It bothered her so much that she went over and pulled up a chair at his table. He looked up from his papers, raised an eyebrow. "This a new service at Jack & Minnie's Cafe?"
"I'm willing to learn," said Rainie. "I'm not a bigot against small towns. I just sort of took it for granted that small towns would feel oppressive to kids because the small town I grew up in felt oppressive to me. If that's a crime, shoot me."
He looked at her in wonder. "I don't have an idea on God's Earth what you're talking about."
"A minute ago when you shut me down," she said, really annoyed now. "You can't tell me that shutting people down is so unimportant that you don't even remember doing it."
"I ordered my breakfast is all I did," said Spaulding.
"So you do remember," she said triumphantly.
"I just wasn't interested in continuing that conversation."
"Then don't shut a person down, Mr. Spaulding. Tell them that you don't appreciate what they said, but don't just cut me off."
"It honestly didn't occur to me that you'd even notice," he said. "I figured you were just making small talk, and the talk just got too small."
"I wasn't making small talk," said Rainie. "I was really impressed with your kids. It's a sure thing I was never that way with my father."
"They're good kids." He took another bite and looked down at his paper.
She laid her hand on the paper, fingers spread out to cover the whole sheet and make it unreadable.
He sat up, leaned back in his chair, and regarded her. "The place isn't crowded, the lunch rush is over, so it can't be that you need my table."
"No sir," said Rainie. "I need your attention. I need just a couple of minutes of your attention, Mr. Spaulding, because in your car yesterday I caught a whiff of something I've heard about but I always thought it was a legend, a lie, like Santa Claus and the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny."
He got a little half-smile on his face, but there was still fire in his eyes. "Since when is Santa Claus a lie?"
"Since I was six years old and got up to pee and saw Dad putting together the bike on the living room floor."
"It strikes me that what you saw was proof that Santa Claus was real. Flesh and blood. Putting together a bike. Making cookies for you in the kitchen."
"That wasn't Santa Claus, that was Dad and Mom, except that my Mom didn't make cookies for me, she made them for her, all neat and round and lined up exactly perfect on the cooky tray, Lord help me if I actually touched one, and Dad couldn't get the bike together right, he had to wait till the stores opened the day after Christmas so he could get the guy in the bike shop to put it together."
"So far you haven't proved that Santa Claus was fake, you just proved that he wasn't good enough for you. If Santa Claus couldn't be perfect, you didn't want any Santa Claus at all."
"Why are you getting so mad at me?"
"Did I invite you to sit at this table, Ms. Johnson?"
"Dammit, Mr. Spaulding, would you call me Ida like everybody else?"
"Dammit, Ms. Johnson, why are you the only person in town who doesn't call me Douglas?"
"Begging your pardon, Douglas."
"Begging yours, Ida."
"All I was trying to say, Douglas, when I brought up Santa Claus, Douglas, was that in your car I saw a father being easy with his children, and the children being easy with their dad, right in front of a stranger, and I never thought that happened in the real world."
"We get along OK," said Douglas. He shrugged it off, but she could see that he was pleased.
"So for a minute in your car I felt like I was part of that and I guess it just hurt my feelings a little when you shut me down back then. It didn't seem fair. I didn't think my offense was so terrible."
"Like I said. I wasn't punishing you."
"All right then. More coffee?"
"No thanks."
"Pie? Ice cream?"
"No thanks."
"Well then why do you keep calling me over to your table?"
He smiled. Laughed almost. So it was all right. She felt better, and she could leave him alone then.
After he left, after all the lunch customers had gone and she was washing down the tables and wiping off the saltshakers and emptying the ashtrays, Minnie came over to her and looked her in the eye, hard and angry.
"I saw you sitting down and talking with Douglas," she said.
"We weren't busy," said Rainie.
"Douglas is a decent man with a happy family."
Now Rainie understood. In her own way, Minnie was just like the guy who rented her the room over the garage. Always assuming that because she was a good-looking woman, she was on the make. Well, she wasn't on the make, but if she was, it wouldn't be any of Minnie's business or anybody else's except her own. What was it about this place? Why did everybody always assume that sex was the foremost thing in a single forty-two-year-old woman's mind?
"I'm glad for him," Rainie said.
"Don't you make no trouble for that good man and his good wife," said Minnie.
"I said something that I thought maybe offended him and I wanted to make sure everything was all right, that's all. I was trying to make sure I hadn't alienated a customer." Even as she explained, Rainie resented having to make an explanation.
"Do you think I'm a fool? Do you think I'm such a fool as to think you're a fool? Since he first laid eyes on you he's been in here every day. And now you're going over sitting at his table arguing with him and then making him laugh. I've got half a mind to fire you right now and send you on your way, except I like you and I'd like to keep you around. But I don't like you so much I'm willing to have you making things ugly for people around here. You can make a mess here and then just walk away, but me and my customers, we'll have to keep living with whatever it is you do, so don't do it. Am I clear?"
Rainie didn't answer, just furiously wiped at the table. She hadn't been reamed out like that since ... her mother was the last one to ream her out like this, and Rainie had left home over it, and it made her so mad to have to listen to it all over again, she was forty-two years old and she still had some old lady telling her what she could and couldn't do, laying down rules, making conditions and regulations, and claiming that she liked her while she was doing it.
Minnie waited for a minute till it was clear Rainie wasn't going to answer. "All right then," said Minnie. "I've got enough in the register to give you your pay. Take off the apron, you can go."
I don't need your money or your job, you poor old fool, I'm Rainie Pinyon, I sing and write songs and play the piano and cut albums, I've got a million-dollar ranch in the Horse Heaven Hills of eastern Washington and an agent in L.A. who calls me sweetheart and sends me checks a couple of times a year, checks large enough even during the bad years that I could buy your two-bit cafe and move it to Tokyo and never even miss the money.
Rainie thought all that, but she didn't say it. Instead she said, "I'm sorry. I'm not going to mess around with anybody's life, and I'll be careful with Mr. Spaulding."
"Take off the apron, Ida."