plastic, fake-stone, neon jungle of the interchange. He parked the
Chevrolet on the far side of the small structure so that no one down at
Harry’s Fine Food, five hundred yards away, would see it.
He got out, locked the van, and went to have his own lunch.
Breen’s was, at least on the outside, much like the restaurant where
Doyle and the kid had stopped. It was eighty feet long, an aluminum
tube designed to look like a railroad passenger car, with one long
narrow window row around three sides and an entrance cubicle tacked on
the front almost as an afterthought.
Inside, a single width of cracked plasticcoated booths was built onto
the wall beside the contiguous windows. Each booth was equipped with a
scarred ashtray, cylindrical glass sugar dispenser, glass salt and
pepper shakers, a stainless-steel napkin dispenser, and a selector for
the jukebox that stood next to the rest rooms at the extreme east end of
the restaurant. A wide aisle separated the booths from the counter that
ran from one end of the place to the other.
Leland turned right when he went in, walked to the end of the counter,
and sat on the curve where he could occasionally look out the windows
beyond the booths and sec the thuds)ird down at flarry’s.
Because it was the last restaaraunt in the complex, and because the
rush-hour rush had passed by two-thirty in the afternoon, Breen’s was
almost deserted. In a booth just inside the door, a middle-aged couple
worked at hot roast beef sandwiches in mutual stony silence. An Ohio
State Police lieutenant occupied the booth behind them, facing Leland.
He was busy with a cheeseburger and French fries.
In the booth at the far end of the room from Leland, a frowsy waitress
with bleached hair smoked a cigarette and stared at the yellowed tile
ceiling.
The only other person in the place was the counter waitress, who came to
see what Leland wanted. She was perhaps nineteen, a fresh and pretty
blonde with eyes as blue as Leland’s. Her uniform was off the rack of a
discount house, but she had personalized it. The skirt was hemmed eight
inches above her shapely knees. A small embroidered chipmunk capered on
one skirt pocket, a rabbit on the other. She had replaced the uniform’s
original white buttons with red ones. On her left breast stood an
embroidered bird, and on her right breast was her name in fancy script:
lanet. And a cheerful greeting just below the name: Hi there! She had
a sweet smile, a curiously charming way of cocking her head, an almost
Mickey Mouse cuteness-and she was obviously an easy lay.
“Seen the menu?” she asked. Her voice was at once throaty and
childlike.
“Coffee and a cheeseburger,” Leland said.
“French fries too? They’re already made.”
“Well, okay,” he said.
She wrote it down, then winked at him. “Back in a jiff. He watched her
walk up the service aisle behind the counter. Her trim legs scissored
prettily. Her tight uniform clung to the welldelineated halves of her
round ass. Suddenly, though the transformation was impossible, she was
nude. To his eye, her clothes vanished in an instant. He saw all of
her long legs, the divided globe of her behind, the exquisite line of
her slim back . . .
He looked guiltily down at the counter top as he felt his loins tighten,
and he was abruptly confused, disoriented. in that instant he could not
even say where he was.
Janet came back with the coffee and put it in front of him.
“Cream?”
“Yes, please.”
She reached under the counter and came up with a two-inch-high cardboard
container shaped like a milk bottle. She laid out his silverware,
inspected her work, and approved. instead of leaving him to his coffee,
however, she leaned her elbows ()n the counter, propped her chin in her
hands, gave him a saucy grin.
“where are you moving to?” she asked.
Leland frowned. “How did you know I’m moving? ”
“Saw you pull in. Saw the Automover. You moving around here
someplace?”
“No,” he said, pouring cream into his coffee. “California.”
“Oh, wow!” she said. “Great! Palm trees, sunshine, surfing . .