“These days, arugula is everywhere. It’s even easier to get than a venereal disease.”
The waitress returned with a root beer for Linda and a cherry Coke for Tim.
Outside, a car pulled off the street, drove past the Explorer, and parked in the farther end of the lot.
“You must exercise,” Tim said. “What do you do for exercise?”
“I brood.”
“That burns up calories, does it?”
“If you think about how the world’s coming apart, you can easily get the ticker above a hundred thirty and keep it there for hours.”
The headlights of the recently arrived car switched off. Nobody got out of the vehicle.
The buttered muffin was served, and Tim watched her eat it while he sipped his cherry Coke. He wished he were a buttered muffin.
He said, “This sort of feels like a date, doesn’t it?”
“If this feels like a date to you,” she said, “your social life is even more pathetic than mine.”
“I’m not proud. This feels nice, having dinner with a girl.”
“Don’t tell me this is how you get dates. The old a-hit-man-is-after-you-come-with-me-at-once gambit.”
Even by the time the burgers and fries arrived, no one had gotten out of the car at the farther end of the parking lot.
“Dating isn’t easy anymore,” Tim said. “Finding someone, I mean. Everybody wants to talk about American Idol and Pilates.”
She said, “And I don’t want to listen to a guy talk about his designer socks and what he’s thinking of doing with his hair.”
“Guys talk about that?” he asked dubiously.
“And about where he gets his chest waxed. When they finally make a move on you, it’s like fighting off your girlfriend.”
The distance and the shadows prevented Tim from seeing who was in the car. Maybe it was just some unhappy couple having an argument before a late dinner.
After an enjoyable conversation and a satisfying meal, Tim said, “I’m going to need your gun.”
“If you don’t have money, I’ll pay. There’s no reason to shoot our way out of here.”
“Well, there might be,” he said.
“You mean the white Chevy sedan in the parking lot.”
Surprised, he said, “I guess writers are pretty observant.”
“Not in my experience. How did he find us? Was the sonofabitch there somewhere when we stopped at that vacant lot? He must have followed us from there.”
“I can’t see the license plate. Maybe this isn’t him. Just a similar car.”
“Yeah, right. Maybe it’s Peter, Paul and Mary.”
Tim said, “I’d like you to leave ahead of me, but by the back door, through the kitchen.”
“That’s what I usually say to a date.”
“There’s an alley behind this place. Turn right, run to the end of the block. I’ll pick you up there.”
“Why don’t we both go out the back way, leave your SUV?”
“We’re dead on foot. And stealing a car doubles our trouble.”
“So you’re just going to go shoot it out with him?”
“He doesn’t know I’ve seen his car. He thinks he’s anonymous. When you don’t come out with me, he’ll think you’re in the restroom, you’ll be along any moment.”
“What’s he going to do when you drive off without me?”
“Maybe he’ll come in here looking for you. Maybe he’ll follow me. I don’t know. What I do know is if we go out the front door together, he’ll shoot us both.”
As she considered the situation, she chewed her lower lip.
Tim realized that he was staring too intently at her lip. When he raised his eyes, he saw that she had been watching him stare, so he said, “If you want, I could chew that for you.”
“If you’re not going to shoot him,” she said, “why can’t I take the pistol with me?”
“I’m not going to start the shooting. But if he opens fire on me, I’d like to have some option besides throwing my shoes at him.”
“I really like this little gun.”
“I promise I won’t break it.”
“Do you know how to use a pistol?”
“I’m not one of those guys who waxes his chest.”
Reluctantly, she passed her purse across the table.
Tim put the purse on the booth beside him, glanced around to be certain that he wasn’t watched by one of the few other customers or a waitress, fished out the pistol, and slipped it under his Hawaiian shirt, under his belt.
Her stare was not sharp any longer, but as solemn and knowing as the sea, and it seemed to him that right then she took down into her depths a new understanding of him.
“They’re open twenty-four hours,” she said. “We could just sit here until he goes away.”
“We could tell ourselves he isn’t really out there, it’s someone else, nothing to do with us. We could tell ourselves all the way out the door, just walk into it and get it over with. A lot of people would.”
She said, “Not a lot would have in 1939.”
“Too bad your Ford isn’t a real time machine.”
“I’d go back there. I’d go back all the way. Jack Benny on the radio, Benny Goodman from the Empire Room of the Waldorf-Astoria…”
He reminded her: “Hitler in Czechoslovakia, in Poland…”
“I’d go back to it all.”
The waitress asked if they wanted anything more. Tim requested the check.
Still no one had gotten out of the white Chevy. Traffic on the street had diminished. The incoming tide of clouds had extinguished the moon.
When the waitress brought the check, Tim had the money ready to pay it and to tip her.
“Turn right in the alley,” he reminded Linda. “Run to the end of the block. Look for me coming west on the main street.”
