Chapter Two #2
Scarlett shrugged. “All kinds of both. She doesn’t like action movies but loves ‘chick flicks,’ as she calls them. When I first got here, she took me under her wing, and we watched lots of movies—especially on Sunday afternoons. Oh, and the bike’s name is Hilda.”
“Why did she name it that?”
“That’s her story to tell,” Scarlett answered.
I stopped what I was doing and sniffed the air. “What is Rosie cooking? It smells delicious.”
“Don’t you know? This is New Year’s Day,” Scarlett answered.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, what do you eat then?” she asked.
“Frank only had one tradition on New Year’s. We never gambled until one minute past midnight.”
“Why? And who is Frank?”
“Because superstition had it that whatever a person did on New Year’s Day, they would do all year. He said if we lost, then we would be losers,” I answered. “And he’s the man who taught me to play poker.”
“But what if you won?” Scarlett asked.
“He didn’t allow us to tempt fate. I did when I played poker in Tucson. I should have walked away a few minutes before midnight.”
She finished loading her bin and headed for the kitchen. “But what if you just think you lost? What if you really won?”
I cut my eyes around at the café, or diner, or bus stop—whatever it was called. Could she be right?
“Rosie is making ham, black-eyed peas, collard greens, cheesy potatoes, and lazy-daisy oatmeal cake,” Scarlett answered.
“That’s the special lunch on New Year’s Day.
I never did like greens until I tasted how Rosie fixes them.
She seasons them up real good with bacon. I just hope there’s lots of leftovers.”
“Why?”
“Because when we close up each day, we take them home for supper.”
“Do you really think there will be that many customers on a holiday?” I asked.
“Always has been,” she answered. “That second bus, the one on the way to El Paso, Vegas, and points west. They will be excited about maybe winning money or having already done so,” she explained.
“So, to answer your question, it will be a madhouse for a couple of hours. I’ll be glad to have some help. ”
So, I am the help, not the boss?
“Did Martha ever hire more than just you and Rosalie?”
“Matilda, not Martha—and no, she didn’t,” she said. “Not in my day, but I understand there was a woman that worked here for a few years before I came to the Tumbleweed.”
“I’m sorry that I called her by the wrong name, but I’m tired and sleepy. How old was Matilda, and what happened to the other woman?”
“She was eighty-eight when she passed away a year ago. Rosie and I are still in shock. She went to sleep and didn’t wake up.”
“In the room where I’ll be sleeping?” I whispered.
“Do you believe in ghosts or something?” Scarlett asked.
“I don’t know, but that sounds a little creepy.” I thought about the futon in the storage room. My stuff didn’t take up a lot of space.
“If you happen to see Matilda’s ghost, call me. There are questions I want answers to,” Scarlett said.
The futon was sounding better by the minute.
“Rosie said that the lady before me had moved somewhere on the East Coast,” Scarlett continued, changing the subject. “I wouldn’t ever want to live where it gets cold or where I’d have to shovel snow again.”
My sixth sense shot into the red zone. With her big innocent eyes and love for conversation, Scarlett seemed like an open book, but there was something that had caused her to snap her mouth shut and abruptly talk about something else. That interested me even more than Ada Lou and her motorcycle.
“So, you come from a cold place?” I asked, glad not to have to think about sleeping where Larry the goat-man had—or in a bed where a woman had died, either one.
“Rosie and I don’t talk much about the past,” she answered. “We’re just glad for the present and hope for the future.”
That piqued my interest for sure, but there was plenty of time to go into stories of the past. “Rosalie or Rosie?”
“It’s Rosalie until she gives you permission to call her Rosie. You have to earn her trust. It took six months for me to get to do that. Larry never did.”
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“Five years. Since I was nineteen. Matilda saved me,” she answered, and then pointed at the window. “There’s Jackson Armstrong pulling his truck up to the gas pumps.”
The abrupt way she changed the subject again and the pain in her eyes told me not to ask any more questions.
Figuring out this new lifestyle wasn’t going to be easy, but on the flip side, I did have a room to sleep in at the end of the workday, even if Matilda had died there.
And I could spend my time trying to figure out the mystery of why Scarlett and Rosalie didn’t want to talk about their pasts.
Lord knows I sure don’t want to, either.
“Hey, Scarlett!” a guy yelled as he came through the door. “Can you rustle me up a double bacon burger and some fries?”
“I sure can.” She moved over to the service window and raised her voice: “Rosie, Jackson wants his usual.”
“Coming right up,” Rosie shouted back.
He removed his coat and hung it on the back of a barstool.
The tattoo on his upper arm of a knife with the words De Oppresso Liber wrapped around it told me he had been in Special Forces.
That little four-inch dark-brown ponytail said it had been a while since he was discharged.
His eyes were the same color as the army-green T-shirt that stretched across his biceps and didn’t leave any doubt about his strength.
“What can I get you to drink?” I asked.
“Sweet tea, and keep the pitcher handy,” he answered. “How long have you been working here?”
“This is my first day.”
“Have we met before? I never forget a pretty face, but names are a different matter.” His green eyes twinkled. Was he flirting?
I set a glass of iced tea in front of him. “My name is Carla Wilson, and unless you’ve played poker, I don’t think we’ve met.”
“So, you were a gambler in your past life?”
“Who said it was past?”
He chuckled. “I can’t imagine Rosie letting any backroom poker games go on here at the Tumbleweed.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I wondered what he had done to earn her trust. If it took being in the military, then I would just call her Rosalie for as long as I owned the place.
But . . . there was another tidbit to file about the people I would be working with until I squirreled away enough money for my next trip to Vegas.
Or maybe I would bypass that place and go on out to Los Angeles.
“Where are you headed today?” Scarlett asked.
“Up close to New Mexico,” he answered, “but I’ll see y’all in a few days. Right now, my crew is staying in Carlsbad until we can get moved into the area. I can’t survive without one of Rosie’s burgers for very long.”
A bell sounded and Scarlett hurried over to the window, picked up the red plastic basket, and set it before Jackson. “There you go. Enjoy.”
“I always do,” Jackson said and popped a french fry into his mouth.
I grabbed a bar rag and a spray bottle of cleaner and set about wiping down the tables and chairs.
When I’d finished that, I swept the floor.
Like folks say about riding a bicycle, even if a person doesn’t get on one for years, it all comes back to them—the same with restaurant work.
Other than cooking, I knew the business; Frank’s new wife, Paula, had drilled that into my head.
I could almost hear her growling at me to sweep the floor again because she found a single breadcrumb under a chair.
I set the broom and dustpan behind the bar and refilled Jackson’s tea glass. “So, how do you like civilian life?”
“How did you know I was in the military?” he asked.
She pointed to the tat. “By that.”
He smiled and nodded. “Guess it’s a giveaway, isn’t it?
I don’t like it as well as the military, but I promised my dad I would give it a try.
His oil company has a place for me, so I don’t have to make up my mind for a few months,” he answered as he finished off his food. “Can I get a sweet tea to go?”
“Of course.”
Scarlett came from the back, handed him the ticket, and turned to me. “You know how to run a register?”
“No, but I’m a fast learner.”
I watched carefully as she hit a few keys and the drawer opened.
Jackson handed her a couple of bills and said, “Keep the change, but I do need a receipt.”
“Here you go—and thanks.” Scarlett closed the drawer with a smile.
“See y’all next week.” He slipped on his light-tan suede jacket and picked up the to-go cup of tea. “Stay warm, and don’t let the tumbleweeds cover up the diner.”
“We’ll do our best,” Scarlett said.
“Nice meeting you, Miz Carla,” he said.
“Glad to make your acquaintance. Come back to see us,” I said, amazed that I sounded a little breathy.
He hunched his broad shoulders against the cold on the way out the door. I made my way over to the booth beside the window and caught a glance of his truck pulling out onto the highway.
“He fueled up before he came in,” Scarlett teased.
“Not interested.”
“Then you are cold as ice inside,” she said.
The thing that warms me up is a good poker game.
I cut my eyes around at Scarlett. “Why don’t you flirt with him?”
“One.” She held up a finger. “I do not date pretty guys. Two.” Another finger went up.
“I have a boyfriend in Dell City. And three.” Her ring finger shot up.
“He’s too old for me. I don’t even flirt with a man that’s more than two years older than I am.
Jackson is thirty-eight and did twenty years in the military.
Every time I look at his pretty green eyes and that sexy body, I remember that I was only four years old when he enlisted. ”