Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Anna had the flu or something like the flu and Meg was in San Francisco and Tyler had taken Lindsey to a thing, so at five o’clock Margo had put on her apron and worked the grill for three and a half hours, which she hadn’t done on a Friday night in the entire time they’d even had dinner hours.
There were enough customers to make it worth it.
One of them a man who’d sent back his grilled cheese because the bread was “too browned,” which Margo had accepted without comment and then, when Joey wasn’t looking, browned the replacement exactly the same and sent it back out with a fresh pickle because the man deserved a nice pickle with his identical sandwich.
He cleaned his plate and told Joey it was much better this time. Joey gave Margo a look across the pass that she returned with the smallest possible shrug. Some things didn’t need explaining.
Bernie was still at his booth.
He’d been there through the whole shift, which wasn’t unusual on a Friday—Bernie came for weekend dinner if the Shack was open for dinner, which it now was, two nights a week.
What was mildly unusual was that he was still there at nine-thirty, when Joey had flipped the sign and Margo was finishing the till.
The heater ticked. The ocean filled the room.
“You can leave any time, Bernard,” she said, tearing off a strip of register tape and setting it on the counter.
Bernie rattled the last of his ice—she could have identified it from three rooms away. “I’m aware.”
“And yet here you are.”
“Joey’s still here. I’m keeping him company.” He tilted his head toward the back office, where the laminator had been running for twenty minutes.
“Joey has a project. He’s fine.”
As if summoned, Joey came out of the back office holding a freshly laminated page up to the pendant light, turning it left and right. He nodded once, slid it into his backpack, and pulled on his jacket.
“Goodnight, Margo. Goodnight, Mr. Klein.” He paused at the door.
Bernie laughed. “You can call me Bernie again, Joey.”
“Oh, thank you. I’m comfortable with this for now.
” He turned to Margo and said, “The salt on table four is low. I topped off the others, but table four has a consumption pattern I’d like to discuss on Monday.
The pepper is also low, but that’s a societal problem.
People under-pepper.” He pushed through the kitchen door, and he was gone.
The Shack was down to the two of them. Margo finished the till, tied the cash in the bank bag, put it in the safe, and hung her apron on the hook—MARGO in her own handwriting, masking tape she’d replaced exactly once in all the time they’d been open.
She grabbed her coat from behind the office door and shrugged it on.
Bernie was on his feet when she came out, coat already buttoned, tablet tucked under his arm. Lately, he’d been keeping his weight on the right side but trying to be nonchalant about it, as if she hadn’t been watching him stand up from that booth for decades.
“I’ll walk you home,” he said, easing out from behind the table.
“It’s three blocks.” She pulled her keys from her purse. “I’ve been walking myself home for decades.”
“That’s a long time to walk alone.” He picked up his coffee cup—empty, nothing but habit—and set it back down on the table in the exact spot she’d pick it up from when she bussed the booth in the morning.
She’d never noticed that before. She stood there with his empty cup in her hand, not moving, while the Shack ticked and settled around her.
“You’re limping,” she said.
“I’ve been limping since the Carter administration.” He came around the booth, and she could see the hitch—the slight catch as his left leg took weight. “I’ve been sitting too long. The walk will do me good.”
She locked up while he waited on the boardwalk. The deadbolt made its heavy click—the Shack done for the day.
The February night was cold. The street lamps along the boardwalk had that winter-yellow quality, slightly dimmer than summer. Nobody was out. The surf shops were dark. A car passed on PCH and kept going.
They walked slowly. Not her pace—his. She matched it without thinking about it.
“Good night tonight,” he said, after they’d passed the last shop.
“I know. I was the one at the grill.” She pulled her coat tighter against the wind off the water.
Bernie shifted the tablet to his other arm. “You haven’t lost a thing, Margo.”
“I’ve lost plenty, Bernard. Just not that.” She glanced at him sideways. “You had the soup tonight instead of the salsa.”
He adjusted his step on a crack in the boardwalk. “I’m trying new things.”
“You’ve ordered the same Friday dinner since we opened for dinner.”
“Then it was time for a change.” He glanced back at her. “The soup was better, by the way.”
“The soup has always been better. You’ve just been too consistent to try it.”
“I appreciate that you said consistent instead of stubborn.”
“I was being generous.”
They reached the end of the sidewalk and turned inland.
The street was darker here—fewer lamps, the houses set back behind hedges that needed trimming.
The incline made his hitch worse. His left foot landed flatter than his right, and she could hear the difference—one step sure, the next one careful.
She slowed down without mentioning it.
“Eleanor called today,” she said, because if she didn’t fill the air she was going to say something about his leg and they’d have the same argument they’d been having since November.
“What did Eleanor want?”
“Vivian’s physical therapist called her by her first name. In front of the receptionist.”
Bernie laughed and shook his head. “The horror.”
“She’s considering switching practices. This would be her fourth in eighteen months.”
“That’s one every four and a half months.”
“Eleanor is tracking the rate.”
“Of course she is.”
They were halfway up the second block when his knee went.
His left foot came down and it didn’t hold and he pitched forward and sideways, his hand going out for the low stucco wall of the house they were passing. He caught himself with both hands, hard, and didn’t go down.
Margo was beside him before she knew she was moving, one hand on his arm and the other flat against his back.
“I’ve got you,” she said.
“I’m fine.” His voice was tight, his hands pressed flat against the stucco. “It locked up. Just give it a minute.”
She kept her hand where it was.
He tested it after a minute, shifting a fraction of weight onto the left side. “You don’t need to hold me up, Margo.”
“I’m not holding you up. I’m standing next to a wall.” She kept her hand where it was. “The wall is doing all the work. I’m providing moral support.”
He turned his head and looked at her, and despite the wall and the February cold coming up through the sidewalk, something in his expression eased.
“Moral support,” he said.
“That’s what I said.”
Somewhere up the hill a dog barked once and went quiet. It released enough that he could shift his weight back onto both feet. She kept her hand on his arm until he was standing on his own, and then she let go.
The sidewalk was quiet. The cold was where her hand had been.
“Get the surgery, Bernard.”
Bernie brushed the stucco dust off his palms. His fingers curled against his coat and flattened. “I’ll get the surgery. I’ll call Monday.”
“I hope so.”
“I said I’ll call Monday, Margo.” He eased himself off the wall and tested it—one step, two. It held. He reached for his tablet and tucked it under his arm. “Now I’m walking you home.”
“Bernard, it just buckled on a sidewalk.”
“And now it’s un-buckled. That’s how it works.” He took a step to demonstrate. “I’m walking you home.”
She folded her arms. “My house is out of the way. I am taking you home. I’ve been winning arguments in that restaurant forever, and I’m not losing one on a sidewalk.”
They stood in the small yellow circle of the streetlamp, and the dog up the hill had gone quiet.
He frowned. “Alright.”
They covered the three blocks to his place without talking. She stayed at his elbow—not touching him, but close enough to catch him if it went again.
His bungalow was set back from the street behind a low hedge she’d known about for decades without ever going inside.
He fished for his keys at the door, one hand in his coat pocket while the other held the tablet against his side.
The porch light—moth-yellow—made his face warmer than the February night had any right to.
“I can come in,” she said from the bottom of the steps. “Make sure you’re settled.”
“I’ve got it.” He pushed the door open and turned back, one hand on the frame. “I’m going to sit in my chair, watch the last ten minutes of something I’ve already seen twice, and fall asleep before the ending I already know. In the morning it’ll be stiff and my coffee will be bad and I’ll be fine.”
“That’s a lot of planning for a man who just caught himself on a wall.”
“I caught myself. That’s the important part.” He held her eyes for a second. “Goodnight, Margo.”
“Goodnight, Bernard.”
She listened—the floorboard by his kitchen creaked, and the recliner took his weight. Then she turned around and walked home.
She let herself in, shrugging off her coat and dropping her purse on the hook. The kitchen was dark. She stood in it for a minute with her hand on the counter, the tile cold under her palm, not quite sure why she was standing there instead of going to bed.
The studio was through the doorway. She crossed into it and turned on the desk lamp. The family portrait came off the easel and leaned against the wall, and a fresh canvas went up in its place. Thirty inches by forty. Unprimed cotton duck. The kind she only used for things she was serious about.
The color she mixed was gray with something else in it. She loaded the brush and stood in front of the canvas for a long time, but she didn’t paint.
After a while she set the brush down next to the palette, careful not to let the bristles touch anything, turned off the lamp, and went to bed.