The Confessors' Club

SIXTY

A faded brown Chevy Malibu pulled into the DQ and parked next to the overhang above the restrooms. I needed that overhang, too, and I needed hot coffee. I drove across the street, wondering what the hell I was doing, considering a new kind of insurance.

A fiftyish woman with stringy blonde hair dangling limp from her scalp and an unfiltered cigarette dangling just as limp from her mouth got out of the Malibu and ran for the door as I pulled up, covering her mouth so the rain wouldn’t extinguish her smoke. I backed up as close as I could to the overhang.

I got out when the inside lights came on and jumped over the growing puddles to the order window and tapped on the plastic. She nodded and slid open the window, offering up the smell of old grease and new cigarette smoke. I ordered coffee and eggs on muffins. I wasn’t hungry, but I needed to get her away from the window long enough to work at the back of the Jeep. She told me in a hoarse voice that the griddle wasn’t warm yet. I said I could wait, and went around to the side, first to the Jeep, then, after five minutes, to the men’s room. It was puddled too, though I did not linger to determine whether that had resulted from the rain. Fresh from a cold water rinse of my face – there was no soap – I went back to the order window. My coffee was sitting outside on the counter, cooling in the downpour. I took the cup to the picnic table under the side eave, sat, and watched the red clay beside the cement slab dissolve and run toward the road.

‘Up here fishing?’ the woman rasped through the screen.

I went to press as close as I could to the window, out of the rain. ‘I came up here looking for a guy who came up here looking for a guy.’

‘Huh?’

I showed her Wendell’s picture. ‘Have you seen this man?’

‘He was here,’ she said, lighting a fresh unfiltered Camel. It was the same brand Debbie Goring used to hoarsen her own voice.

‘You saw him?’

‘Yesterday. I worked a long shift.’

‘He drove a tan car?’

She nodded. ‘Parked right where you did, ordered coffee.’

‘At night?’

‘Huh?’

‘He came in at night?’

She exhaled smoke. ‘I don’t work nights. Teenagers work that shift because they like to screw when things are slow.’

‘Afternoon, then?’ That would have fit, time-wise. Krantz had said Wendell packed a bag at eight in the morning.

The Camel hung limp from the edge of her mouth, confused.

‘The man came in the afternoon?’ I repeated.

‘About three o’clock. Not that I mind a little screwing.’ The Camel was rising between her lips. Her eyebrows had risen, too. Her hair, though, stayed limp.

‘This man, did he say where he was headed?’

‘I don’t expect much,’ she added, after giving me a head-to-toe look.

I had to look away. ‘Anything you remember will help,’ I said to the clapboards next to the order window.

She pointed down Main Street in the direction of the road to Arthur Lamm’s fishing camp. ‘He gave me a five-dollar bill, told me to keep the change, and shot out of here like his britches were on fire.’

I nodded. It was not hard to fathom.

She went to pull my two egg muffins off the grill. She wrapped them in paper, slid them through the little window. I gave her a five-dollar bill, and told her to keep the change because I was no slouch either.

She said I owed another buck seventy-five.