Random

Chapter ONE

Life is random. I know that better than most people, but on the first day of summer I find out again. The hard way.

It's exactly the kind of morning you want summer to be. Blue skies, fluttering leaves, promise of a great, hot afternoon, which I plan to spend beside the local pool, sleeping in the sun.

This morning I'm waiting tables at Billy's Restaurant, which is busy because we sit on the main drag out of a major industrial area where they do shift work. I've landed the regular Thursday morning table of UPS guys. There's seven of them and I swing the coffee pot around, topping off cups. "Hey, Jess," one asks me, "when are you going to marry me?"

"When you have a million dollars, baby," I say, tossing my hip-length braid over my shoulder. I point at the metal pitcher of cream on the table. "Need more?"

"We're fine, sweetheart."

The bell rings over the door and a single guy comes in, tall and lean and young. His hair is so glossy it looks lacquered. Little feet of awareness run down my spine. I head toward the front to seat him, but Virginia beats me to it, winking over her shoulder at me as she settles him in her section. I grin. All's fair when seating hot guys.

Another group comes in, ringing the bell, and this one is mine. As I head for them, music is playing on the speakers overhead, something tinny and country because that's all the owners will play. The swell of customer voices is cheerful. It's only Virginia and me on this morning, since Kary Ann called in sick-at five o'clock in the morning!-but we're both good at what we do, and it's going fine. We're both happy, honestly. I can handle half the restaurant and so can she, and the extra tips will be sweet. My tiny savings were wiped out by a car repair last week, and I'm not going to be comfortable until I get a little more back in there. Not the easiest thing in the world when you're working for tips, but, as we always say, it's a lot better than minimum wage.

I grab some laminated menus from the stack on the counter. "Hey, folks, four this morning?"

"Got anything by the window?"

They're going to regret this choice, but none of us know that right then. "Sure." I lead them to a booth, wait until they settle-the woman takes a long time to slide in, but I see that she doesn't move that well and try not to be impatient. I'm sure I have an order ready in back and some more tickets to drop off at tables, and there's someone waiting at the front to pay.

But I know how to be patient. It's one of the tricks of getting great tips versus good ones, a combination of patience and urgency. I can move fast, carry a lot of plates, and still stand here, smiling, while an old woman maneuvers her way into a too-tight turquoise booth. I catch Virginia's eye as she heads up to the cash register to ring up a pair of customers waiting to pay. That's done.

When the party is settled, I pass out the menus. "Coffee?"

"Please," says the man.

I whirl through the doors to the back, grab four mugs in one hand and the pot in another, pour the coffee, peek in the cream pitcher and head back to the kitchen. Virginia is already starting a new pot of coffee. I put the empty down and she winks. "Good money morning," she says.

"Very."

"We're a good team."

Virginia is a single mom with two little girls. She is only twenty-four, but she was married at my age-nineteen-and divorced just a year ago. She keeps telling me to be careful about guys, but I just laugh. I have no intention of getting caught by anybody. Maybe ever.

What I will do instead is still up in the air, but for now this job fits the bill just fine.

"Jess! Order up, for God's sake."

That's the Wicked Witch of the West, a woman so mean and ragged she looks like a dog who's been left outside in the rain for a year. She's the main cook, the boss's wife, and she has a craggy, horrible smoker's voice that screeches when she yells. Like now.

"Got it, Tina, thanks." I grab biscuits out of the warmer, call out that we're down to ten, drop the biscuits in a basket and line up the plates on my arm. Three plates on the left arm, biscuits settled in the crook of the elbow in a balance it took me a long time to figure out, and the final plate in my right hand. "Coming through!" I cry as I push through the right side of the swinging doors with my shoulder.

It's hard work, this job, the hardest I've ever done, but I only work thirty hours a week, all first thing in the morning, and I'm totally a morning person, so I'm done by two o'clock and have the rest of the day to myself.

The one downside is the Wicked Witch, who hates me. And her fat sloppy husband, who sits in the back of the restaurant with his wet lips and stares at our asses. He's mostly harmless, though he has been known to grab. Right now he's in the kitchen making cinnamon rolls, and when I go into the back I have to squeeze by him, smelling sweat and something sour, to get to the walk-in.

"Jess!" bawls the bitch. "Come get this fucking order before the eggs turn to ice, for God's sake."

I squeeze back by Fatty, trying not to notice the way he pushes back, pressing me into the wall with his butt. Gross.

All part of the game. I moved out of my step-dad's house when I was seventeen, and this job means I can stay in my tiny house. It's only a mother-in-law house in a crappy neighborhood, but it's all mine.

The rush is finally dying down a tiny bit when it happens. I'm busing the table from the UPS guys, cheerfully grabbing five dollar bills from several spots, ones from others and stacking them all together, when I hear a huge, crashing noise from behind me. It doesn't quite compute-breaking glass and a roar-and I turn around to see a car barreling right through the front door.

You'd think you'd instinctively run when you saw something like that, but I'm frozen, money in my hand, trying to figure out what I'm seeing.

A car in the restaurant?

In slow motion, I see the glass and metal around the front door crack and crumple and shatter. The car keeps going, crushing the cash register counter and sending wood splaying out into the world, then keeps coming, smashing into two empty booths, into tables and chairs. I can see the horrified face of a very old person behind the wheel, and that's when I realize the freaking car is coming right at me. I unfreeze and dive toward the kitchen yelling, "Car!"