“Well, well,” one of them says, Mr. Patterson, I assume. “You must be Mavis’s niece, the one from Atlanta.”
“Great-niece, and yes. Eleanor Whitfield.”
I extend my hand automatically, and he shakes it with a grip that is surprisingly strong for his age.
“Good handshake,” he says. “Firm. None of that dead fish nonsense.”
“Thank you. My mother always said a proper handshake was the foundation of any interaction.”
“Smart woman.”
He gestures to his nearly empty glass.
“I’ll take another Bud Light, and so will these reprobates.”
I write this down carefully, four Bud Lights, and feel a small surge of triumph.
I can do this.
It is just taking orders and delivering drinks. I mean, how hard can something like that be?
“I’ll have those right up to you,” I say, and turn to head toward the bar.
That’s when I notice the menus.
They’re tucked into the little wooden holders on each table, handwritten on chalkboard-style paper. And as I pass table eight, I can’t help but look at one.
I stop dead in my tracks.
The menu says: Nachos, piled high with all the fixins. Wings, hot, medium, and if your chicken. And loaded potato skins, your gonna love them.
Your? Your gonna love them?
And if your chicken. Y O U R.
That does not even make sense.
It’s clearly supposed to be if you’re chicken, as in if you are too cowardly to try the hot wings.
I pick up the menu and stare at it in horror.
There are more errors, like mozzarella sticks with an unnecessary apostrophe, and queso dip made fresh everyday when it should be every day with a space, two words. And desserts with an apostrophe, which is just, well, no.
“Is there a problem?”
The woman at table eight is looking at me.
“The menu,” I say. “There are grammatical errors. Several of them.”
“Oh.” She looks at her companion, a man in a trucker hat who is more interested in his basket of wings than any editorial concerns. “I guess I never noticed.”
“How could you not notice? ‘Your gonna love them’ is missing both an apostrophe and the proper form of ‘you’re.’ And ‘mozzarella stick’s’? That apostrophe has no business being there. It is plural, not a possessive.”
The woman blinks.
“Um, okay.”
“I have to speak to somebody about this,” I assure her, tucking the menu under my arm. “This is completely unacceptable for a business establishment.”
