Page 25 of My Violent Valentine

There are red roses on all the tables to celebrate this day of saccharine sweetness. Large pink and red paper hearts hang down from a water-damaged ceiling. The hearts sway lightly back and forth from the air vents.

An elderly woman with long gray hair pulled back into a bun and a light blue dress with small white polka dots and a white apron greets us with menus. “You can just sit wherever you want doll, I’ll get ya in just a minute. We serve breakfast all day and all night,” she says to Mina.

She’s a transplant from some southern state, and has a thick drawl.

She doesn’t make eye contact with me or even acknowledge my existence, but I know she just had that hairs standing up on the back of your neck feeling with me. She feels me, even if she won’t look at me. Well, that at least makes me feel a bit better about myself. I’m still me, and stranger danger still means something in the world.

Mina takes the offered menus and guides us to a booth at the back.

“This okay?” she asks me.

I nod and take the seat facing the door. I know we’re in the middle of nowhere, far from the danger of opportunists who know me, but old habits die hard. There’s only one customer entrance. I imagine there’s an emergency exit next to the bathrooms and if there isn’t one there, there’s definitely one back in the kitchen.

From what I can tell there’s a cook and two waitresses working tonight—the older woman and a younger redhead taking care of the other side of the diner. A lone man sits at a table between the front door and an old-fashioned jukebox that thankfully isn’t playing. Maybe it’s just decorative.

A few tables down directly between our booth and the exit sit two large men. I assume the two semi-trucks out in the parking lot are theirs. They’re wearing old blue shirts with a white patch and thick red embroidery that has their name stitched on it.

Floyd and Mack. It’s anybody’s guess if these are their real names or if they got the shirts at Goodwill.

There’s an older man in a tattered brown coat slurping on a bowl of soup. He’s sitting at the counter directly across from us and just a few feet away from Mina, which I don’t love, but I’m not going to relocate us over it. Besides his proximity, our location is perfect, and it’s not as though he’s a threat to anyone.

A few minutes later, the older waitress returns. She sits a nearly full coffee pot on our table that she just used to pour refills for the truckers. She wipes her hands on her apron and pulls out a pad of paper and a pencil. Her name tag reads, “Dottie.”

Given the clientele of this diner, it’s immediately apparent how they stay in business even staying open all night in the middle of nowhere. It seems to be a popular place for truckers.

“Now, what can I get you two?”

She’s looking at Mina, still avoiding my gaze, but I speak first. “Dottie, I’ll have a T-bone, medium rare, hash browns, two eggs sunny side up, and a coffee. Black.”

She furiously scribbles down my order. “And for you, darlin?” She looks at Mina a little too intently, as though she’s looking for signs I’m beating her.

“Blueberry pancakes, the famous ones, and coffee,” Mina says, tossing her a disarming smile.

“Cream and sugar?”

“No, black.”

“Coming right up.” She’s barely stepped away from the table when she yells: “Hank!” and proceeds to take the order back to a cook who just appeared in the window as if by magic. He was probably taking a nap back there. She clips our order to a creaky metal wheel and spins it to the large guy in the kitchen who looks at it, grunts, and then gets to work.

There’s a TV suspended from the ceiling at an angle that most of the patrons can at least partially see, and it’s on.

“Turn that up!” someone shouts.

The redheaded waitress turns the volume up.

“We’re here at the scene of the aftermath of a Valentine’s Day gang war with over twenty victims, including, tragically, a teenage girl who seems to have stumbled upon the night’s events. Earlier tonight, firefighters were called to what appeared to be a house fire at the isolated Nolan Estate, only to find an even more grizzly and shocking scene. Cole Nolan, CEO of Nolan Tactical, a mid-sized handgun manufacturer has long been suspected to be the leader of one of the Phoenix area’s most notorious criminal organizations...”

My muscles go rigid. The absolute last thing I need right now is for Mina to be reminded of that shit—not like she can forget it, but still, having it shoved in our faces every five minutes isn’t exactly conducive to our continued relationship.

Dottie returns with our coffee. She glances up at the TV news report and shakes her head as though she’s disappointed more than shocked by all the evil in this world. I’m sure she wouldn’t be calmly pouring my coffee right now if she knew I was the one who killed that girl.

“Such a shame,” she says. “And why did it have to be on Valentine’s Day of all days? These psychopaths can’t just let us have one good day of love and candy hearts?”

I smile tightly at her and thank her for the coffee. She leaves our table and turns the TV off to groans from some of the patrons.

“We’ve had a nice day today,” she says, “And we aren’t spoiling it with the news.”

A few minutes later she returns and sets a plate of fluffy blueberry pancakes in front of Mina. “Yours will take a little longer,” she says to me, before darting back to the kitchen.

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