“Speak—” Her eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong with the way I talk?”
“Nothing.” He let out a sigh because being rude wasn’t his way, but neither was lying. “In Nebraska. But California wants the entire nation to believe everyone here is sophisticated. A cut above the rest, and you sound like you’re a country bumpkin straight off the train. Which you are.” A solid stab of guilt hit his stomach at the way her face fell. However, a little disappointment now was nothing compared to what she was going to experience. “Go home,” he said earnestly. “Just go home.”
She spun around. “You go home.”
A heavy sigh escaped as Walter watched her march between the cars and back onto the sidewalk. He couldn’t help but think how another beautiful woman would soon be gobbled up by the evils that be, and that there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it.
Trying one last time, he leaned against the side of his car, and shouted, “It’s not here. Whatever you hope to find, it isn’t here.”
She looked at him and spread her arms wide. “Hope? Hope is everywhere. You should go get yourself some.”
The clicking of her heels on the concrete no longer made Shirley smile. She was too mad for that. He had to be the rudest man ever. Almost running her down with his big red car, and telling her to go home ’cause there’s no hope here.
Fool.
Hope was everywhere. Like dreams. You just had to snatch it up and hold it inside. Without it, there was no point in living. Hope was all she’d had for years; it’s what kept her going after she’d lost everything, everyone. It was what had brought her all the way to California. He was wrong. Hope was here, all right, because it was inside her. If a person didn’t have hope, they didn’t have anything. He needed to learn that.
“There ain’t nothing wrong with the way I talk, either,” she muttered under her breath.
Goose bumps rose up on her arms as she remembered Miss Larsen, the schoolteacher she’d had for only a short time. Pretty and young, Miss Larsen had been from out east somewhere, and had talked so funny the kids had teased her. Teased her so much she’d left.
Miss Larsen had said that ain’t was not a word. They’d all thought she’d been wrong. The silliest teacher ever.
“Excuse me.”
Shirley turned, but the person who’d spoken stepped past her into the street. So did others. She looked left and right, twice, and then followed. Others followed her, and they all made it across without anyone getting hit. The cars stopped, letting the last few folks make it all the way to the sidewalk before the cars started moving again.
She looked up and down the blocks. The only place people were walking across the streets were at the corners.
Dang.
Huffing out a breath, she shook her head. Just because he was right about that—jaywalking—didn’t mean he was right about everything. Him in his fancy black-and-white suit. Even his shoes had been black-and-white. Shoes like that weren’t made for working. That’s for sure. Neither was that fancy suit, even though it sure made him look nice. So did his hair, the way it was trimmed and combed over to one side. She’d only seen men who looked that spiffy, that handsome, in magazines. There hadn’t been a hint of a whisker on his chin. Matter of fact, his face had been so pleasant to look at she’d kept trying not to look at him because for some silly reason it made her heart pitter-patter.
She wasn’t here for pitter-patter. She was here to sing.
Turning about, she walked toward the newspaper stand. It sure seemed like a waste of time to walk all the way to the corner, then across the street, and all the way back down this side of the street, but if that was way folks around here did things, she’d just have to get used to it.
That wouldn’t be so hard.
A few minutes later, she decided crossing the street at the corners was downright easy compared to deciding what newspaper to buy. She’d never seen so many. In the end, she picked the one with a picture of a big building on the front page and a headline about a new theater that would open soon. The man selling the newspapers said that building was only a few blocks away, so that paper seemed like a logical choice.
She paid the man, tucked the newspaper under her arm and walked down the block to where a sign said the soup of the day was tomato.
The inside of the café was red and white everything, right down to the floor. She found a seat at a white table and sat down on a red chair, smiling at how bright and cheery everything appeared. Far cheerier than that man driving the red car. He had been nice looking, though. Far nicer than any of Olin’s sons. It could have been his suit. She wasn’t used to seeing men in suits.
“What can I get for you?”
Shirley glanced up at the woman with a red scarf tied around her dark brown hair. It was tied with a big red bow smack-dab in the middle of the top of her head. It looked spiffy. Shirley figured she might have to tie a scarf that way on her head. She’d have to buy one first. Which meant she needed to get a job.
“I would like a bowl of soup, please, and a cup of coffee,” she said, and then held her breath, waiting for the woman to comment on the way she talked.
The woman smiled and nodded. “Coming right up.”
Shirley smiled, too, mainly to herself. That man didn’t know what he was talking about. Determined to forget all about him, she laid the newspaper on the table, but then, just out of curiosity, scanned the entire front page for the word ain’t.
By the time a bowl of soup and cup of coffee were set on the table, she’d skimmed the entire newspaper and hadn’t found the word. Not once.
That was fine, she didn’t need that word, anyway. Pert-near never said it.
She scanned the newspaper again while eating her soup.
“Well, gal-darn it,” she whispered.
The soup was gone, except for a small amount on the bottom. She grasped the bowl with both hands, but then looked around the room. Others had bowls of soup, but none had picked up the bowl to drink the last bits, so she slid her hands off the bowl and folded them in her lap.
She watched and listened to other people, especially a woman dressed in a dark blue dress and wearing white shoes.
“More coffee?”
Shirley nodded and slid her cup to the edge of the table.
“New to town?” the waitress asked as she poured the coffee.
“Yes, I am,” Shirley answered, conscious of how she sounded. She didn’t sound like that other woman, that was for sure. “I truly am,” she added, focusing on sounding less like, well, a country bumpkin.
“If you’re looking for a job, Mel—he owns this place—is looking for a dishwasher.”
If
