Stella, Get Your Man

As if she’d heard me, the woman looked out, saw me, and with a sigh, gestured toward the door. She looked tired, as if it had been a long, slow day. Her pale pink uniform was stained with what looked like spaghetti sauce and coffee. I waited, smiling, as she fumbled to unlock the door. Her wiry red hair fell across her shoulders and she flipped it back impatiently as she struggled with the lock.

“Thanks,” I said as the door swung open.

She looked at me, dark circles under her even darker eyes, and attempted a return smile.

“Hey,” she said. “I’m the only game in town this time of year and you look worse than I feel. What’s another customer, eh? I could use the money, and honey, looking at you, you could use something to eat.”

Damn. Was it that bad? I inspected myself in the mirror above the diner counter and thought, well, yeah, I guess it is. My hair lay flat against the sides of my head. I was pale, even more washed-out because my naturally dark hair was still blond due to an unfortunate undercover assignment that had happened months ago in my former cop life. I looked like a tired ghost.

“Coffee?” the woman asked. She’d gone around the counter to grab the pot of ancient brew off its stand.

“Is it safe?”

“Do you really care? Beggars can’t be choosers, you know.”

“Don’t mind her,” a male voice interrupted. “She talks to everybody like that, don’t you, Marti?”

I’d overlooked the guy at the end of the counter. He was maybe midforties, curly salt-and-pepper hair, tall, wearing jeans and a faded navy T-shirt. From the way he looked at Marti, I figured him for a boyfriend. He looked lovesick. Then I looked at Marti and realized she was completely unaware of his feelings for her. I revised the picture. Maybe he was her husband; marriage is like that sometimes.

“You complaining, Tom?” she asked.

“Not me, babe, never.” He turned his attention to me and smiled, but not the way he smiled at Marti. “Get her to heat up the chili. Her chili’s like…” He hesitated for a moment. “Like…winning the Super Bowl when the other team was favored to cream you.”

Marti actually blushed. I did another mental revision; this was an awakening, a new relationship about to flower.

“Yeah, thanks,” I said. “I’ll do that. Chili sounds great.”

“You want fries with that?” Marti asked.

Behind her, Tom slowly shook his head.

“No, chili’s fine.”

“You know, I forgot about that corn bread you made,” Tom murmured.

I took the hint. “I love homemade corn bread!”

Marti, seeing the setup, smiled at Tom. I settled back on my stool and felt myself begin to relax. Maybe this wasn’t going to be such a raw deal after all. Maybe we’d find Mia’s brother right away and still have time to spend a few days relaxing.

“Do you live here?”

Tom took a sip from his coffee mug. “Well, I did when I was little, but I moved away. I came back a couple of months ago for a two-week visit and haven’t left yet, so I guess you could say I live here.”

“Must be a pretty small town in the winter months,” I said.

Tom smiled. “Just gives me more time to learn the routine around here before the tourists start coming back and all hell breaks loose.”

I tried to drink a sip of my coffee, smelled the acrid scent of burned beans and put the cup back on the counter. Tom’s attention was split between entertaining me and being entertained by Marti. He watched every move she made through the open window into the kitchen, but glanced away if she looked up, too shy to be caught and too entranced to stop staring.

“Yeah, Surfside’s small but it’s grown a lot since I lived here.” He swiveled a little on his stool. “What brings you to the beach in the dead of winter?”

“Well, I met a guy who said he lived here. He made the town sound really beautiful. I thought I’d come visit, maybe run into him again.”

Tom’s attention switched back to me. “He doesn’t know you’re here?”

I tried to look embarrassed. “Well, no. You see, we met in a park two years ago in…New York, Central Park, and well, somehow we just started talking. He said I should come to Surfside Isle and look him up if I could, but…”

I looked down at my hands and bit the inside of my cheek thinking I should’ve taken up acting.

“I feel so stupid. See, he gave me his card and I lost it.”

Tom laughed, a rich, deep chuckle that made Marti look up from her place behind the window.

“You lost it? So you just came here looking for a guy who lives somewhere in Surfside Isle but you don’t know where? What’s his name? And why did you wait two years?”

I kept my head down. “I don’t know,” I murmured. “I can’t remember his name. You see, I was dating someone and so I didn’t think much of it at the time, but I kept thinking about him, I don’t know why, and when Glen and I broke it off, I suppose I…oh, I know, it’s stupid!”

Tom almost fell off his chair laughing. Marti slid chili and corn bread up onto the window’s counter and walked through the door to join us.

“What’s so funny about that?” she asked. “You mean to say you never met somebody, looked into their eyes and felt they could be the one? And then something happens and—” she snapped her fingers “—just like that, they’re gone and you never got a chance to see what was there. That never happened to you?”

Tom looked right into Marti’s eyes and smiled. “Yes,” he said. “And I made a resolution about that kind of thing. I don’t waste opportunities anymore.”

The force of Tom’s intensity seemed to radiate into the room, filling it with feeling and unspoken emotion. If it had been a two-by-four, the realization couldn’t have hit Marti any harder. Her eyes widened, her mouth fell open, and she turned bright red.

“Oh,” she said. “Oh!”

I watched my chili grow cold in the pass-through window behind her for a long minute as Marti and Tom stood staring at each other, oblivious to anything and everything but their own, newly created world. It was Marti who dropped back into the reality of the moment and realized where she was.

“Your chili!” she said, practically throwing the bowl from shelf to counter.

“Thank you!” I scooted back as the bowl slid toward me, sloshing dangerously.

Marti picked up a rag and began swiping furiously at the counter between us, ignoring Tom.

“You don’t remember his name?” she asked.

I shook my head. The chili was hot and deliciously spicy. I’d almost lost interest in Mia Lange and her brother. Almost.

“What’s he look like?”

I choked. What the hell did he look like?

“Well, he’s about forty, I’d say, and um…well, you know…cute…average height, great eyes.”

I shoveled chili into my mouth and avoided eye contact. They had to think I was a total ditz. I couldn’t even describe him to them. Fortunately, Marti and Tom were too wrapped up in each other to pay too much attention to me. They tried, but I knew they were just waiting for me to leave so they could talk.

They made a halfhearted attempt to review the café’s regulars. By the time I’d finished the corn bread, they agreed that they hadn’t seen any “cute” men in their forties who lived year-round in Surfside Isle, but they did know how to direct me to my rental house.