KingofQueens:Spent the night looking for my cat (don’t ask). Now, yes, staring at the ceiling long enough to draw you a diagram of the paint peeling.
He rolled his wrists, trying to limber up, loosen his joints. He was going to have to speak with his doctor about his meds.
Mama2Twins:different night, same problems. Want to join us for Sudoku?
Julian didn’t know who “us” was, and he honestly didn’t want to join any sort of bigger group discussion at all, but he didn’t wantMama2Twinsto hop off their chat and abandon him. Soon enough, he andMamaandBeartownwere in a heated race to pair up numbers into empty boxes. An absolute ridiculous waste of time, but it’s not like any of them had anyplace else to be. The game dwindled after an hour, and Julian found that he didn’t want to log off. He was used to being alone without Robin and postretirement, but being alone in the interminable stretch of predawn hours was a different sort of emptiness. If he hopped off the forum, he knew he would indeed find his way into his office and drive himself crazy with would haves, should haves, could haves, with micromanaging all the small screw-ups that led to an avalanche. Not that he had many doubts, but yes, there was one.
KingofQueens:Hey, long-shot but any chance you guys are on the east coast? Educated guess because we’re up at the same time.
He had always been excellent at putting clues together.
Mama2Twins:I’m just outside New York City. First suburb on the train.
Beartown:No shit! I’m actually in the city. Right by the park.
Julian felt a pang of nostalgia for when he would take Simone to the carousel on crystal-clear spring days and let her ride as many times as she wanted. Or trek through the zoo and watch the seals. Or buy ice cream from the truck on the 72nd Street Transverse and race to see who could eat it before itdripped down the outsides of their hands. Robin was still alive; he was still a semipresent father; the job that consumed much of his waking hours was his.
The idea tumbled out of him before he could realize what he’d proposed.
KingofQueens:I’m right near both of you actually—in Queens. Sorry, it’s a stupid handle. Feel free to say no since meeting strangers from the internet is probably ill-advised and I should say, I promise I’m not a serial killer, but…wondering if you guys would like to meet? There’s an all-night diner on the Upper West Side I used to go to, near Columbia. Maybe this would feel less lonely if we did it face to face, like our own little Insomniacs club. Any takers?
4
Night Two
Betty
October 15th
Betty had burnedthe coffee at the diner again, but since there were no customers and she was the only employee present, barring the line cook who was asleep in a folding chair by the grill, she stared at the swirl of brown sludge until she lost track of time. Eventually, she snapped out of her trance, and then she dumped the coffee down the industrial-sized sink drain. No one had bothered to ask her if she had any culinary skills when she applied for the job, and if they had, she would have lied. She lied so quickly and so easily now that sometimes she hadn’t even realized what she was spinning until the words were out of her mouth. But the trust-fund kid who owned the diner hadn’t delved into her work history and pretty much offered her the gig on the spot. The last girl had quit; he was desperate. Desperate meant easier to manipulate.
Betty had learned that from her dad, actually.
The kid, not too many years older than she was, had been surprised but not particularly interested that she wanted only the overnight shift. But barring a few hours on the weekends,when the drunk Columbia students packed the booths and paid with their parents’ credit cards, she could always have a decent sense of who was coming and going during her shifts, always felt like if she needed to simply walk out the back door and leave, she could.
“So it’s tenp.m.to sevena.m.five nights a week,” he’d said. She saw his eyes coast over her mousy brown hair, over her curves, which she was just learning how to flaunt. She’d been taught to cover them for so long that a V-neck sweater felt nearly pornographic.
“I don’t sleep much,” she’d replied, forcing a smile because she knew young men liked that sort of thing. She needed a job after ditching her gig at the perfume counter at Bloomingdale’s. The main floor there was too hectic, made her feel claustrophobic, like she had no idea who was approaching.
“No one will mind that you’re not available for overnights?” He was flirting now, but she also knew he was harmless, completely toothless really.
“They’ll only mind,” she said, “if I can’t convince you to give me two dollars more an hour.” She flashed a grin at him again. Like hey, maybe this is a possibility, you, me, sex in the stock room. It was absolutely absurd, which was the only reason Betty felt comfortable with it. Betty had only had sex a handful of times, mostly to get it out of the way so something about her was normal for her age.
He laughed and said, “I should call your references, but what the hell, sure, why not. I like you, Betty. You’re hired.” It was better that he didn’t call her references, all of whom were invented, so Betty really lucked out. Desperate always did as desperate does.
She’d almost never seen him since, so it wasn’t much of a risk, the flirting. She had the sense that the kitschy diner wasmore of an afterthought in his portfolio, like a sports car that sat in his garage that he could show off to his other rich friends to impress them. He could have turned into a predator, sure. But in the years since Betty had left home, she’d gotten a feel for who was dangerous and who just liked to think of themselves as dangerous. Those were two very different things. If she were another girl in another life, maybe she would have actually slept with him. She had to use everything available to her; she wasn’t under any illusions about that.
Tonight, she replaced the burned coffee and started a new pot. The line cook was snoring now. When the bell at the diner’s front door clattered, it took her a few seconds to register that she actually had a customer. Wednesdays tended to be dead, and they could go nearly a whole shift without seeing anyone between about twoa.m.to fivea.m. So when she popped out of the kitchen, she was even more surprised to see a trio slide into the corner booth, one of whom she thought she recognized, though she couldn’t initially place him. She grabbed three menus and made her way to the table.
“Evening, folks,” she said. She was trying something new these days, a lilt of a Midwestern twang, elongating her vowels for emphasis. Something to practice in case she needed it when the time came. “Late-night meal?”
An older Black man turned his attention toward her and rested his arms on the table, which wobbled under his weight.
“One sec,” she said, fishing two packets of sugar from her pocket and dropping to the floor to wedge them under a metal leg to level the tabletop.
Also, she needed a second to compose herself.
She was pretty sure, no, she was definitely sure, that one of these customers was Zeke Rodriguez. Betty wasn’t even a sports fan but now that she’d gotten a good look, his face wasimpossible not to recognize—he was advertising razors on the sides of buses; he was on television selling low-calorie beer. Zeke Rodriguez could leave her a tip big enough to cover a month’s rent. Zeke Rodriguez was an opportunity.
