“No. We want them to think we’re locals and not real bright.” On the fly, I made up a tale. “We found the bike near a dead rider. The body was pretty well eaten by the time we found it. My brother Joe repaired the screamer so we can make it to the diner for work. Joe’s a great mechanic, but a pain in the ass.”
“I think he’s cute,” Cupcake, said, as I gunned the engine toward the diner.
“Whatever,” I said.
We reached the diner. I braked to a stop about thirty meters short of the matte black motorcycles, and killed the engine.
Raising my voice, I said, “You boys here to eat and pay or sex traffic?”
One of the guys, a slim brown-haired guy swaggered toward us. “We have money for food and safe passage. Though your friend could make a lot in the trade.”
“Piss ant,” Cupcake murmured in my ear. “I bet his penis is only seven centimeters long.”
I swallowed my giggle, turned on the bike, and made my way closer to the diner. And remembered I didn’t have a key. “Key?” I whispered to Cupcake.
“Devil’s dangles,” Cupcake swore.
I nearly giggled again.Nerves.
“Go around back and see if the cook left it open,” Cupcake said. “I’ll entertain them.”
“Don’t be too cute. Amos will take their dangles and wear them for earrings and we’ll never learn anything.”
Cupcake hopped off the bike and I motored around back, turned it off, and tried the back door. “Open,” I said into comms. “Coming around front. Hope they have eggs. That’s the only thing I know how to cook.”
“Shinning Sugah,” Jolene said into my ear. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you can’t cook. Even eggs.”
It wasn’t true. I made a great canned seafood chowder and peerless coffee.
I made my way through the diner and unlocked the front door, turning the oval sign to “Open.” Men began to enter, and Cupcake joined me in the back. She showed me how to turn on the big griddle thing that she called a flat-topped grill, and it started heating immediately. She indicated the commercialtoaster, the small oven, and pointed to the walk-in refrigerator. Then she went up front to make coffee and chat.
Cupcake was full of chatter about how the cook wasn’t in, which was weird, and that she and I were the waitresses, but that we could make a mean breakfast, and we would fix them up right and proper with eggs and toast and pancakes. She said to them, “The coffee’s pretty shitty. Just saying.”
I’d had the diner’s coffee. It took the term swill to new lows, but it was all we had, and it did at least smell like coffee. A little.
Then she started in about my brother Joe, with whom she was madly in love and that Joe and my boyfriend were coming for breakfast, but she would make sure the motorcyclists were served first since they had to wait. No one attacked her and the DRs took seats.
Pulling the cuffs of my riding gloves to snug them on my fingers, I found a bucket of lard. Scooping out a generous portion, I tapped the lard from the spoon to the grill where the fat instantly began to melt. So far so good.
I opened the refrigerator. There was a dead rat in the corner. A cat dashed in, grabbed up the rat, and pranced back out the door. “It might have been poisoned,” I warned. “You could die.”
It ignored me and disappeared into the kitchen.
In the fridge, there was a little real butter, some flour, goat milk that didn’t smell too bad, four slightly mushy onions, and eggy goo. And what might be called bacon in some locales. There was also something red that might be beet and strawberry syrup. I carried everything to the kitchen. I called out, “Flapjacks with syrup, eggs, and thin-sliced hammy something-something.”
Cupcake flirted with the bikers and took orders based on the ingredients as I worked and searched the building.Her chatter started with the weather: “Colder than the devil’s testicles.” The lack of rain: “Drier than the devil’s dick.” The forecast for snow: “As disappointing as the Devil’s erection.”
She had this devil’s thing going on but it seemed to be working. The men stared laughing and relaxing around her, beginning to chat among themselves.
One of the men asked about the bike we had rode in on and Cupcake spun the tale about Joe finding the bike at the bottom of a gorge near Logan and the dead body, all eaten by scavengers. “Maybe coyotes and definitely rats. There was no face left and bones were showing. Maggots. Lots of maggots.” She certainly had a vivid imagination and a way with words.
“Joe fixed the bike. Finders keepers is the law of the land, and you ain’t taking our bike, ‘cause, I have to say, it looks a lot like the things you boys are riding.”
And suddenly they were talking about the bikes and about their “club” and how they were looking for a territory to claim and settle. And how there were “tales about the war and war tech up in the West Virginia hills and mines.”
I stopped dead in the middle of whisking eggy goo.
“Do tell,” Cupcake said, flipping her blond hair back and batting her baby blues.
