Chapter 4
Night Two
Betty
Betty had burned the coffee at the diner again, but since there were no customers and she was the only employee present, barring the line cook who was asleep in a folding chair by the grill, she stared at the swirl of brown sludge until she lost track of time.
Eventually, she snapped out of her trance, and then she dumped the coffee down the industrial-sized sink drain.
No one had bothered to ask her if she had any culinary skills when she applied for the job, and if they had, she would have lied.
She lied so quickly and so easily now that sometimes she hadn’t even realized what she was spinning until the words were out of her mouth.
But the trust-fund kid who owned the diner hadn’t delved into her work history and pretty much offered her the gig on the spot.
The last girl had quit; he was desperate. Desperate meant easier to manipulate.
Betty had learned that from her dad, actually.
The kid, not too many years older than she was, had been surprised but not particularly interested that she wanted only the overnight shift.
But barring a few hours on the weekends, when the drunk Columbia students packed the booths and paid with their parents’ credit cards, she could always have a decent sense of who was coming and going during her shifts, always felt like if she needed to simply walk out the back door and leave, she could.
“So it’s ten p.m. to seven a.m. five nights a week,” he’d said. She saw his eyes coast over her mousy brown hair, over her curves, which she was just learning how to flaunt. She’d been taught to cover them for so long that a V-neck sweater felt nearly pornographic.
“I don’t sleep much,” she’d replied, forcing a smile because she knew young men liked that sort of thing. She needed a job after ditching her gig at the perfume counter at Bloomingdale’s. The main floor there was too hectic, made her feel claustrophobic, like she had no idea who was approaching.
“No one will mind that you’re not available for overnights?” He was flirting now, but she also knew he was harmless, completely toothless really.
“They’ll only mind,” she said, “if I can’t convince you to give me two dollars more an hour.
” She flashed a grin at him again. Like hey, maybe this is a possibility, you, me, sex in the stock room.
It was absolutely absurd, which was the only reason Betty felt comfortable with it.
Betty had only had sex a handful of times, mostly to get it out of the way so something about her was normal for her age.
He laughed and said, “I should call your references, but what the hell, sure, why not. I like you, Betty. You’re hired.” It was better that he didn’t call her references, all of whom were invented, so Betty really lucked out. Desperate always did as desperate does.
She’d almost never seen him since, so it wasn’t much of a risk, the flirting.
She had the sense that the kitschy diner was more of an afterthought in his portfolio, like a sports car that sat in his garage that he could show off to his other rich friends to impress them.
He could have turned into a predator, sure.
But in the years since Betty had left home, she’d gotten a feel for who was dangerous and who just liked to think of themselves as dangerous.
Those were two very different things. If she were another girl in another life, maybe she would have actually slept with him.
She had to use everything available to her; she wasn’t under any illusions about that.
Tonight, she replaced the burned coffee and started a new pot.
The line cook was snoring now. When the bell at the diner’s front door clattered, it took her a few seconds to register that she actually had a customer.
Wednesdays tended to be dead, and they could go nearly a whole shift without seeing anyone between about two a.m. to five a.m. So when she popped out of the kitchen, she was even more surprised to see a trio slide into the corner booth, one of whom she thought she recognized, though she couldn’t initially place him.
She grabbed three menus and made her way to the table.
“Evening, folks,” she said. She was trying something new these days, a lilt of a Midwestern twang, elongating her vowels for emphasis. Something to practice in case she needed it when the time came. “Late-night meal?”
An older Black man turned his attention toward her and rested his arms on the table, which wobbled under his weight.
“One sec,” she said, fishing two packets of sugar from her pocket and dropping to the floor to wedge them under a metal leg to level the tabletop.
Also, she needed a second to compose herself.
She was pretty sure, no, she was definitely sure, that one of these customers was Zeke Rodriguez.
Betty wasn’t even a sports fan but now that she’d gotten a good look, his face was impossible not to recognize—he was advertising razors on the sides of buses; he was on television selling low-calorie beer.
Zeke Rodriguez could leave her a tip big enough to cover a month’s rent. Zeke Rodriguez was an opportunity.
“Sorry about that,” she said, righting herself, knowing her cheeks were flushed, hoping it came off under the guise of hard work. “You guys chose the one table that’s a troublemaker.”
“Do you have coffee?” the woman who looked to be somewhere between mid-thirties and mid-forties asked.
In New York, so many women kept such good care of themselves that guessing their age was akin to throwing a dart at a bull’s-eye with a blindfold on.
This woman had immaculately highlighted blonde hair, a soft pink manicure and skin that screamed expensive night cream, and even though she was probably just a few years younger than Betty’s own mom would have been now, Betty could find nothing superficially alike in the two women: This woman seemed like a mom who packed her kids’ lunches and used fabric softener on their sheets and bought brand-name Halloween candy for neighborhood kids.
Betty’s family didn’t even celebrate Halloween.
The woman must have felt Betty’s gaze linger, so she smiled kindly at her, like she was sorry to be asking about the coffee, as if it weren’t Betty’s job.
“No, not for me,” the older Black man said. “I’m off coffee. I would just love an ice water. And if you do a fruit salad? Or something fresh. Just nothing with sodium, please.”
“You’re off coffee?” the woman asked. “To help with the insomnia? I should do that, too, but honestly, I’m not about to cut one of the few pleasures of my life.”
“You haven’t tried ours yet,” Betty said. “Don’t set your expectations too high.”
At this, Zeke Rodriguez threw his head back and howled, and Betty felt a bubble of pride rise up from her belly. She’d gotten good at identifying what turned people on in the four years she’d been on her own. She stowed this away in case he became a regular.
“What do you recommend for food?” the woman asked. She’d put on reading glasses and was examining the plastic menu with a scrutiny better reserved for a legal brief. “Or, Julian, you suggested this place, you’ve eaten here?”
Julian was lost in a thought and didn’t seem to hear her.
“Okay, well, then I’ll take an order of pancakes,” the woman said. “I probably shouldn’t be eating in the middle of the night given the state of my own midlife metabolism, but oh well.” She handed the menu back.
“How’d you end up on the night shift?” Julian asked, reengaged. Betty wasn’t wild about his penetrating gaze, but her fight-or-flight response was well honed, and she suspected he was harmless. Just an inquisitive dad who probably saw his own kids in her.
“I’ve always been a night owl,” she said. “I can’t ever remember sleeping. Thought I may as well take advantage of that, you know? Though the tips are lousy, it gives me more time in the day, actually.”
Zeke clapped his hands together. “A fellow insomniac! What are the chances?” Then he thrust out his hand that wasn’t in a cast. “I’m Zeke. And none of us ever sleep anymore. Welcome to our club.”
“This is a club?” Betty said. She very intentionally didn’t do clubs.
“I’m Sybil,” the woman said. “I have two kids about your age,” she added as if they were going around and saying a fun fact about themselves. “And this is Julian…actually, I don’t really know much about you.”
Julian pressed his lips together like he wasn’t all that interested in revealing cute details about their lives to the graveyard-shift waitress. “I own a candy store,” he said.
“Ooh,” Sybil said. “Now that sounds fun.”
“Really just a small business like any other.”
“Okay, but favorite candy?” Sybil said. “I love Good & Plentys. I could literally live off them if I had to.”
“Chocolate,” Zeke said. “All day every day. Though I can’t really do a ton of sugar when I’m training.”
“Oh, and I love marzipan,” Sybil added, looking to Betty as if she would nearly bathe in it if she could.
“I’m actually not much for sugar either,” Julian said. “Again, it’s just work.”
Sybil deflated like her Willy Wonka bubblegum dreams had been pricked with a sewing needle. She tried to stitch herself back up.
“This is actually the first time we’ve met in person,” Sybil said to Betty. “The three of us met online.” She paused. “That sounds creepier than I meant. This is not, like, a sex cult.”
Betty nodded passively like the mere mention of cults didn’t spike her cortisol levels.
“We met online when we couldn’t sleep,” Zeke clarified. “And now there are four of us who are up all night. So sit. Have some pancakes with us.”
“Oh, I don’t think I can sit, but let me put the order in,” she said.
“I have to wake up the line cook. So give it a few minutes.” What she didn’t say was that she also needed a few minutes to google Zeke, to see if she could google the others.
How common was the name Sybil? She could probably find her in less than two minutes.
Julian who owned a candy store? Easier than shoplifting a Hershey bar.
“The fruit plate,” Julian said. “Don’t forget.”
Betty didn’t have the heart to tell him that it would be cantaloupe too pale to be edible and some canned peaches. Maybe a sliver of pineapple if there were any left over from the dinner shift. He was still glaring at her, so it was easiest to say nothing anyway.
“And some coffee for me,” Zeke added. “I have physical therapy in five hours, so I may as well just power through.”
“And when you come back,” Sybil said warmly, as if she needed a child to mother and maybe Betty was her surrogate, “you’ll sit?”
They looked so harmless tucked in the booth by the window.
A small allowance for friendships with old people and a celebrity, Betty thought.
Innocuous. Safe. Nothing that could throw off the delicate house of cards she’d worked so hard to construct.
So she nodded yes. Because if an All-Star and his friends were offering her an opening, she’d be a fool not to take it.