Page 33 of This Love
Including David Rose’s stare of doom.
Which now was mine.
Another man snorted. “Seems like it got lost, sugar pie. Guess you’ll have to take it out of your tip.”
As if the paltry three dollars extra they’d thrown in would cover the double chicken-fried steak and two beers.
“I’ll reprint it, then,” I said.
“We’re on our way out,” the first man said, standing up to hitch his jeans back into place. “Gotta get back to that demo job.” He shoved a yellow hard hat on his head to cover his bald spot.
The other men followed suit in a squeal of table legs on the concrete floor.
I was not getting shorted. Not today. Time to call in my backup.
“Harry!” I called. “We got walkers!”
The first time I heard the term, I thought my coworker literally meant people who could walk. But a couple of days into waiting tables here, Big Harry explained it meant someone who was trying to walk the check, or leave without paying.
Maybe the ground didn’t exactly shake as Big Harry lumbered out of his office beyond the bar, but I bet it could have if he’d stomped much harder.
Big Harry had owned this diner for thirty years, right in this spot on South First, and nobody messed with him. He’d once tossed an entire football team out on their butts when they’d gotten too friendly with one of his servers.
My coworkers loved telling me all the Harry stories I’d forgotten.
“Stop right there, or I’ll break a leg on each of ya,” he bellowed at the men, who were halfway to the door.
They glanced over their shoulders. The last two sped up, but the first one stopped, and they smashed together like the accordion a man had brought in on my first day when he’d played a few songs for tips. Harry let people do that sometimes, particularly if they seemed down on their luck.
Joseph, one of the other servers, raced to the door and locked the deadbolt that used a key on both sides.
No way out.
The lunch crowd quieted. Most of them were regulars and enjoyed a good Harry show. A couple of them hid smiles behind their hands.
I waited by the table, my fists on my hips. “It was another fourteen dollars, if memory serves.” My memory didn’t serve me whatsoever, but I knew my numbers.
The man in the honor student T-shirt fished out his wallet and flung a twenty-dollar bill in my direction. It fluttered through the air, landing on another table. A young guy, all red hair and freckles, picked it up and passed it to a woman at the next table, and she handed it to me.
Joseph silently returned to the door and unlocked it.
“Out with ya,” Harry roared. “And I don’t need the likes of you in my establishment ever again.”
The one who tossed the twenty looked like he wanted to clap back at that, but he thought better of it and pushed through the door.
When the four of them had taken off down the bright sidewalk awash with afternoon heat, the other customers cheered.
I stuffed the money and tickets in my apron pocket and stacked their plates. The fourth ticket was stuck to the bottom of a cup using congealed gravy as the glue. Jerks.
Harry patted my shoulder. “There’ll always be a few of those. The good people outnumber them all.” He gestured to the other tables. “Don’t worry. You did right fine.”
I piled silverware and napkins onto the plates. “How did I used to handle customers like them? You know, in the time before.”
“A little tougher than today. But when you first arrived, no more than a wee mite of eighteen, you were as skittish as a dragonfly.”
“So, I got better.” I hefted the stack of dishes to take to the back.
“You did.” Harry grinned at me, and all the anxiety in my belly over the encounter evaporated. I knew I should think of my actual dad as my dad, but it was Harry who understood me best.
