“No,” I said. “Those are decoration. We can order fresh cold soda.”
A moment later, the server showed up. She was dressed in a white button-down shirt and pants, black shoes, black belt, and black bow tie. It was a modern take on the original soda jerk uniform.
“Hi, folks, are you ready to order? Our root beer bread pudding is really swell.”
Really swellhadn’t been in style for decades.
The girl couldn’t be a day over seventeen, with her big smile and bouncy brown hair tucked behind her ears. But there was a sparkle in her eyes that said she was in on the joke and liked it.
Probably just working a Joe job until she could head off to college.
“Swell, huh?” I asked, spinning the laminated card that served as a menu my way.
“The bee’s knees.”
“Bee’s knees,” I grumbled.
Lu dropped her hand under the table and rested it on my thigh.
We’d been alive when that slang was real, when it was modern, when it was fresh. Hearing it used as an old-timey joke was a little rough on my sense of place in the world.
It was one more reminder that time ticked and ticked, each second a whittling knife shaving off a little more life, carving breath and body down to sticks, twigs, ash.
Lu squeezed my thigh, maybe sensing my mood.
“Medium rare burger and fries,” Lu ordered for me, “grilled cheese sandwich,” she ordered for Abbi, “and an extra order of fries. We’ll also take two root beer bread puddings. What flavor of soda do you want?” she asked Abbi.
“All of them?”
The server chuckled. “Do you have a favorite flavor? A favorite candy or fruit?”
“I like grass. And clover.” Her eyes widened, as if she’d just remembered people who looked like little girls didn’t eat grass.
“We have grass soda,” she said, making a note on the pad. “I don’t think I have clover, though. Something else you want to try? Honey? Butter?”
Abbi’s eyes were still wide. “Strawberry?” she asked hopefully, like it was some kind of rare treat.
“Grass and strawberry got it. Anyone else?”
“Moxie,” Lu said.
“Got any Brownie Root Beer?” I asked.
“You bet your bippie, we do.”
“Better follow that up with a coffee, black,” I added.
“Anything for you?”
Hado, still wearing his sunglasses, shook his head.
The server left, and the music switched to the Chordettes singing about lollipops. Someone in the place was whistling along with it. Cheerfully, beautifully. Not too loud, but getting louder.
Coming down the aisle toward us was the owl woman, Miss Woodbury, the seer. Just like in the visions, she wore wide-legged pants under a skirt, layers of shirts, some flannel, some button down, all faded and soft: dusty denim, sage, cinnamon.
She whistled and danced, a sort of herky-jerky slide and skip, that made her cloud of white hair sway and wave, and set the beads, stone, and wood hoops around her wrists and up her skinny forearms chiming, like the soft maraca of a spring rain.
A few people glanced her way—she wasn’t invisible—but no one seemed bothered by a woman well into her three-digit years, bopping down the aisle, whistling a tune.
