Chapter Nine
The calendar on the kitchen wall beside the coatrack told me that it was Friday—one week and one day since I’d arrived at the Tumbleweed.
Not a month or a year like it sometimes felt like, but only eight days.
As usual, Rosalie led the way from the trailer to the café with Scarlett right beside her.
Clouds covered the moon and stars like a heavy fog of smoke over a poker table.
In my life as a gambler, I saw sunsets but seldom ever caught a glimpse of a sunrise.
The games didn’t end until the early hours of the morning, and then I had to unwind before going to sleep.
So my internal clock was having a horrible time trying to adjust to this new schedule.
Had someone told me two weeks ago that I would be getting up before daylight, I would have wondered what they had been smoking.
“Hey, I have a question,” I said when we were inside the storage room.
Scarlett pulled a string with a wooden thread spool on the end and lit up the room. She kept on walking into the kitchen, where Rosalie had already switched on the lights. I was beginning to think that she hadn’t even heard me.
“Ask whatever you want, but you might not get an answer if it’s something personal,” she finally said.
Rosalie had already turned on the grill and the oven and, like she had done in previous mornings, had slung a bibbed apron over her T-shirt and loose-fitting jeans. That day she wore a yellow bonnet with butterflies printed on it.
“What’s your question?” she asked.
“What’s the difference between a diner and a café? And which one is the Tumbleweed? The sign says Tumbleweed Bus Stop and Diner, but Ada Lou calls it a café.”
“I remember asking Matilda that same question,” Rosalie answered.
“She said that in the beginning, this place was considered a diner since it only served breakfast until about eleven o’clock.
And after that, only sandwiches and food that folks on the buses could grab and go.
When she began to get business from travelers other than those catching a bus or stopping for a break, she began to fix one hot meal a day and called it the lunch special.
It grew from that to the menu we have today. ”
“Short answer,” Scarlett said, “is that the words are now interchangeable.”
“Another question.” I pressed my luck. “Why doesn’t your boyfriend—Gary—ever come into the café?”
Scarlett stopped just short of the swinging doors and turned around. “It’s Grady, not Gary—and except for Sunday, he is working when we are open.”
I followed her and started putting chairs on the floor while she got the condiment trays ready. “Has Rosalie met him?”
“Of course,” she answered. “We’ve been dating for more than a year.”
“Y’all don’t dilly-daddle around,” Rosalie called out. “Biscuits will be ready in twenty minutes. What do y’all want to go with them?”
“My regular,” Scarlett said.
“Sausage gravy and hash browns,” I yelled and then focused on Scarlett. “A whole year with one guy?” Not in my wildest imagination could I fathom staying in a relationship that long. Sometimes a weekend was twelve hours too long, and I couldn’t wait to tell the guy goodbye at the hotel door.
“You look surprised. You are thirty years old. Surely you’ve had relationships in the past.”
“Not really. To be honest, I’ve never had a real boyfriend.
A few one-night stands, and one guy that I got together with for a whole weekend when our paths crossed.
We both knew that it was casual. He got married a couple of years ago, so even that ended.
My number one rule is that I don’t go to bed with men who are taken. ”
“Well, you are here now. It’s time to change that,” Scarlett said.
“I’m still not having sex with a married man,” I declared.
“I didn’t mean that,” Scarlett said with a smile. “I meant it’s time to have a boyfriend—a single one that you could fall in love with.”
“What does it feel like to have someone in your life for an extended period of time?” I’d read lots of those happy ever after–romance books, but that was just entertaining fiction. Could there be something like that in reality?
“If that person treats you like Grady does me, then it’s wonderful,” she answered, and then her expression went from warm and fuzzy at his name to cold and tough. “If you get someone who doesn’t make you feel like a queen, break it off.”
“Do you feel sparks . . .” I hesitated. “I got that word from the romance books I read, so don’t judge me, but do you feel all gushy inside when he holds your hand?”
“I do,” Scarlett answered. “It seems strange to be answering these questions when you are older than I am.”
“Hey, now, I’m not that old,” I protested. “But thank you all the same.”
“Food is ready,” Rosalie called from the kitchen.
Scarlett unlocked the front door and flipped the switch to turn on the flashing Open sign. We went to the kitchen and sat down in our regular places.
“Thank you for always making breakfast for us, Rosalie,” I said.
“No problem,” she said.
“It seems like I’ve fallen into a bed of roses. I have everything I need without having to shell out money.”
Rosalie chuckled and set a plate of food in front of each of us.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
“That you are finally understanding that you don’t need poker to be happy,” she answered. “So, are you telling me that you don’t need a game of cards anymore?”
I picked up my fork and shook my head. “No, ma’am, I am not saying that at all. If it wasn’t for all your good food, I might be driving over to El Paso or up to Carlsbad for a game.”
“How do you know you could find something in either of those places?” Scarlett asked.
“I would just need to make a phone call to a guy I know, and he would find a game for me anywhere within a hundred miles. But then you would leave, and I can’t cook,” I teased.
“Don’t you forget it.” Rosalie emphasized each word by poking her fork at me.
“Since you hate gambling so much, why didn’t you walk away when you realized what Larry was doing with all the money y’all made?” I asked.
“I prayed that he would finally come to his senses or that someone decent would buy this place,” she answered. “God answers his children in mysterious ways sometimes.”
I didn’t think of myself as spiritual, but I agreed with her that morning.
Something totally out of my wheelhouse and comfort zone was surely happening, and I had no control over any of it.
Usually, one or two customers from the buses entertained me with a story throughout the day, but not that Friday.
The only potential bright spot had been when Ada Lou rode in on her motorcycle, and even she declared that she was in a bad mood and poor company.
I blamed the dreary weather for the ho-hum day when the last customer paid their bill and left to board the bus.
Life does not mean you get to be the statue every time. Today you are the pigeon, the voice in my head said.
“Don’t I know it,” I muttered. “But a little bit of excitement would be great.”
Scarlett had already begun taking the condiment trays to the kitchen to clean them. “What was that?” she asked.
I got busy wiping down the tables. “Nothing. I was just talking to myself.”
I finished that job and made a trip to the employee bathroom just off the storage room.
When I had washed my hands, I stepped out to the sound of Rosalie yelling at someone to put those guns away and get their sorry butts on down the road.
Then Scarlett said something about not opening the cash register in a tone I didn’t recognize.
“We are being robbed,” I muttered, and my chest tightened.
There were people out there with guns. Or was this a drill that Rosalie had thought up to see how I would react?
I tiptoed back into the kitchen and was about to peek out through the service window when I heard a feminine voice say, “Old woman, I told you to get over there to that cash register beside the waitress.”
I counted to ten and raised up again to take another look. This was no drill. There were two people in masks, and each of them held a gun sideways, like gangsters in the movies.
“Move, old woman!” the one with a masculine voice demanded.
Nobody talked to my friend that way if I could do anything about it.
Rosalie was not old by any stretch of the word, which told me that the two robbers were punk-ass kids.
I took another quick look from the side of the window and saw Scarlett at the cash register.
I couldn’t see her face, but her back was ramrod straight.
From that angle, it was difficult to see if she was scared or angry, or both.
Rosalie had a clean condiment tray still in her hands and was facing the service window.
When she noticed me, she glanced down at the counter where she kept the sawed-off shotgun.
Was she telling me to try to get to the gun?
Fat chance. I had to make it over to the counter without being seen. The two masked people had guns with what looked like high-capacity magazines attached to them. Were those even legal in the state of Texas?
Robbery isn’t legal, either, so I’m sure they don’t obey rules. Ada Lou was back in my head.
I checked them both out from my hiding place. One was tall and skinny. The shorter one wore a T-shirt so short that it showed a belly button ring. If they thought they were taking money from us, they had cotton candy for brains—not when I needed every dime to move on with my life.
It’s time to prove if Rosalie and Scarlett are your friends. Will you do anything to protect them? the irritating voice in my head asked.
I stopped myself before I blurted out, “Yes, and hush before they realize I’m here.”
There was no way I could get to that weapon, not even if I laid on my belly and crawled under the door like a snake. Bonnie and Clyde out there would see me for sure.
“Keep your hands up, or I swear I will shoot you,” the girl growled loudly.