Porcelain dishes fell to the yellow linoleum floor, toppling from her turf-green tray. Plates, glasses, and silverware slammed on the floor, splatting food and drink unforgivingly over the narrow space between the boots and the counter seats. She sighed, her knees already forming bruises. Blood dripped in tempo with the jukebox, a shard of glass jaggedly stuck in the vertical crease running across her palm. The fate line, wasn’t it called? She wrapped a rag from her apron waistline around her bleeding palm, keeping the sight of her injury from the eyes of the wolves who tripped here. Not wanted to give them the satisfaction of seeing their prey bleed. Howling with laughter, the wolves smacked each other’s arched backs, ruffling each other’s perfectly groomed manes.
Lydia bolted into the dining room from the swinging kitchen doors, the ones with the little lookout windows. Kitchen towel and spatula still in hand, Lydia growled with frustration. The wolves howl loader. Standing up, the girl shuffles behind the counter, empty for hours, their patrons most likely asleep given the late hour. She searched for the trash bags, the ones that were always being evicted and moved from their usual home. Lydia pityingly hands the girl the trash can from the back, not forgetting to growl and snarl words of profanity the entire time. Hearing the string of profanities hissing underneath Lydia’s breath, the girl thought better than to ask for the kitchen staff’s first aid kit, the one with the heavy gaze.
Using the trash bin that was pitifully too small for the job at hand, she loaded the shards of glass and plate into the bin as best she could. Satisfied with themselves, the wolves slap their money they hadn’t earned on the table, the one they claim as their hunting ground every Friday. Trotting to the glass door, leaving their victim bloody, they kick the uncollected shards just out of her reach.
“See you Monday, Marg.” Margaret looked up to see Gerald, the boys’ pack leader, reaching into his front shirt pocket. Pulling out a cigarette, he locked eyes with her and blew her a kiss. He licked his lips before sticking the cigarette between them and walking out the door to the car his daddy bought him. She swore his tongue was forked, like the devil himself. In silence Margaret cleaned up the rest of the mess, taking her time, attempting to avoid another one-sided conversation with Lydia about her clumsiness.
The boys were still outside when she got up to lock the door to the restaurant. Some were sitting on the hood of Gerald’s Pace Setter convertible, while the older boys pushed and shoved each other playfully, not able to let go of their glory days of high school. Trading their wrestler star status for work their father’s found them. A valet at a country club twenty miles from town, a playing mechanic at their daddy’s shop, or a farm hand for a man they owe money to. Margaret wished Gerald would end up like that, but she knew better. She looked into the black night and the forest behind the lot, where she saw Gerald emerge, zipping his fly closed.Their eyes met and her heart jumped, not as it once had when seeing him across the cafeteria room or meeting him at the back corner of the gymnasium, behind the bleachers, made her feel electrified. Now, her heart jumped as though from electrocution, with shocks that jolt the body so hard your cells feel like burning ash rising from the flames.
Turning off the front lights, obscuring her image in shadow, she felt safer from his electricity. She watched the boys pile into the car, keeping her eyes on him, scared that if she let him leave her sight he might just appear in the dark places of the restaurant. His eyes stayed on the door, and though she knew he couldn’t, she could not help but feel that he could see her. She could not help but feel that he had snake eyes, able to search through the dark for her.
Once the car pulled out of the lot and some time had passed, she finally heard Lydia calling her name from the kitchen. Letting out a shivering breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding inside her, Margaret walked back to the kitchen. Lydia, too tired to scowl her for dropping another tray of dishes, the fourth this month, decided silence was the best method for displaying her disapproval. The rest of their time cleaning the restaurant stayed silent except for the clattering of washing dishes and splashes of water as tables and floors were scrubbed. At a quarter past midnight, Lydia looked to Margaret. Looking her over, only then did she notice the red, dried rag wrapped around her hand.
“Marg! How did you manage that?!” Margaret sheepishly tucked the hand behind her. “Cleaning up those dishes is all. Just a scratch, Aunt Lydia.” Having none of it, Aunt Lydia walked swiftly over to Margaret, grabbing her forearm. She gingerly unwrapped the makeshift bandage. “Let’s clean this up,” she whispered, her voice shifting from stern employer to loving aunt. Margaret sat and waited for Aunt Lydia to get the first aid kit, not helping but to look out at the dark night, darker it seemed than usual. Though, the restaurant and the forest seemed to be in just the right spot to block out any hope of moonlight.
After delicately bandaging the gash, Aunt Lydia dismissed Margaret for the night, and of her weekend duties at the restaurant. “Let that wound heal before returning. We don’t want anyone getting sick looking at that bandage and wondering about what’s underneath it!”
Not able to shake the thought of Gerald, Margaret said her thanks and goodbyes to Aunt Lydia in a haze, walking out into the engulfing night. This summer had felt hotter than any she could remember, and Aunt Lydia agreed. On many occasions, Aunt Lydia would turn on the air conditioning rather than have the windows kept open. Only something as hot as the sun would possess Aunt Lydia to do such a thing, and Margaret supposed that this summer must be as close as they were going to get to equalling the sun. The night allowed for no refuge from the heat either. The moon, a hot sun in the dark. Walking, Margaret only carried her apron and handbag, not daring to let either touch her skin for fear they might melt against her. The handbag was a gift from her mother last Fall. A bright orange, the bag was unexpected coming from her mother, a woman who placed modesty and minimalism on a pedestal above all else. The gift was as unexpected as the day her mother left the family that winter.
Turning onto Alexander Street, Margaret felt the pores of her skin drip with sweat, aching for a single, cool breeze. But the night is not so generous. Hadn’t it been this street that missing girl was last seen? Every car that passed jolted her sleepy eyes awake, quickened her pace, and had her searching against the solar flames of the car headlights, hoping it wasn’t him in the driver seat. A half past midnight, one of the cars slowed, slowed down so much that she could see past the solar flares, into the eyes of the devil himself.
She screamed, at least her body attempted, though the sound could not find its way out of her tightened throat. She turned and swiftly stumbled over the short, stone wall separating her and safety. Separating the street and the forest. Forgetting her injured palm, her injured fate, she gripped a jagged and chipped rock, hard. She ran like hell was at her heels, because he was. Branches, fallen and mangled, tried to trip her like the wolves had at the restaurant. The hem of her dress caught, making a ripping sound that echoed against the fallen trees. She still couldn’t scream, but somehow she could breathe. That was the only sound she could hear besides the splitting of dead wood under her heavy feet.
Margaret could see it then, the light from her back porch, a shining beacon. In place of a scream, as the back door window came into view, she threw the jagged rock, shattering the window and her father’s slumber. Her father, towing blood-covered feet from the shattered glass inside, thrusted open the door and stood on the porch. Hand still gripping the handle, he tried holding on to some control of the situation as he saw his daughter running at him. Terror in her eyes, her face was snarled in pain as rocks and sticks kicked at her bare legs. The orange bag Vivian had given her clenched in her hand.
Margaret stopped in front of her father, gripping his arms tight, a child scared by something she swore she saw under her bed. Before she could say anything, before she could possibly start to explain herself and the origin of this terror, Margaret turned. Nothing. Nothing stood behind her except the dense darkness of a humid night.