Chapter 22
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Bernie called Margo at eight-fifteen on a Wednesday morning, which was unusual because Bernie did not call people at eight-fifteen on Wednesday mornings. Bernie called people at reasonable hours or not at all.
“I need to get out of this house,” he said.
“Good morning to you too.”
“I’ve read every mystery on the shelf. I’ve watched everything worth watching. The cat my brother sent me a picture of yesterday is wearing a sweater and I spent ten minutes looking at it. I need to leave.”
“Where do you want to go?”
“Where do you think?”
She picked him up at nine-thirty. He was on the porch with his cane, dressed in actual clothes—not the sweatpants he’d been wearing for weeks, but khakis and a collared shirt. He’d shaved. He looked like Bernie again instead of a man recovering from something.
“You dressed up,” she said, coming around the car to the passenger side.
“I put on pants. That’s not dressing up.” He shifted the cane to his other hand and reached for the door.
She looked at him more closely and smiled. “You shaved.”
“I shave.”
“You haven’t shaved in two weeks.” She stepped back to give him room to maneuver into the seat.
“How would you know that?”
“Bernard. I see you three times a week.”
He got in the car—the cane first, then the knee, then the rest of him settling into the low seat. She didn’t help. He hadn’t asked her to and she knew him well enough to know that helping would be worse than watching.
He put the cane between his knees. “Let’s go.”
The Shack was four minutes from his house, which was four minutes from hers, which was four minutes from everything in Laguna if you knew the streets. He got out slower than he’d gotten in, the knee straightening in stages.
They walked to the door at his pace. She kept step with him without deciding to.
He stopped at the door, one hand on the frame, and looked through the glass.
The OPEN sign was lit. The morning light was on the windows.
Anna was at the counter. Joey stood at the pass.
The dining room was half full with the Wednesday breakfast crowd.
The door opened and the smell came through—sourdough and coffee and the grill already working.
“Five weeks,” he said, his hand still on the doorframe.
“Five weeks and three days.”
Bernie nodded. “But who’s counting?”
“Joey is counting. Joey has a spreadsheet.” She reached past him and pushed the door open.
Joey saw him first.
Joey was at the pass with a ticket in one hand and a coffee pot in the other and he stopped mid-pour when the door opened. The coffee pot stayed tilted. The cup beneath it filled and kept filling.
“Joey,” Anna said. “The coffee.”
Joey set the pot down without taking his eyes off Bernie and came around the counter. He did not run—Joey did not run—but he moved at a speed Margo had only seen him bring to napkin emergencies. He stopped three feet from Bernie, straightened his apron, and clasped his hands in front of him.
“Mr. Klein. You’re here.”
“I’m here, Joey.”
“The booth is ready.” Joey glanced toward the corner. “I heard you heard about the reservation.”
“I heard.” Bernie leaned on his cane. “It was precautionary, I’m told.”
Joey rocked slightly on his heels. “Five weeks and three days. The salt shaker has been maintained.”
“I appreciate that, Joey.” Bernie shifted his weight. “I really do.”
“I have a log.”
“Of course you do.”
Anna came out from behind the counter, wiping her hands on her apron, and hugged Bernie—carefully, one arm around his shoulders, the other hand on his arm above the cane. She held on for a second longer than usual.
“We missed you,” she said, stepping back and looking at him. “Did you miss us?”
“I missed the grilled cheese.” He smiled at her, his cheeks turning a little pink.
“That’s the same thing,” Anna said.
“Basically.”
Joey had already gone to the corner. He folded the Reserved sign in half, put it in his apron pocket, and ran a cloth over the table surface—parallel lines, no circles. He checked the salt shaker. Adjusted the pepper a quarter inch. Stepped back.
“Sir,” he said. “Your booth.”
Bernie walked to the booth, his hand on the table edge for the last step, and lowered himself onto the bench seat carefully, the knee going last.
He looked around the dining room. The same room he’d been looking at for decades. The counter, the window to the kitchen, the grill visible through the door. The ocean through the windows. The ceiling with the shells. The morning light.
A woman at table four leaned over to her husband and said, “Is that the man with the knee?” The husband nodded. The woman gave Bernie a small wave. Bernie waved back.
“You have fans,” Margo said, standing at the end of the booth.
“I have regulars who bet on my pools. That’s not the same thing.”
She was where she always stood—his side, counter side, where she refilled his coffee and set down his plate and moved on.
She sat down across from him.
Bernie looked at her. He set his cane against the wall and put both hands on the table.
“You’re sitting,” he said.
“Yes, I am.” She pulled the menu toward her even though she didn’t need it either.
“You don’t sit. Not here.”
“I’m sitting now.”
He didn’t say anything else about it. He reached for his own menu—which he had never once needed—opened it, and studied it while Margo sat across from him.
Anna appeared at the booth with two cups of coffee and set them down—one in front of Bernie, one in front of Margo. She paused for a half-second, looking at Margo on the other side, and then picked up her notepad.
“Two grilled cheeses?” Anna asked. “And the girls land tomorrow, so it’ll be a full house again by the weekend.”
“It’ll be lovely to see them. And yes, please,” Margo said.
Anna went to the kitchen. Through the window Margo heard Anna say something to Joey she couldn’t make out. Joey’s response was a single word that Margo also couldn’t make out but suspected was “noted.”
The coffee was hot and the booth was the booth—Bernie across from her with his hands on the table, the Wednesday morning light coming through the window behind him and falling across the table.
“Good to be back,” he said, picking up his cup.
“Particularly good coffee,” Margo said, picking up hers.
“It’s the same coffee, Margo.”
“Tastes better from here.”
She took a sip. It did taste better from here. But she wasn’t going to tell him why.
They sat in the booth and drank their coffee and waited for their grilled cheese, and the Shack carried on—the ocean through the windows, Joey at the pass, Anna at the grill.
Margo drank her coffee from the wrong side of the counter for the first time ever, and it was fine.