Chapter 21
The Happy Cow belonged to the suicidal animal school of advertising. The restaurant’s neon sign featured a beaming bovine in a chef’s hat, eager to plunge a knife and fork into its own breast.
“If you think about it, this is a weird place,” Helen said.
Margery made a left-turn through the traffic on U.S. 1, and pulled into the Happy Cow parking lot. “What’s weird about an all-you-can-eat buffet in South Florida?”
“That cow. It’s dying to become your dinner. How many happy cows, cheerful chickens, perky pigs and smiling shrimp have you seen, all thrilled to death because they’re going to wind up on your plate?”
“So what do you want on the sign? A cow cowering in the corner while the butcher attacks it? That will sell a lot of steaks.”
“No, I just wonder if people stop to think about it, that’s all.”
“The only thing these old farts think about is getting home for a nap before they go out for the early-bird special.”
Helen didn’t mention that some of the people coming out of the restaurant were younger than Margery. Some, but not many. The predominant customer hair color was snow white.
At one-thirty in the afternoon, most of the walkers and canes were heading out the front door. The lunch hour was winding down.
“Do you think we’ve missed Fred and Ethel?” Helen said.
“Nope. Fred said they were going to a sale at Sears, then getting a late lunch here. I figured we should wait in the parking lot until they go inside. I don’t think anyone will notice my car.”
Margery parked her big white Cadillac between a big white Lincoln and a big white Buick. The parking lot looked like a pod of white whales. Helen could never figure out why, once you turned seventy in Florida, you bought a large white car. It must be some biological urge.
Helen and Margery watched the clientele totter out.
“There are more chicken necks here than at a soup factory, Margery said. “This place must depress the hell out of you.”
“Not me,” Helen said. “Usually I feel old. I’m a hot babe in this crowd.”
Margery snorted. “You young people. Always talking about being old. You don’t know what age is. You are a hot babe. By the time you figure that out, you won’t be one anymore.”
Helen looked in the side mirror. She could practically see her chin and chest sliding south. She could also see Fred and Ethel pulling up in a big white Chevy.
“They’re here.” She ducked down in the seat, a decision she regretted. She got a cold blast of air conditioning in the face. By the time Fred and Ethel climbed out of their car, she’d have frozen to death.
Helen poked her head above the window to keep her eyebrows from frosting up. She saw Fred first. An AMERICA—LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT T-shirt was stretched across his melon belly.
“That’s a Nixon-era slogan. Where did he get that?” she said.
“I think they’re bringing it back,” Margery said.
Ethel toted a fat black purse the size of a carry-on suit-case. She wore a GOD BLESS AMERICA T-shirt with a sequinned flag on her chest.
“Patriotism is the last refuge of these scoundrels,” Helen said. “I guess we should wait five minutes for them to get seated before we go inside.”
“Good. It will give me time for a last cigarette, now that you can’t smoke in a Florida restaurant.” Margery rolled down her window and lit up. “I’ve been thinking how this should go down. I know the layout. I’ve been here with my bridge club.”
“I didn’t know you played bridge.”
“I don’t. We play poker, but restaurants don’t like that. So we tell them we’re playing bridge. We bring bridge pads and set them out. Nobody ever checks. We sit in the bar and play cards and drink enough manhattans to keep the help happy.
Fred and Ethel are militant nondrinkers. They won’t go near the bar. We can sit in there and watch them where they can’t see us. You got the stuff?”
“Right here.” Helen patted her pocket. “Let’s go.”
Helen loved the bar at the Happy Cow. Its generous, curving black leather booths, dim lights and red-flocked wallpaper reminded her of the great old steak houses in St. Louis.
The bar smelled pleasantly of mold, Lysol and stale cigarette smoke. That smell lingered long after the smoking ban.
The two women sat on heavily padded black barstools and ordered white wine. The bartender, a woman about Margery’s age with an impressive figure and a blond beehive, was fast and efficient.
Margery had picked a good spot. They could see the whole place in the mirrors behind the bar. The restaurant was long and narrow, with a soup, salad and dessert bar running down the middle. A soft-serve ice cream station and soft-drink section were against the wall. The walls were decorated with Florida beach scenes and NO DOGGY BAGS signs. The waitresses took the orders for grilled steaks and chicken.
Then the diners raided the salad bar.
The Happy Cow did not have fashionable food. Its clientele wanted a steak tender enough to chomp with dentures and food that filled them up: potato salad, macaroni salad, rice salad, green bean salad, black bean salad, corn salad, carrot salad with raisins. The bread was hot, white and puffy.
Lettuce was covered with croutons and creamy dressing.
Baked potatoes were piled with butter and sour cream. This crowd did not worry about cholesterol. They had already outlived the weak sisters with heart trouble.
“Fred and Ethel are experienced all-you-can-eat restaurant goers,” Margery said. “They skip the starchy salads and bread and go for the expensive fruit and vegetables. Fred’s got at least five bucks’ worth of produce on his plate.”
Fred’s plate was loaded with salad, sliced mushrooms, fresh strawberries, cantaloupe and pineapple chunks.
“What’s Ethel doing with those mounds of potato salad and bread?” Helen said.
“Getting tonight’s dinner. Watch.”
Back at their table, Ethel slid into the booth first. Fred’s paunch provided privacy, but Helen could see over it on her tall barstool. Ethel opened her purse and eased most of the potato salad and bread inside.
“That’s disgusting. She’s putting food in her purse.”
Helen imagined it landing on hairbrushes and old Kleenex and nearly gagged.
“Relax,” Margery said. “Her purse is lined with Ziploc bags. Look around the restaurant. Everyone is doing it.”
Sure enough, when the waitresses turned their backs, satchel-sized purses snapped open and swallowed salads, vegetables and bread. Sugar and sweetener packs disappeared off the tables. Butter pats and creamers, ketchup and mustard packets all went into the leather maws.
When Ethel’s steak arrived, she cut it in two and dropped half in her purse. Her baked potato went the same way.
In fifteen minutes, Fred and Ethel put away enough food to feed a frat house. Fred ate his. Ethel stuffed most of hers in her purse. She did have a bowl of clam chowder, along with her half-steak and half-potato. She hit the dessert bar three times. The first time, a big gooey chocolate brownie went into her purse. The second time, she ate the Key lime pie. On the third swing through, she got the bread pudding and slathered it with sauce.
“She’s going for it,” Helen said.
Margery asked for the bar check. They watched as Ethel chewed her bread pudding. She gave a muffled shriek, then grabbed her cheek dramatically. Bright red blood gushed from her mouth.
A woman with a macaroni salad screamed, “Help! Somebody call an ambulance.”
“No ambulance!” Fred roared.
“You bet he doesn’t want one,” Margery said. “That would ruin everything.” She put a twenty on the bar, but kept watching the drama. A worried waitress ran over to Fred and Ethel’s booth. The manager, a thin woman in a blue blazer, sprinted behind her.
“Time for us to go to work,” Margery said.
They started for the booth. The waitress was mopping up the blood with napkins. The manager was wringing her hands.
“I’m not a suing kind of person, but I’ll have to take my poor wife to the emergency room,” Fred said. “And we have a four-hundred-dollar deductible on our insurance.”
“Why, Fred and Ethel, what a surprise,” Margery said. “Is something wrong?”
Fred looked up, startled. Ethel choked, but quickly recovered. The manager looked ready to leap in and do the Heimlich maneuver.
“Ethel bit down on that metal in her bread pudding.” Fred pointed to a piece of metal about half an inch long, lying in a pool of blood. “She’s hurt bad. Look how my poor wife is bleeding.”
“Wow,” Helen said. “Ethel must have magnets in her teeth. That’s the second time this week she’s found metal in her food. I was in the diner about two miles down the road when she got metal in her meal. You wanted four hundred dollars for your emergency room deductible there, too. Cash only. I don’t see any stitches from that accident, though. And Ethel bled all over. She was eating bread pudding that time, too. What a coincidence. I bet that piece of metal Ethel found in her food looks a lot like this.”
Helen produced the sliver of metal she’d lifted from their kitchen and put it on the table next to Ethel’s bloody exhibit.
They were identical.
Fred’s jaws were working, but no sound came out. The waitress stared at Helen and Margery. The manager stopped wringing her hands. She had an idea where this was going.
“My, my,” Margery said. “Ethel is a regular horror show.
Lotta blood running out of her mouth. Of course it looks worse when you smear it all over your face like that. What blood type are you, Ethel?”
Helen took a blood capsule from her pocket, held it up for everyone to see, then squeezed it. Fake blood squirted richly across the sequinned flag on Ethel’s chest.
“F-positive,” Helen said. “I’m positive you’re a fraud.”
The waitress gasped. The manager smiled.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Fred said. “I’ll sue you for slander. I’ll call the police. I’ll—”
As he talked, he and Ethel eased themselves out of the booth and down the aisle. Margery blocked their way.
“I won’t have you two crooks on my property. You have twenty-four hours to pack up and get out, or I’ll call the police and tell them about your hobby. Don’t even think of asking for your deposit back.”
Fred and Ethel scuttled out.
“My name is Gladys,” the manager said. “Can I buy you lunch and a drink?” With the tension gone from her face, she looked years younger.
“No, thanks. We have to be about our business,” Margery said. Helen thought she sounded like a gunslinger leaving town after rounding up the cattle rustlers.
“I can’t thank you enough,” Gladys said. “Let me give you two free dinner certificates to the Happy Cow. Come back any time. We’d be honored to have you.”
“Thank you, ma’am,” Helen said. “We’ll just be moseying along.” Margery glared at her.
On the way out to the car, Helen said, “Well, we got rid of Fred and Ethel.”
“I promise I’ll never rent to anyone normal again, Margery said.