Homicide My Own - Anne Argula [22]
The waitress was a woman in her thirties, but they were hard years. She asked us first if we wanted coffee.
“Iced tea,” I said. I was burning up.
“And for you?”
Odd shook his head, lost his voice.
I watched him until she came back with the iced tea, but he never said anything. Soon, a pleasantness came over his features. They softened, relaxed.
“So…what will you have?” asked the waitress.
“You bake your own pie?” I asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said proudly.
“Apple?”
“Fresh today.”
“That’s for me, a la mode.”
“I’ll have a black ‘n tan,” said Odd.
Both the waitress and I looked at him and huh?
“A what?” she asked.
“A black ‘n tan.”
“What’s that?” she asked.
“He’ll know,” said Odd.
“Joey,” she called to the kitchen. “Do you have a black ‘n tan?”
Joey, a recovering alcoholic in his late twenties, poked his head through the pass-through window. His head was covered with a Harley Davidson wrap. He yelled back, “Say what?”
“A black ‘n tan.”
“Never heard of it.”
An old Indian man at the counter said, “They used to make them here. Long ago. The Stauffers owned this place then.”
“Right,” said Odd, “like when the Stauffers had it.”
“A black ‘n tan,” said the old Indian, “is an ice cream sundae. Vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce on the bottom. Then carmel. Crushed up peanuts. A blossom of whipped cream. A cherry on the top.”
“That’s it! Thank you, sir,” said Odd.
My nipples had not gone down. On the contrary, the rest of me was straining to pop out as well, like my whole body was on a countdown to explode. I wanted to go screaming through the rain.
“I’d like to try that,” said the waitress, and for a second I thought she had read my mind. No, Odd had inspired her. She was like a cynical bartender who had discovered a new drink.
After she left, I said, “Odd,” and there was a quaver to my voice, “what the hell is going on here?”
“You know how something happens and you say, whoa, all this has all happened before?”
“Yeah, it’s called deja-vu, which is about all the French I know.”
“This isn’t like that. I know this place. I know these people.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I do. I used to sit in this booth. How can that be, unless…?”
“Unless what?”
“Unless I was one of them once.”
“So, who’s the old guy, then?”
I nodded to the old Indian who had remembered the ice cream sundae. Odd looked at him hard. I was about to tell him he didn’t know shit, when he called out, “Mr. Drinkwater!”
The old man turned on his counter stool. “Yes, sir?”
“Thank you very much!”
“You’re welcome.”
I held my head in my hands, much like Stacey’s mother had when I first saw her, like events had overtaken her, and now me, and things were spinning out of control, and maybe if I squeezed my head very hard everything would get forced back to normal. I felt columns of sweat worming over my ribs.
“I had a life before this one,” Odd said, “and I spent it here on this island.”
“That ain’t the way it works,” I said, “not where we come from.” Meaning basically, I guess, from good Catholic and Lutheran families.
“When I was a kid, I was told a lot of stuff about life and death that turned out to be lies.”
“Yeah, well, me too,” I admitted, “but you’re talking…” I could hardly bring myself to say it. “…reincarnation. Are you really ready to believe that stuff?”
“I never thought about it before, but one life does sound like kind of a short deal, doesn’t it? Just about the time you get your poop in a group, it’s over. Why shouldn’t we get another crack at it, keep trying ‘til we get it right? That would make some sense.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. What would be the point of living?”
“No, otherwise, what would be the point of dying?”
Woi Yesus. Was this ever a conversation I didn’t want to have.
“I knew this place before we ever landed on it. I knew about Frank’s boat, Jimmy crewing…”
“We don’t know if that’s true.”
“Oh, we know, we know.”
I knew