Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
Margo came in through the kitchen door, tied on her apron, and walked through to check that the dining room looked like a dining room.
The Shack smelled the way it always smelled at seven—sourdough starter from the back, coffee from the pot Anna had already started, and underneath it the ghost of fifty years of grilled cheese baked into the walls.
Bernie was at the counter.
Not his spot. The counter. Third stool in from the register, coffee already in front of him, paper already open.
He looked like a person who had been sitting there for a while, which meant he’d come in early, walked past his booth—the one he’d been sitting in every morning for as long as she’d been running this place—and chosen a stool instead.
The table was empty. The salt and pepper were still in their places. It was wiped. It looked like it was waiting for someone who wasn’t coming.
“Morning,” Anna said from the grill, flipping something without looking up.
“Morning.” Margo picked up a knife and started on the tomatoes. Roberto had sent better ones this week—firm, the right color, no soft spots she’d have to work around. Small mercies.
Joey arrived, carrying a paper bag of avocados and wearing the confused expression he wore when something in the restaurant had shifted and he hadn’t been consulted.
He set the avocados on the prep counter, hung his jacket on the hook, and came to stand next to Margo. He did not start on the avocados.
“Margo,” he said.
“Joey.”
He leaned slightly closer and dropped his voice. “Bernie is at the counter.”
“I see that.”
“On a stool.”
Margo kept slicing. “I’m aware.”
Joey reached for an avocado and turned it in his hands without examining it, which was unlike him—Joey examined every avocado like it had a secret. “Does he know his spot is available?”
“He walked past it to get to the stool, Joey.”
“I’m just checking.” He set it down and took another. “I’m going to go talk to him.”
“Okay.”
“I’ll be casual about it.”
Margo kept her eyes on the tomatoes. “Okay.”
“I’ve been working on being casual. My study group says it’s a growth area.” He straightened his apron and headed for the dining room.
Through the pass, Margo could hear him. She kept slicing.
“Good morning, Bernie.”
“Morning, Joey.” Bernie frowned slightly in Joey’s direction.
“I notice you’re at the counter today.”
“I am.”
Joey straightened the napkin dispenser. “The booth is available. I just wanted to confirm you were aware of that.”
There was a slight pause before Bernie said, “I’m aware, Joey.”
“Okay. Good.” Another pause. Joey’s shoes shifted on the floor—Margo could hear him rocking slightly, like he did when he was trying to not ask the thing he wanted to ask. “Can I ask—is this a one-time thing, or a new configuration we need to support?”
Bernie turned the page in his crossword puzzle book. “I don’t know yet.”
“Okay. That’s fine. That’s workable. You’ll let me know?”
Bernie looked at Joey over the top of his glasses. “I’ll let you know.”
“Thank you. That’s helpful.”
Joey came back through to the kitchen and picked up the avocado he’d set down. He held it for a moment, then began cutting it open.
“He doesn’t know yet,” Joey said.
Margo nodded.
“He’ll let me know. That’s fine.” Joey scooped the pit out cleanly and set it on the cutting board. “I’ll need to update the seating notation. I had him as booth, corner, daily. I’m thinking counter stool, third from register, one occasion, pending.”
“That sounds thorough.”
“It’s preliminary. I’ll finalize at lunch.” He lined up the avocado halves and reached for the next one. “I just want the documentation to reflect the current reality.”
“Of course you do,” Margo said, and meant it kindly, because Joey’s documentation was Joey’s way of making sure the world held still long enough for him to understand it, and she had always respected that about him even when it made her tired.
At ten-thirty Anna came off the grill for water and stopped next to Margo at the prep counter, pouring from the jug and drinking half the glass before she said anything.
“Bernie’s at the counter,” Anna said, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand.
“He is.”
“Did something happen?”
“I don’t know.”
Anna finished the water and set the glass down. “You haven’t asked him?”
Margo shrugged and reached for another tomato. “No. Not yet.”
Anna looked at her grandmother for a second and then she picked up her glass and went back to the grill.
Halfway through the morning, Bella jumped into the empty booth. She settled into the corner where Bernie usually sat, tucking her paws underneath her.
Joey was there in four seconds.
“No,” he said, scooping Bella off the table with both hands.
“You can’t sit there. That’s Bernie’s booth.
” He carried her toward the kitchen door, Bella hanging from his arms with an expression of mild outrage.
“He’ll be right back. You can’t just—this is a seating assignment, Bella.
There are systems. And you’re not supposed to be inside anyway. ”
The lunch rush started at eleven-fifteen and went the way a Thursday lunch rush went.
The tomato prep became cheese prep became running plates became the hiss and scrape of the grill became refilling coffees became wiping down a booth that someone had left sticky, and by the time Margo looked up it was after noon.
She walked over to the counter with the coffee pot. Bernie was still there, paper folded to the crossword now, pen in hand. His left hand was under the counter, resting on his knee, and his weight was shifted to the right on the stool, one side doing more work than the other.
“Refill?” she asked, holding up the pot.
“Please.” He slid his cup toward her, and she filled it to the line she’d been filling it to for decades—three-quarters, no higher, because Bernie liked room and she’d learned that without either of them ever discussing it.
“Roberto sent better tomatoes this week,” she said, capping the pot.
“I noticed. The ones last week were sad.”
“Joey called them tragic. He wanted to write Roberto a letter.”
“A letter?”
“On Shack letterhead. I told him we don’t have Shack letterhead, and he said that was a separate problem he’d like to address.”
Bernie smiled into his crossword and shook his head. “Joey.”
“Joey,” Margo agreed.
She glanced at his left hand, still on his knee. “Bernard.”
“Margo.”
“Is it the knee?”
He filled in a crossword square without looking up. “It’s a stool.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“It’s the answer I’ve got.” He filled in another square. “Later, Margo.”
She took the coffee pot back to the kitchen.
At one-forty she was running the last orders of the rush—Anna had needed a break, so Margo had taken the grill—when she saw, through the pass, Bernie stand.
Both hands flat on the counter, pushing up through his palms, his weight shifting to the right before his legs took over.
It was a motion that someone who didn’t know him might read as an old man getting off a stool.
Margo, who had known him for decades, read it as his left leg not doing what it was supposed to.
He got his jacket from the hook by the door and shrugged it on.
He turned toward the dining room—toward the pass, toward Margo—and then he didn’t stop.
No wave at Margo. No nod at Joey. No hand on the doorframe on his way out.
The crossword was still on the counter, two squares empty.
Bernie never left a crossword unfinished.
Joey appeared at the pass a minute later, a binder in hand.
“I’ve logged it,” he said. “Third stool, pending. I’ll revisit Monday.”
“Okay, Joey.”
“Is that—are you okay with that?”
She looked at him. He was holding the seating book against his chest with both hands, and looked like he knew something was off but didn’t have enough data to build a theory.
“That’s fine,” she said.
Joey went back to the dining room. Margo wiped down the grill. Anna came back from her break and told Margo she had it from here, and Margo untied her apron, hung it on the hook, and washed her hands. She got her coat and stopped at the kitchen door.
“Anna?”
“Yeah?” Anna was already at the register, pulling tape with one hand and tucking her hair behind her ear with the other.
“Bernie didn’t say anything to you either about what’s going on?”
Anna looked up. “He said good morning. Went to the counter. I asked if he wanted coffee, he said yes.” She pulled the tape free and tore it. “That was it.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Anna looked at her for a second. “You worried?”
Margo buttoned her coat. “I’m not worried. I’m asking.”
She pushed through the kitchen door and walked home.
The hill was the hill—uphill, the way it had been for years, the ocean getting quieter behind her with every block.
Her own knees working but wanting her to know they were working, a conversation she’d gotten used to ignoring.
Didn’t seem like the conversation Bernie was having with his.
The February afternoon was cool and gray.
She thought about the cerulean paint she’d squeezed onto her palette that morning, which by now would have formed a skin and would have to be scraped off and thrown away.
She thought about walking back down the hill tomorrow on her day off and checking whether Bernie was at the counter or the booth and decided she’d wait until tomorrow to decide.