Ragnarök

Four: The Washerwoman

As recompense for the power outage, the manager of Country Grove diner, a burly man in black slacks and a pit-stained guayabera, announces that everyone in attendance gets a scoop of ice cream on the house. The kitchen is down for the time being, but the freezer is being powered by the back-up generator.

"I can call Patty to come pick us up." Liza reapplies her aubergine lipstick, using a spoon as a clumsy substitute for a mirror. "She'll give you a ride home if you want." She mashes her lips together to spread the coat evenly. "Better?"

"Better," Mason nods. "I'll be fine walking."

She dismisses this notion, but does allow him to settle their tab with the money from Mildred's piggy bank. This renders it official in his mind: he's been on his first real date, and more incredible yet, he's enjoyed himself. He sits there eavesdropping while Liza places a laconic call to her mother. The waitstaff are going around recording everyone's ice cream preference, retracing the same well-worn routes in the carpet, flapping in and out of kitchen doors like glockenspiel automatons.

Hanging up, Liza announces plainly, "She's drunk."

"Is she still coming?"

"Yeah, her boyfriend's driving. He's supposedly sober, but that would be a first." Pulling on her fur coat, it's like some lustrous marsupial is devouring her arm. "Wanna have a smoke while we wait? I can't fucking eat ice cream after pancakes, I'd feel like such a lardass."

The two slide from their booth, waving goodbye to Kelly, whose eye they catch on the way out. Outside, under a black and white striped awning, they jostle themselves to keep warm, sheltering their lighters from the wind. Liza bounces on the balls of her feet. He's come to know so much about her over the course of the night, a disproportionate amount, given how little of himself he shared. She's an only child. Her father is a deranged pig farmer who threatened to kill the two women in his life if they ever left him. Her mother once heard Grillow Rock referenced in an afternoon soap opera. "It's the town where her favorite character, Abigail, was supposed to have been born," Liza recounted, rolling her eyes. "I assumed it was a made-up place. The jury's still out on that one."

Mason marvels at how arbitrary the impulses can be that direct life, the ones which in hindsight are called Fate, especially if all turns out well. Would he not be standing here talking to her if some TV screenwriter had chosen any other backwater in the whole American landscape?

Black driven air charges past them, on its way somewhere else, somewhere distant, tainted by all it has touched so far. Tainted now by Grillow Rock. Before long, a weatherbeaten red Silverado bursts into the lot blasting rock music. Rust congeals over the wheel wells.

"This is us," Liza says.

He follows her to where the pickup screeches to a halt. A man sits behind the wheel in a leather jacket and ball cap, wearing a close-trimmed beard. He happens to be the only black man Mason can remember seeing in Grillow Rock since Mr. Good, the substitute who filled in during Mrs. Stokdyk's maternity leave, and whose lampshade mustache and stern elocution earned him the grindhouse moniker, Black Hitler. Mason even recalls a comic strip floating around, peddled surreptitiously through the halls like Bolshevist leaflets.

In the passenger seat is a woman who looks to be in her mid-fifties but whom Mason guesses is much younger. Years' worth of hard living and chronic smoking have roughened her face. She has auburn hair down to her elbows, wears a puffy New England Patriots jacket. Her skin is tanned to a nut-brown hue, very much in contrast to her waxen daughter.

Patty has to get out and tilt her seat forward so the two kids can climb in back. She squeezes Mason's shoulder in passing, sizing him up top to bottom. "So you're the one my little sprout's so sweet on."