Roy Orbison’s “Mean Woman Blues” was playing on the radio.
“Are you open?” he asked in an even voice.
With that smirk on his face, I felt like throwing the pot of hot coffee at him, but I never did like the sound of a man crying.
“Yup,” I replied.
He stepped across the black-and-white tiled floor and took a seat at one of the stools in front of the counter. Once there, he took the camera from around his neck, sat it next to his elbow, and gave the restaurant a good looking-over. There was a clock above the counter similar to the large, bland industrial-type ones that some might remember from grade school. Along the walls were a handful of framed pictures of horses.
After another long minute of silence, he became fidgety, seeing as how no one was coming to help him. He began to pick at a hangnail, and once he discovered that doing that didn’t exactly get his goat going, he reached into the pocket of his fancy leather jacket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. He wedged a cigarette in between his puckered lips and then looked at me again with raised eyebrows.
My nonfriendly expression had not changed, nor would it until Abraham decided to get out the bathroom and do his fucking job.
“Can I smoke in here?” the kid asked.
My reply: “I don’t know. Can you?”
He looked down at his own hands, his wiggling fingers, as if trying to solve an equation. “Can you?”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out another smoke. Lit it. “I can smoke wherever the hell I want,” I said.
“I see,” he said. “May I smoke in here?”
“You can smoke wherever the hell you want, kid.”
“Sorry,” he said. “Sometimes, you go into a little place like this and the smoking or no smoking depends entirely on the, uh, the proprietor of the place. On personal tastes, you know? I mean, I’ve been in little diners like this …”
“This ain’t a diner,” I said loudly. “This here’s an honest-to-God restaurant, arright? The kitchen is second to none.”
“Sure,” he said, looking away again and lighting up. “It’s just that back where I come from there aren’t a whole lot of honest-to-God restaurants called Long John’s.”
“Yeah? And where would that be?”
“What’s that?”
“Where are you from?” He said, “New Jersey.”
“Well, in that case, mind your own business.”
This was not turning out to be a good day for me.
“Jesus, guy, whatever happened to Southern hospitality?”
“I don’t know. It died with the Duke, I guess.”
He laughed. “What about you? Where are you from?”
“Nowhere,” I said.
“Why’s this place called Long John’s?”
“Does it matter?”
“No.”
“What’s your story, kid?”
“No story. Just making conversation.”
“The guy that opened this place up back in the thirties was named John. Used to be called just John’s, but back when this place opened it was the warmest place to be when the cold months set in. Because of the big oven back here. Because of that, he changed the name, like an inside joke. Being in here was like having on an extra pair of thermals. Simple as that.”
“That’s nice,” said the kid. “The outside is very retro. Very nice.”
“Yeah,” I replied. “It makes my fucking heart melt.”
“So with that kind of long-term rep, with this place being reputable, seeing as how it’s been here so long, where is everybody?”
“Where else?” I said. “Church.”
“That’s nice too.”
“Yeah, that really makes my heart melt.”
“Mine too,” he said, chuckling. “Whatever, kid. Listen, what’s the story?” Something about the kid—him being so friendly—rubbed me the wrong way. Like sand in a condom, maybe. Or steel wool. “What? No story, just …”
“You trying to pick me up or something?”
“God, no.”
“You ask an awful lot of questions for someone who just wants a coffee and a scrambled egg, or am I just presuming? You here to use the commode?”
“What? No, I’m parched, actually. I’d love a cup of coffee. And an ashtray.”
I stood silently for a spell to see if I could hear Abraham in the bathroom, but I heard nothing. I angrily barged through the double doors, reached under the counter, and grabbed an ashtray for the kid from the stack on a low shelf. I slammed it in front of him.
I poured him a cup of coffee and slammed that in front of him too.
He said, “Thanks.”
I said, “Thank me by telling me the story.”
“What makes you think there’s a story?” he replied.
“Are you saying there isn’t?”
“No.”
“Then let’s hear it,” I said. “Why? Why the curiosity?”
“You’re the curious one, pal. Asking about one thing, then the other. Besides, everyone’s got a story.”
“I don’t know. It’s not that interesting.”
“Try me. You’d be surprised what passes for interesting in a small town like this.”
“Okay, well …”
“You a nancy?”
“What? No, I, I, I …” he stuttered. “I’m a photographer.”
“What kind? Flowers and shit?”
“Models. As in people. Women, mostly. And I’m kind of driving cross-country, all around and about and so on, and, you know, going from coast to coast. I started in New York, and, uh, I got the idea on a flight a couple years ago. Do you fly often?”
“No.”
I had not been on a plane in many years. Last time I was it was with a fake name.
“Well,” he continued, “when you fly over this country, you see these huge gaps of land between cities, and hidden in all the nature down there are all these little towns in the middle of nowhere, so I got the idea to go through all this nature, all these little roads, and see what’s down there. Down here, in what they call ‘the flyover states.’ So that’s what I’m doing.”
“I have no idea what you just said.”
He sighed. “I’m driving to the Pacific Ocean. I’m photographing my road trip. I’m taking pictures. Writing essays. I hope to make a book of it. A coffee table book. Big color prints.”
“Is that right.”
“Yes it is.”
“Well, isn’t that nice.”
“Yes it is,” he said, glowing. “Anthony Mannuzza.” He held out his hand for me to shake.
I gave it a look like it had his love juice on it. “Whatever. This ain’t a fucking AA meeting over here.” He put his hand back on the counter. “Okay, Mr. Happy, what’s your name?”
“My name’s none of your business,” I said. “You from around here?” I said, “No.”
“Here long?”
“Long enough,” I said.
He took his cup of coffee and took a seat at one of the tables by the window.
I saw the unmarked police car pull up outside the restaurant through the window. It was a beige Ford that was already a handful of years old, but the way they built those cop engines, they could practically travel through space if you put the right gas in them.
The engine purred itself to sleep, and out the driver’s-side door came my old buddy Pearce. Danny Pearce was a cop, a detective, actually, and if you want to know what irony is, he was the closest thing I’d had to a friend since I went off to war. He was a good man, a barrel-chested man with a good heart and a desire to do good deeds.
When I blew into Evelyn one night a few years earlier, I was still hitting the sauce pretty hard. I initially drank because it made it easier to deal with being what I had become, but there came a point when I kind of accepted that part of myself, or at least became very stoic in a Marcus Aurelius kind of way. Still, I drank heavily when the mood struck me, and that mood usually urged me to go into a watering hole and pick a fight with somebody. I had a very wild hair growing in a very itchy place, and, to me, bars were made for two very distinct purposes: for fisticuffs and to pick up broads.