Clark laughed and took her elbow. ‘Come on,’ he said, and led her into The Rock-a-Boogie Restaurant.
The Rock-a-Boogie went a fair distance toward allaying Mary’s fears. She had expected a greasy spoon, not much different from the dim (and rather dirty) pit-stop in Oakridge where they’d eaten lunch. They entered a sun-filled, agreeable little diner with a funky fifties feel instead: blue-tiled walls; chrome-chased pie case; tidy yellow-oak floor; wooden paddle fans turning lazily overhead. The face of the wall-clock was circled with thin tubes of red and blue neon. Two waitresses in aqua-colored rayon uniforms that looked to Mary like costumes left over from American Graffiti were standing by the stainless-steel pass-through between the restaurant and the kitchen. One was young — no more than twenty and probably not that — and pretty in a washed-out way. The other, a short woman with a lot of frizzy red hair, had a brassy look that struck Mary as both harsh and desperate . . . and there was something else about her, as well: for the second time in as many minutes, Mary had the strong sensation that she knew someone in this town.
A bell over the door tinkled as she and Clark entered. The waitresses glanced over. ‘Hi, there,’
the younger one said. ‘Be right with you.’
‘Naw; might take awhile,’ the redhead disagreed. ‘We’re awful busy. See?’ She swept an arm at the room, deserted as only a small-town restaurant can be as the afternoon balances perfectly between lunch and dinner, and laughed cheerily at her own witticism. Like her voice, the laugh had a husky, splintered quality that Mary associated with Scotch and cigarettes. But it’s a voice I know, she thought. I’d swear it is.
She turned to Clark and saw he was staring at the waitresses, who had resumed their conversation, as if hypnotized. She had to tug his sleeve to get his attention, then tug it again when he headed for the tables grouped on the left side of the room. She wanted them to sit at the counter. She wanted to get their damned sodas in take-out cups and then blow this joint.
‘What is it?’ she whispered.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I guess.’
‘You looked like you swallowed your tongue, or something.’
‘For a second or two it felt like I had,’ he said, and before she could ask him to explain, he had diverted to look at the jukebox.
Mary sat down at the counter.
‘Be right with you, ma’am,’ the younger waitress repeated, and then bent closer to hear something else her whiskey-voiced colleague was saying. Looking at her face, Mary guessed the younger woman wasn’t really very interested in what the older one had to say.
‘Mary, this is a great juke!’ Clark said, sounding delighted. ‘It’s all fifties stuff! The Moonglows . . . The Five Satins . . . Shep and the Limelites . . . La Vern Baker! Jeez, La Vern Baker singing ‘Tweedlee Dee’! I haven’t heard that one since I was a kid!’
‘Well, save your money. We’re just getting take-out drinks, remember?’
‘Yeah, yeah.’
He gave the Rock-Ola one last look, blew out an irritated breath, and then joined her at the counter. Mary pulled a menu out of the bracket by the salt and pepper shakers, mostly so she wouldn’t have to look at the frown-line between his eyes and the way his lower lip stuck out.
Look, he was saying without saying a word (this, she had discovered, was one of the more questionable long-term effects of being married). I won our way through the wilderness while you slept, killed the buffalo, fought the Injuns, brought you safe and sound to this nifty little oasis
in the wilderness, and what thanks do I get? You won’t even let me play ‘Tweedlee Dee’ on the jukebox! Never mind, she thought. We’ll be gone soon, so never mind.
Good advice. She followed it by turning her full attention to the menu. It harmonized with the rayon uniforms, the neon clock, the juke, and the general decor (which, while admirably subdued, could still only be described as Mid-Century Rebop). The hot dog wasn’t a hot dog; it was a Hound Dog. The cheeseburger was a Chubby Checker and the double cheeseburger was a Big Bopper. The specialty of the house was a loaded pizza; the menu promised ‘Everything on It But the (Sam) Cooke!’
‘Cute,’ she said. ‘Poppa-ooo-mow-mow, and all that.’
‘What?’ Clark asked, and she shook her head.
The young waitress came over, taking her order pad out of her apron pocket. She gave them a smile, but Mary thought it was perfunctory; the woman looked both tired and unwell. There was a coldsore perched above her upper lip, and her slightly bloodshot eyes moved restlessly about the room. They touched on everything, it seemed, but her customers.
‘Help you folks?’
Clark moved to take the menu from Mary’s hand. She held it away from him and said, ‘A large Pepsi and a large ginger ale. To go, please.’
‘Y’all oughtta try the cherry pie!’ the redhead called over in her hoarse voice. The younger woman flinched at the sound of it. ‘Rick just made it! You gonna think you died and went to heaven!’ She grinned at them and placed her hands on her hips. ‘Well, y’all are in Heaven, but you know what I mean.’
‘Thank you,’ Mary said, ‘but we’re really in a hurry, and — ‘
‘Sure, why not?’ Clark said in a musing, distant voice. ‘Two pieces of cherry pie.’
Mary kicked his ankle — hard — but Clark didn’t seem to notice. He was staring at the redhead again, and now his mouth was hung on a spring. The redhead was clearly aware of his gaze, but she didn’t seem to mind. She reached up with one hand and lazily fluffed her improbable hair.
‘Two sodas to go, two pieces of pie for here,’ the young waitress said. She gave them another nervous smile while her restless eyes examined Mary’s wedding ring, the sugar shaker, one of the overhead fans. ‘You want that pie à la mode?’ She bent and put two napkins and two forks on the counter.
‘Y — ‘ Clark began, and Mary overrode him firmly and quickly. ‘No.’
The chrome pie case was behind the far end of the counter. As soon as the waitress walked away in that direction, Mary leaned over and hissed: ‘Why are you doing this to me, Clark? You know I want to get out of here!’
‘That waitress. The redhead. Is she — ‘
‘And stop staring at her!’ Mary whispered fiercely. ‘You look like a kid trying to peek up some girl’s skirt in study hall!’
He pulled his eyes away . . . but with an effort. ‘Is she the spit-image of Janis Joplin, or am I crazy?’
Startled, Mary cast another glance at the redhead. She had turned away slightly to speak to the short-order cook through the pass-through, but Mary could still see at least two-thirds of her face, and that was enough. She felt an almost audible click in her head as she superimposed the face of the redhead over the face on record albums she still owned — vinyl albums pressed in a year when nobody owned Sony Walkmen and the concept of the compact disc would have seemed like science fiction, record albums now packed away in cardboard boxes from the
neighborhood liquor mart and stowed in some dusty attic alcove; record albums with names like Big Brother and the Holding Company, Cheap Thrills, and Pearl. And the face of Janis Joplin —
that sweet, homely face, which had grown old and harsh and wounded far too soon. Clark was right; this woman’s face was the spitting image of the face on those old albums.
Except it was more than the face, and Mary felt fear swarm into her chest, making her heart feel suddenly light and stuttery and dangerous.
It was the voice.
In the ear of her memory she heard Janis’s chilling, spiraling howl at the beginning of ‘Piece of My Heart.’ She laid that bluesy, boozy shout over the redhead’s Scotch-and-Marlboros voice, just as she had laid one face over the other, and knew that if the waitress began to sing that song, her voice would be identical to the voice of the dead girl from Texas.
Because she is the dead girl from Texas. Congratulations, Mary — you had to wait until you were thirty-two, but you’ve finally made the grade; you’ve finally seen your first ghost.
She tried to dispute the idea, tried to suggest to herself that a combination of factors, not the least of them being the stress of getting lost, had caused her to make too much of a chance resemblance, but these rational thoughts had no chance against the dead certainty in her guts: she was seeing a ghost.
Life within her body underwent a strange and sudden sea-change. Her heart sped up from a beat to a sprint; it felt like a pumped-up runner bursting out of the blocks in an Olympic heat.