Page 60 of Levi

“You laminated the map?”

“Had to. Sheila drags it out every day.” He files the map back under the register, collects his tray, and orbits off.

Sheila lands course two. A tub of pale dip ringed by saltine crackers that have been buttered individually.

“Smoked tuna dip,” she announces. “Tex’s recipe. On Dante.” She watches me load the first cracker. “Both hands, sugar. It’s not going anywhere.”

Tex materializes on the next loop. “The smoked tuna is Big Bertha’s work. Bertha’s the smoker out back. She’s got a welded scar down her firebox from an incident we don’t dwell on, and she is the longest relationship of my life. When she’s not doing brisket, she does tuna. She’s got range. I’ve been in love twice.”

“Is the second one in the kitchen?”

“Yes, sir, he is,” he agrees, and then a biker by the door yells something about a pool cue and he’s off to preside over it.

The gumbo is course three. Sheila sets the cup down and adds, half to me and half to the room at large, “This one’s on Dante.”

“You’ve said that about every plate so far.”

“And every plate it’s been true.” She’s already moving. “Eat your gumbo, baby. Stormy’s feelings will be hurt if you don’t eat it.”

The shrimp starts arriving. Fried, with a lemon wedge and cocktail sauce. Then blackened, still hissing at the edges. Then boiled, peel-and-eat, and with the boiled round Sheila sets down a whole roll of paper towels instead of napkins. “You look like a man who knows what those are for,” she says, and I do.

Tex passes behind me mid-peel. “You’ve reached the same shrimp course,” he observes. “Stormy named that stretch of the menu himself. ‘Same shrimp, three ways.’ Wrote it right on the card. The man refuses to market. Sheila calls it using up the shrimp before it turns. Between the two of them there’s not one ounce of decent marketing about shrimp and it’s still the best shrimp in three counties.”

“I can’t eat all this,” I tell Sheila, as the boiled plate empties anyway.

“Sure, you can.” She doesn’t even slow down. “Dante said you’re not eating enough. Somebody’s got to set it right.”

“He said that? This is six meals already.”

“He might have,” she says, and disappears.

Course seven is deviled eggs, four of them, paprika dusted on like it was measured. Tex swings past long enough to say, “Deviled eggs mean it’s an occasion. Weddings, funerals, and tonight. There is no fourth category,” and swings away.

I’m beginning to feel like I’m in a cartoon, the way the kitchen door keeps swinging open with another course.

Then there’s the scheduled pause. Course eight, printed and scheduled, ten minutes of nothing. Tex arrives for it, leans on the bar across from me, and fills the scheduled nothing.

“Since you’ve got the time, you should understand what tonight is for Sheila.” He drops confidential, which for him means slightly quieter than a lawnmower. “About two months back, Dante sat right where you’re sitting. Sheila brought him her sweet tea. Her sweet tea, Levi. You need to understand what it means to Sheila. And that Dante took one sip, set the glass down, slid it back across the bar, and said, and I’m quoting him directly, ‘The tea is too sweet. I’ll take it unsweetened, please, Sheila.’”

He lets that sit like he’s just read a war crime into the record.

“He said please, Sheila,” Tex adds. “Like that made it better. She brings it to him unsweetened every time now. Sets it down like she’s serving him papers. She has waited two months for a night like tonight. You’re not a customer, Levi. You’re a correction that’s been waiting. Let me show you something else.”

He reaches behind the register and pulls off a little magnet that’s stuck to the back side. He slides it over for me to read.

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

I grin at him. “I’m the revenge dish.”

“Her revenge is course number fifteen.”

He slaps the magnet back on the side of the register.

Sheila arrives with course nine as if summoned. Brisket, sliced thick, a square of cornbread riding shotgun on top. She clocks my sweet tea, half gone, and something in her face loosens about one degree. “At least someone has sense,” she says. “You’re too thin, sugar. We’re fixing that tonight.” And she’s gone.

“You’re in her will now,” Tex says. “That fast.”

The brisket is the best I’ve ever eaten. “Fourteen hours inside Bertha,” Tex says on a drive-by, “and the rub is my daddy’s, which makes it older than me. Sacred text. Nobody edits it.”