“The exception that tests the rule. There will be exceptions, always. Do you believe yourself to be exceptional?”

She took the daintiest bite possible from the messy sandwich, chewed more thoroughly than necessary. “As a matter of fact, I do. And Martha Gellhorn. I meant to say Martha Gellhorn.”

“Then maybe you can turn this story into something. Tell you what, tomorrow on your lunch break, let’s walk down to the cop shop, I’ll introduce you to John Diller, and he can run you through some basics. How to pull a police report, for starters.”

“I met him briefly at headquarters the other day, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in the newsroom.”

“You probably never will. He calls his information in to rewrite, couldn’t write a note to his mother or even a grocery list without a rewrite man on the other end of the phone. Other reporters call him Deputy Diller or Deputy Dawg behind his back. We’ll tell him that this is—kind of a training mission. That way, he won’t get spooked about some gal he’s never heard of making phone calls on his beat. Like I said, he’s more cop than reporter. Blood runs blue. He knows everything that happens at the PD.”

Not everything, Maddie thought, blood rushing to her cheeks.

The Waitress

The Waitress

They’re talking about Cleo, Mr. B and the woman with him. I almost lean in and say, I knew her, but that throws people, being reminded that the waitress ain’t deaf and dumb. It’s a guaranteed way to get stiffed on the tip, let me tell you.

I’m surprised when the woman with Mr. B picks up the check at lunch, more surprised that she leaves a good tip. Not that all women are bad tippers, but this woman doesn’t look as if she knows much about hard work, and that’s what makes the difference in tips. Lawyers are the worst, very stingy. But housewives, who’ve never held down a job, they can be just as bad.

Maybe she’s trying to impress Mr. B. I’ve been waiting on Mr. B for almost ten years now. I remember when he was younger, thinner. He says he’s trying to reduce, then orders deviled ham. I know him well enough that I’ll give him a playful tap when he reaches for someone else’s French fries.

Of course, this woman doesn’t order French fries.

Why would a woman pick up the check for Mr. B? That isn’t allowed. He told me once he has to pay for himself, always. That if I see him with a stranger, I should make sure he gets the check. But he lets this woman pay. How odd. She clearly isn’t a romantic interest, because then she definitely wouldn’t have paid. Besides, he’s married. He says “happily” but I’m not convinced the word happily can be applied to any part of Mr. B’s life, except maybe the newspaper. He likes his job. He doesn’t want to go home. I know because sometimes he comes in right before closing and drinks a very slow cup of coffee while I count my tips, talks to me about where he grew up, a town a lot like the one I come from, back in West Virginia.

None of my business. My business is to get the food on the table, fast and hot.

I’ve been waiting tables since I was thirteen, a leggy thirteen who could pass for sixteen. My parents brought the family to Baltimore during the war, for that Glenn Martin money. That didn’t work out. Nothing worked out for them. They drank, they divorced, they got back together, which was worse than the drinking or the divorce. I had to find a way to escape, even if I was just thirteen, so I got a job at a place called Stacey’s. Then I went to Werner’s and now I’m at the New Orleans Diner. The NOD, as we call it, is long and skinny. It has defeated many a waitress. I’ve seen a lot of young ones come and go because they weren’t efficient. Too much trot, not enough glide. But I know how to cover the maximum ground with the minimum steps.

Not that I was much smarter when I was a young pup. Turns out having cash money at the end of the day isn’t the best thing for a teenage girl on her own. There were a couple of dark years where I almost became my mom. That’s basically the story of every woman’s life, right? You become your mother or you don’t. Of course, every woman says she doesn’t want to be her mother, but that’s foolish. For a lot of women, becoming their mothers simply means growing up, taking on responsibility, acting like an adult is supposed to act. I hear the young women talking over their coffees, complaining about their mothers’ opinions, their rules. I’m on the mothers’ side. Especially now, with the young people starting to act so odd, dress so odd, listening to crazier and crazier music.

Still, I can sympathize with the girls, too. I remember being young, loving Elvis. I wish there had been a mother at home who railed at me a little, instead of a ghost in a bathrobe with a gin bottle who sneaked into my room while I was out and stole my tip money.

Anyway, one day, I woke up pregnant and that was that. The guy married me, but it was the only correct thing he ever did and pretty soon I was nineteen, with a baby, all alone.

Now that baby, Sammy, is fourteen years old, an honor student. I don’t drink and our house is neat as a pin. A rental, but neat as a pin, whatever that means. How are pins neat? I go home every day and spend an hour with my feet up on the ottoman, a glass of Pepsi at my side. Because I do that, my legs are still worth a whistle, not a trace of a varicose vein. Less trot, more glide. Elevate. Those are the secrets I would share with the younger girls if they asked. But they never ask. They think they have all the answers, even the ones who manage to survive at the New Orleans Diner.

That name creates a lot of confusion, let me tell you. Some people think it’s supposed to be New Orleans food, whatever that is. But it’s just a joint that used to be on Orleans Street, then the owner moved it to Lombard, so he decided to call it the New Orleans Street Diner to keep his trade, but he screwed up and left the word “street” off the menus and was too cheap to fix it. He’s a Greek, good with money and cooking, dumb about everything else.

The woman at lunch with Mr. B—she asks him lots of questions. But not in a get-to-know-you way. Not in a date way. I don’t even need to hear the words to know that. This woman is like a dog stalking a squirrel, her body all a-quiver. Whenever I see a dog like that, I wonder: What do you want with a squirrel? You’re well-fed, it’s not going to taste that good. Whatever that woman wants from Mr. B, it can’t be as important as she thinks. Nothing is. I have learned that lesson over and over again. Nothing you want matters as much as you think it does.

It’s when I’m pouring Mr. B his third or fourth coffee that I hear her name, Cleo Sherwood. She worked in the kitchen at Werner’s, although not very long. She wanted to be a waitress, but the bosses weren’t having it. You had to be white to wait tables, they said it was what the customers wanted. Cleo was too pretty to be hidden away in the kitchen, in her opinion. She was right. Now she’s dead. I saw it in the Star the other day. She’s the first dead person I know, outside, you know, the kind of people who are supposed to die, grandparents and such. It was weird, reading in the paper that Cleo was dead. In the lake yet. How does a girl end up in a fountain? Had to be man trouble. A woman dies young, it’s man trouble.

Thinking about Cleo makes me realize how short life is, how a person needs to live a little. When I count up my tips that afternoon and see that I’ve had an unusually good day, I find myself walking the opposite direction from my bus stop, over to the center of downtown where the big department stores cluster. Hutzler’s is too much, I could never imagine myself shopping at Hutzler’s. It’s ten stories tall, there’s so much to buy there that it runs over into another building. But Hochschild Kohn isn’t as scary. I push through the revolving doors and march over to the perfume counter because it’s the first thing I see.

Perfume is wasted on me. I pretty much smell like bacon and French fries all the time, no matter how often I wash my hair. Not that anyone’s around to notice. When Sammy started school, I decided to forget about men. I’ll be all of thirty-five when he goes to college. That’s not too old to have some fun. The woman at lunch, she smelled good. I’d like to smell like that.