly be more than forty-two or forty-three years old if he’s a day.”
“I rest my case,” said the much-younger Joy.
The hostess laughed. That was Netta. Always good for a laugh.
“I wonder if he’s married though,” Helen mused.
“Did he have on a ring?”
“I didn’t get a chance to look. Because if he’s not married? Ba-be, I am gonna be all over that!”
“Number one,” said Joy, “you’re married.”
“And?”
Joy shook her head. Hoes came in all ages, she supposed. “And number two,” she said, “if he’s the age you said he is, then that man is way too young for you, Miss Helen. Way too young!”
Helen gave her a side-eyed look. “Who do you think you’re talking to? I’m not that old!”
Joy laughed. “Yes ma’am.”
“And what you know about it anyway? He’s a great-looking guy. And a gentleman to boot.”
In truth, he was too far away for Joy to render any opinion on his looks, but she enjoyed needling Helen. “He’s aw’ight.”
“He’s just aw’ight to you because you wouldn’t know good looking if it bit you in the face. That man is fine, you hear me? And so polite too. I bet you he leaves you a big fat tip.”
Joy looked at her. “Is he the guy that drove up in that Corvette?”
“No, some young whippersnapper was driving that.”
Joy frowned. “A whipper-what?”
“Why should it matter what he was driving?”
“Because if he was driving a brand-new Corvette that would mean he has money to burn and might just be able to give me that big tip you’re talking about.”
Helen shook her head. “Netta, you don’t know nothing do you? Just because a person drives around in a fancy car doesn’t mean they’re rich.”
“I know that. But it has to mean something,” Joy said.
“It means they’re foolish enough to spend their hard-earned dollars on a car they could probably barely afford. That’s all that means.”
Then the kitchen bell rang. “Order’s up, Netta,” said the food expeditor through the cut-out window inside the kitchen as he tossed two plates onto its countertop.
“I’ll check his finger for you,” Joy said with a wink as she hurried to grab the plates, and Helen smiled too.
When William made it back to his booth from the restroom, he had no idea he had been the topic of anybody’s conversation.
He pulled out his reading glasses, put them on, and carefully looked over the menu to see what they had to offer.
What he saw was a menu overloaded with greasy comfort food, which he wasn’t accustomed to eating.
But there was at least one section filled with grilled comfort food.
He checked out that section more closely.
Further back, Joy delivered the burgers and fries to the two truckers. Then she made her way to the table where Miss Helen’s “cute” guy was seated. “Welcome to Maylene’s,” she said in her usual cheerful voice.
Although he didn’t look at her, but continued to study the menu, she noticed what looked like strain on his face. “My my, you look exhausted.”
He continued to look over the menu.
“I know the look because I’m exhausted myself,” Joy continued talking. “I’ve been on my feet for eleven straight hours already. I’m working double shift today.”
Still no reaction or response.
“A regular chatterbox you are,” Joy said teasingly, but that got nothing from William either. She exhaled. One of those, she thought. “Okay then! What would you like to drink, sir?”
That got his attention. He never responded to waitresses small-talking him because he knew they were only doing it for the tip.
He removed his glasses and finally looked at her.
But as soon as he saw her cheerful, expressive face, an odd feeling rushed over him.
As if there was something familiar about her.
But he’d never seen her before in his life.
Or had he?
Joy found his sudden pause odd too. And the way he was looking at her as if she owed him money made her damn uncomfortable. “Sir?”
William quickly realized he was probably scaring the young lady with his sudden stare. He broke it. “What do you have to drink exactly? I haven’t gotten around to the drink portion of the menu yet.”
The drink portion of the menu. What a way to put it. This guy was so bougie, Joy thought. “Well, sir, we have tea. Our root beer is really good. Better than most. We have sodas of all kinds, including diet. We have regular beer. And we have the old tried and true water.”
What he wanted was a glass of wine! “Water will do,” he said.
“Sure thing.”
“And I’m ready to order,” he added, as he closed the menu.
Joy smiled. “Decisive. I like that.” But that only made him look at her even harder than he had the first time. Damn. What was wrong with this guy? She pulled out her order pad. “What are you having, sir?”
“I’ll try the grilled salmon.”
Before Joy realized it, she blurted out ugh!
What was wrong with this girl, William thought. “Excuse me?”
“Between you and me and the sky and the sea, our salmon is crap. I’m sorry, but it is.
” She looked around to see if the manager was lurking about.
When she didn’t see her, she sat down on the booth seat beside William, which shocked him.
They were so close that her small arm was touching and overlapping his big arm.
“Let me show you what’s worth a darn and what isn’t.
That way you can make an informed decision since it’s obvious you aren’t from around here. ”
William didn’t know what to make of her brazenness. Who was this girl?
As she opened back up his menu, he found himself staring at her for a different reason altogether. Before, he was staring because something inside of him reacted to her presence. But now he was questioning her sanity. Because nobody on the face of this earth got this personal with him. Nobody!
“Do you see these so-called healthy choice items over here?” she asked as she pointed out the grilled items on the menu.
He put back on his glasses and looked. “Yes,” a still shocked William responded.
“They’re all crap. I’m sorry, but they’re pure crap. And they call it healthy? It’s healthy alright. Customers have been throwing that shit up left and right.”
That caught William’s attention. He leaned back and looked at her. “Really?”
“I’m not a liar,” she said and looked dead into his eyes for the first time. And when they locked eyes, it affected both of them in a very visceral way.
For William, it was that enormous spark in her extra-large, greenish-brown eyes.
It was as if her eyes were glistening. They seemed so pure and so filled with cheerfulness that they were strikingly beautiful.
And her face was so smooth and brown that it reminded him of the silkiness of satin.
Her face was so filled with warmth and so inviting that he found himself inwardly exhaling, as if he was on to something when he wasn’t on to anything at all!
But her face was quite unusual. He’d never seen eyes so positively positive like that before in his life.
For Joy, it was how deeply blue his eyes were.
And they were so soft for a man who came off so hard.
It was that contradiction that threw her.
But only for a second. She quickly recovered.
“I wouldn’t tell you a lie, is what I mean.
It’s the truth. Customers have been throwing up after eating that so-called healthy food every time I turn around.
Now if you want a case of the heebie-jeebies, or best-case scenario diarrhea, then eat away. But you’ve been warned.”
William felt blown away by her presence. Who is this girl??? “What do you recommend?” he asked her. He could not take his eyes off of her.
“It’s not healthy,” Joy said, “but you can’t go wrong with a max burger or the chicken tenders. We do food that’s bad for you real good.”
William actually smiled.
And Joy caught it. “You smiled!” she said with a gorgeously bright-white smile of her own. “Wow. I didn’t think you had it in you, Mister, even though your eyes said you did.”
William didn’t understand what she meant. Was she coming onto him? That child? “How about that,” he said, which was his throwaway line whenever he didn’t get it.
“So which will it be?”
Neither were his cup of tea, but he needed to eat. “I’ll take the tenders.”
“What would you like with your tenders?”
“With them?”
“Fries,” she said with a nod of her head. “Or a baked potato?” she asked, but she shook her head at the bake potato suggestion.
“I’ll take the fries,” William said.
“Good choice,” she said. His eyes were so beautiful to Joy that she suddenly felt uncomfortable. And realized how close she was seated beside this man. She quickly stood up and grabbed the menu. “Tenders and fries with water coming right up,” she said and left his booth.
But she left an impression on William. A remarkable one.
He still didn’t know what to make of her.
But one thing he knew for certain: She was just a kid compared to him.
A kid, he also noticed as he watched her walk away, with a very nice body.
A body that made clear to him that she was a long way from her kid days.
He watched her work those hips in that miniskirt and those heels and that apron, as if she owned this joint.
Which made him smile again. She was like a kid in a candy store. Only she was the candy.