“It’s not a test,” Russell said. “Just tell it your favorite song.”
“‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want,’” Sophie blurted.
She started to explain that it was the Rolling Stones but Russell was already asking the magic car to play track nine of Let It Bleed. A few seconds later, the opening chorus of choirboys singing (sounding much better than tonight’s carolers, Sophie thought) filled the car, followed by Mick Jagger’s beautifully ruined voice.
They drove, and let Mick Jagger croon them over the dark country roads. Sophie loved this song, and mouthed the words, but resisted the urge to sing out loud. One of the What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth? moments had involved an ill-advised rendition of “To Sir, with Love” on the karaoke machine in the common room. “Maybe not the best choice if you’re tone-deaf,” one of the girls had said. She’d been trying to be helpful, but none of Sophie’s NYC friends—some of whom had attended the performing arts high school—had ever seen fit to make such a comment.
Sophie wasn’t sure where they were going. It was rural out here; they just seemed to be driving, but that was okay. Driving and listening to the Stones definitely qualified as the best date she’d had here so far. (Not that this was a date. Was this a date?)
After about twenty minutes, Russell pulled off the highway. In the middle of an otherwise empty stretch of road, all lit up like a beacon, was a diner. Not just a diner, but an old-school, aluminum-sided diner. It looked like a giant Airstream trailer.
“What is this place?” Sophie asked as they crunched over the gravel parking lot. It was so completely unexpected, like being handed a beautifully wrapped gift for no special reason.
“This,” Russell said, “is the best pie in the state.”
“But where did it come from?” Sophie heard the question. It was the diner equivalent of What are you doing here? But the only diner-type places she’d seen around campus had been chains: Applebee’s and Fridays and the like.
“Oz,” Russell said.
That seemed exactly right. Oz, like it had been blown in on a twister, or like it was in Technicolor after everything these past few months had been in black and white. Maybe when people asked Sophie where she was from—in that overly solicitous but also mildly suspicious tone that suggested that wherever it was, they were glad they weren’t from there—she should stop saying Brooklyn (so big city) and start saying Oz.
Oz was packed. They found the last remaining booth. A waitress in jeans and a T-shirt with a Saint Bernard in an elf hat on it plopped a couple of menus on the table. “Merry Kiss-My-Ass,” she crooned in a smoke-scarred voice.
“Right back at you, Lorraine,” Russell said. “What’s good tonight?”
“Why you always ask me that?”
“I like the way you talk pie.”
“Oh, stop it.”
“Also, I have a guest.”
Lorraine glanced at Sophie. “So you do.” She cleared her throat. “We got some specials: banana cream. Reese’s peanut butter pie, sweet potato. Plus, the cherry’s good. Fruit’s frozen but the cherries were grown only two miles from here.”
Russell looked to Sophie. “Well?”
“Do you have apple?” she asked.
Lorraine looked at Russell. “Really?”
“Hey, I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?” Sophie asked but nobody answered her.
“Two apples then,” Lorraine said. “You want ’em à la mode or with cheese?”
Sophie winced. Pie with cheese. Why not add some gravy while you’re at it?
Russell registered the look. “You ever had apple pie with cheese?”
Sophie shook her head.
“But you know it’s no good?”
“Yep,” Sophie said.
“Without ever having tried it?”
“Well, I’ve never had apple pie with toenail clippings either, but I’m pretty sure where I stand on that.”
Russell smiled. Lorraine tapped her pencil against the pad.
“We’ll take one of each,” he told Lorraine. He turned to Sophie. “You might be tempted.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Sophie said.
“I always go for the long shot.”
He was teasing her, Sophie could tell, but she wasn’t entirely sure he was teasing her about pie.
“That all?” Lorraine asked.
“Almost,” Russell said. He looked right at Sophie, as if they were in cahoots. “Coffee. Right?”
“Obviously.”
“Two coffees, please.”
After Lorraine left, Sophie looked around. It was an interesting mix of people; farmers in Carhartt, but also people who looked at home in a city, even though the nearest city was more than a hundred miles away. How had they all found out about this place?
“Is this place on Yelp?” Sophie asked.
“Don’t think it has a name, let alone a Yelp listing,” he said.
“How’d you find it?”
“You knock three times on the fourth red barn on your left and someone whispers you directions.”
“Very underground,” Sophie said.
“Yep,” Russell said. “Only for the cool kids.” He gestured to an elderly couple behind them. “The ultimate insiders.”
She laughed at that. Not that she’d ever been an insider, but never less so than in the last three months. “I miss diners.”
“They’ve got good diners in New York,” Russell said.
“They do. There’s this one me and my mom sometimes go to for upside-down dinner, which is—”
“Breakfast for dinner,” Russell interrupted. “Big fan of the upside-down dinner.”
“Me, too. Wait, how’d you know I was from New York?”
Russell didn’t answer. Or let his oozy grin do the answering.
“Oh, I see. It’s obvious. Because I’m so big city.”
“Big city?”
“That’s what they tell me here all the time. Only they don’t mean it as any kind of geographical designation. It’s more of an all-purpose commentary on how strange they think I am. You watch foreign films and are sarcastic, therefore so big city.”
Russell thought about it a minute. “You eat spicy food, therefore so big city.”
“You read the New York Times and not for an assignment, totally big city.”
“You listen to jazz, whoa, big city.”
“You wear black, definitely big city.”
“You are black, definitely big city. Only then they call you urban.”
Sophie laughed. “Sometimes I think big city is code for Jewish, even if people here don’t realize it because they’ve never met a Jew before.”
“Seriously?”