Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
The Saturday brunch crowd was the people who had given up on brunch everywhere else.
That was Anna’s theory and Stella had been collecting evidence for it since November.
The Saturday brunch crowd at the Shack was older, quieter, more loyal.
They came at nine. They sat at the same tables.
They ordered the same things. They tipped well.
Anna said it was because nobody under forty knew what eggs benedict were anymore—they thought brunch was a charcuterie board with a Bloody Mary garnish the size of a child—and so the people who actually wanted eggs benedict had migrated to the Shack and stayed.
Stella thought it was because the Shack was the Shack and people knew where to come.
She was at her prep station in the corner—parsley, lemon wheels, the things that needed small fingers—and her bag was on the chair beside her. She picked up the camera between tasks. Eggs benedict didn’t require small fingers. Lemons did.
Tyler was at the grill. He’d been at it since seven-thirty, the muffins browning on the griddle filling the kitchen with something warm and toasted.
Anna was on the floor in the apron Margo had given her in October.
Joey manned the counter, calling out tickets in his specific cadence—three syllables for eggs benedict, one for toast, a pause for coffee.
The bell over the door rang.
Margo.
She was in her good wool coat and the cream scarf Eleanor had given her years ago. She had her purse over her shoulder and an empty takeout container in her hand that she’d brought it with her.
Margo set the container on the pass. “Morning,” Tyler said from the grill, not looking up.
“Morning.”
“Eggs?”
“Two orders. Both for one person.”
“That’s a lot for one person.”
“He’s hungry.”
Tyler cracked four more eggs into the simmering water. Anna passed by and squeezed Margo’s elbow on her way to a four-top. Joey looked up from a ticket he was marking.
“Morning, Margo. You took him pancakes yesterday.”
“He has to eat, doesn’t he?”
“I’m not arguing.” Joey went back to his ticket. “Just making an observation.”
Stella lifted the camera—people in the room she wanted to look at without looking at. Through the viewfinder, she saw the cream scarf against the dark wood, the coat she hadn’t unbuttoned, the container in her hand.
Margo’s eye moved. Brief—a quarter-second, a half-second at most. Across the dining room. Toward the corner. Toward the booth.
The shutter clicked before she knew she was pressing it. Margo at the pass, profile, the takeout container. The empty booth in soft focus behind her, three tables back, the salt and pepper still in their usual arrangement.
Margo’s eye came back, returned to Tyler. She said something Stella didn’t catch.
Stella let the camera drop.
Tyler plated the orders in two stacked containers. Hollandaise in a small lidded cup on the side. He’d done the muffins on the griddle for an extra minute because he knew Bernie liked them browner than the menu version.
“Tell him I said hi,” Anna said, bringing over a thermos of coffee from the back without being asked. She set it next to the containers. “And tell him to be nice to the nurses.”
“I’ll tell him.” Margo picked up the thermos and tucked it under her arm.
“Bea’s going to come by Monday with her sketchbook.”
“He doesn’t want a sketchbook in the hospital.”
“He’ll like that she’s coming.”
Joey pulled the door open for her with one hand, but then she stopped and turned back, one hand on the doorframe.
“He’s getting out tomorrow,” she said.
Anna at the four-top turned around. Tyler at the grill looked over.
“Tomorrow morning. Nine-something.” Margo shifted the bag to her other hand. “I’m driving him.”
“What about food when he gets home?” Anna asked.
“The Circle has a schedule.”
“Oh?”
Margo buttoned her coat with her free hand. “I have Friday. And Saturday. And Mondays and Tuesdays.”
She headed out into the parking lot and the door swung shut behind her.
The four-top was waiting on Anna. Tyler had two orders working. Joey had a ticket in his hand he’d been about to call. Stella had her camera up because she’d thought there might be one more shot in the doorway and there hadn’t been.
Joey, not looking up from his ticket. “That’s four days.”
“Yes, it is, Joey,” Tyler said, flipping something on the grill.
“That’s most of the days.”
“Leave it alone, Joey.”
“I’m just observing.”
Anna was heading toward her tables, trying not to laugh. Tyler caught her eye across the room.
“Anna, don’t you start.”
“I didn’t say anything.” She picked up a menu from the empty four-top and kept walking. “I’m not saying anything.”
“You’re not saying anything very loudly.”
She smiled and disappeared around the corner.
The morning kept going. The brunch crowd cycled. Stella prepped lemons and sliced parsley and ran a few plates and shot when the light was right. Tyler at the grill, Anna on the floor, Joey at the window.
Nobody mentioned Margo again.
At eleven-forty Stella put down her knife and washed her hands.
“I’m out,” she said to Tyler, slinging the camera bag over her shoulder. “Darkroom.”
“Need anything?”
“No, thanks. I’m good.”
The school darkroom on Saturdays was empty except for whoever else had asked Mr. Reeves for a key, and Mr. Reeves only gave keys to two people. Stella was one of them. The other one was a senior named Marcus who took pictures of skateboarders and never came in on weekends.
She had the room to herself. The safelight came on. The chemicals were where she’d left them on Thursday, the developer sharp and familiar.
She worked through the morning’s frames. Her eye knew which ones to develop and which ones to set aside.
The wide shot of Margo came up at print number seven.
Stella lifted it from the developer with the tongs, the paper slick between them. Held it under the red light. The cream scarf. The container in her hand. Her profile, eyes turned a quarter degree off-center. The empty booth in soft focus behind her, three tables back.
She rinsed it. Hung it on the line.
She finished the rest of the morning’s frames.
The hollandaise close-up Anna would want for the menu update.
Tyler at the grill mid-flip. Joey at the window calling out a ticket.
The light through the front windows at ten-fifteen.
The salt shaker Bea had drawn a face on with a marker last September and Anna had decided not to clean off.
When she’d hung them all, she packed up her chemicals, turned off the safelight, and let her eyes adjust.
She took the wide shot off the line and carried it home in a manila folder with the others.
In her room she pinned it to the wall beside the two from three weeks ago—the Bernie at the booth, the Margo at the grill. Three prints in a row. The late-afternoon light through her window came in gold, the same Laguna amber that had been on everything all day.
Stella looked at them. Lowered her hand from the pin. Stepped back.
She didn’t turn on the desk lamp. She just stood looking.