“Lord help me,” she said, all tearful, and he knew she’d come around. “It’s Pecan fuckin’ Hollow. And that’s all I know, motherfucker,” she said. “Godfuckingdamn.”
Thank you. He slipped a fresh cigarette from the pack on the table and went to the stove. By now, the coil glowed orange. He lit the cigarette on the burner and crossed the kitchen to where she sat. “You made me the bad guy,” he said, holding the hot end toward a sore on her wrist. She yanked the arm back. “I’m not the bad guy, I’m trying to do the right thing. I’m right with the Lord and I have to get right with Kit.” He slipped the cigarette between her lips, then thumbed the storm of bruising and track marks in the crook of her elbow. She whimpered, and glared at him in helpless rage.
“You’re the bad guy,” he said. “Not me.”
Chapter Five
Manny thanked the bus driver and stepped onto the sticky asphalt of the bus stop in Pecan Hollow. He was close. But first, he would need to eat to quell this screaming hunger. He inhaled the unctuous odor of deep-fried potatoes and crossed the main road to the diner. In prison, nearly fourteen years of insipid slop had passed through his system, bland calories all bearing the same undertone of tin and rancid fat. And there was never enough.
Inside the diner, Manny scanned the room, taking account of every person in there. It was a habit he’d picked up from robbing gas stations, because every person was a variable, and he needed to know who was there, where they were, and what they were doing. To his left, at nine o’clock, sat a middle-aged Mexican couple, hunched over matching plates of eggs. Immigrants, maybe. Trouble-avoidant. At one o’clock, a portly trucker picked his teeth, his plate wiped clean, while a redheaded waitress warmed up his coffee. Women screamed; truckers tackled; the elderly were usually meek, but some had nothing to lose and would take risks. Directly to his right, a milquetoast man of forty laid down a fiver and sorted his change by category. He was the type to soil his pants silently and call the cops.
Dead ahead, a homely girl in her mid-twenties cleared away some dishes. As she ran her rag up and down the counter, her waist-long braid, loosely bound, hung over her shoulder and swayed. She had a faintly inbred look to her, poor teeth, a soft chin, and her hair nearly matched the putty color of her skin. He sat down right in front of her.
When she looked at him, her eyes darted away as if he were hot to touch.
“Hello, there, little lady.” He let his words unfurl like a spool of velvet. She did not look up, but the skin around her collarbone flushed pink in splotches. He cocked his head to meet her eyes and she acquiesced. He had not lost his touch.
“Can I help you?” she gasped, but it sounded more like “Kah-hehpye?”
“What’s your name, sweets?” he asked. She looked down at the nameplate pinned to her breast. He smiled.
“Sandy,” he said, clasping her hand between his before laying it back on the counter. “Howdy, I’m Manny. Now, I’m awful hungry.”
She slid a menu toward him and continued to wipe down the same clean spot, the blotches on her chest now more defined.
“Let’s see here,” he said, surveying the menu. “Well, it all sounds so good, how am I gonna pick just one thing?” As he looked from Sandy’s braless breasts to the menu, he felt the shimmer of his appetites, electric with wanting. He deepened his breath and slammed his knee firmly up against the counter.
“You okay?” she asked, sweet with concern.
“About to be,” he said, and pushed the menu back to her. “I’ll have one of everything, please.”
She stalled, confused, and waited to hear more. “Everything?”
“First meal in fourteen years,” he said with a wink. “I told you I was hungry.”
She started slowly for the kitchen and turned around at the swinging doors. “I don’t mean to pry, mister, but how are you gonna pay for all that?”
Manny smiled, slipped a gold link bracelet from his pocket, and coiled it on the counter. He hadn’t stolen but merely recovered it from a woman’s purse, which had fallen on the floor of the bus while she was sleeping. Sandy draped it over her wrist. She pursed her mouth into a white line while she deliberated, then disappeared into the kitchen. When she returned, she had frosted pink color on her lips and had smoothed back her hair.
“My boss says he’ll take it,” she said.
A young man with an apron around his waist and a rag slung over his shoulder slammed his hand on the bell and barked, “Order up!” Sandy startled, scurried away, and disappeared between the swinging doors of the kitchen.
Manny was irritated at the manager for interrupting what seemed to be a promising conversation. He was starving, too, and could scarcely wait the fifteen minutes or more for the food to come. There was a thin newspaper left behind by a customer on the seat next to him. He picked it up and tried to read the headline, but he was too distracted. Although he had fantasized for years about what he would do, he found that the closer he got to her, being here where she’d been living, it was as though the slate were clean. He had so many questions he needed answered. But you couldn’t put pressure on Kit like that. You had to go slow, give her nothing to push against. He knew how to handle her.
A dusty-looking cowboy ambled in and swung his hips into the first booth by the door. He looked like a real shitkicker. A horrible thought crossed Manny’s mind as it occurred to him that she might have been with someone other than him. After all this time, had she given up waiting for him and caved? If she had, she never would have stayed with anyone, but maybe she’d shuffled through a lot of them, searching, always searching for a substitute for her one and only. Her Manny.
He seethed at the thought. As he looked down he realized he had shredded the newspaper into a feathery mess.
Just then, a cook, two waitresses, and Sandy brought out trays of bacon, sausage, pancakes and waffles, a half dozen sandwiches, sides of cornbread, beans, and rice, migas and chilaquiles, roast beef and gravy, pies, cakes, and pralines. They spread the plates out and covered the entire counter. Sandy looked as proud as if she had made the food herself. He put a napkin in his lap and said a prayer of thanks. Manny took exactly one bite of each of over fifty dishes. When he was finished, he wiped his lips, folded his napkin, and tucked it under his plate.
“Miss Sandy, how old are you?”
“Twenty-five next month.”
“Oh, you’re just a little baby,” he said. “You wouldn’t know my friend then.”
“Maybe I will, who is it?”
“A girl I used to know. Strong legs, little titties, kinda looks like a pretty boy. At least, she used to. She could be a big fatty now, for all I know.” Sandy giggled, exposing crooked front teeth, and covered her mouth.
“I don’t know, doesn’t ring a bell just yet,” she said. “What was her name?”
“Kit,” he said.
“Well, sure! I know Kit!” she said, a little loudly, excited to have made a connection.