Leaving the Comfort Cafe (3 page)

Of course, the item that attracted Austin’s attention more than anything else was the handmade sign in the front window declaring the best pecan pie in the world, written in an awkward cursive scrawl. The promise of a homemade Southern delicacy enabled Austin to see past the chipping white paint and faded yellow curtains.

An old girlfriend once told him the pale blue golf shirt brought out the gentle gray flecks in his eyes. But when he walked into the restaurant, he felt that the baby blue pastel made him look immature and callow in comparison to the bold, bright and dirty flannels and overalls of the working men who were regulars at the café counter. The farmers straddled silver barstools and darted skeptical stares in his direction while cradling coffee cups. Austin walked to a booth beside a window, located as far from the front door as possible. He picked up one of the abandoned sections of the newspaper left on one of the tables. When he sat at his booth, the red vinyl seat—which had been repaired and re-repaired with duct tape—made a loud squeak. Austin had hoped to hide behind one of the newspaper sections, only to find, to his dismay, that the crossword puzzle had already been completed…and poorly.
Tennessee Williams play, Cat on a Hot Tin _______
was answered as: C-A-N-S, four letters across. Austin pulled a pen from his pocket, resolutely scratched out the answer and wrote R-O-O-F. Then of course, that messed up number five down. Austin folded the paper and strategically used it to cover what looked like a syrup stain that had somehow escaped a waitress’ dishrag. He just wanted to start the day over, and didn’t need a crossword puzzle to frustrate his frazzled mind any more than it already was. Austin rubbed his nose, trying to escape the burning smell of bacon grease that reminded him that the Comfort Café served breakfast 24/7. It was hard for Austin to convince his body to let go of the fight-or-flight mode it had adopted while looking for snake eggs in tall grass.

A grandmotherly kitchen matriarch with cantaloupe bosoms handed Austin a menu that had been laminated one too many times. She plopped a paper placemat in front of him that featured a North Carolina map, highlighting all of the state’s tourism treasures. It mistakenly listed the tulip as the state flower.

“What can I get ya?” She had long fingernails. Austin remembered an article he read about how long fingernails harbored all kinds of bacteria. He glanced around, searching for the restaurant’s sanitation rating. But when the matriarch cleared her throat, he felt it best not to think about it.

“I’ll have some of the pecan pie, please. And coffee. Decaf.”

“I’ll tell Blythe to bring it on out.”

“Thanks.”

Austin kept telling himself Conyers wasn’t a bad place. It was just a detour. A pit stop on his way to someplace else. But pit stops are usually the first exits on the route to mediocrity. His ribcage ached. He wasn’t sure why.

“Well, hello there, Austy.”

Austin didn’t recognize the voice. And no one had ever called him Austy in his entire life. Ever. Austin wasn’t too happy someone was trying to start. He followed the direction of the voice, and found Dan Murray, the mayor of Conyers, meandering slowly toward him. It was as if the mayor sucked all the air out of the room, like a massive black hole, and not even light could escape the massive mounds of political BS and good ol’ boy politics that were the gravity holding the core of the town together. Without the mayor’s black hole, they thought they would all spin helplessly off into outer space in a cascade of cracked sidewalks, dilapidated downtown stores and overworked garbage trucks.

Before his hasty departure, Robert told Austin he believed the mayor was one of the few people in the twenty-first century who still used the word “colored,” but the mayor did at least have enough sense not to use the term in front of Queen. The mayor—he was never called Dan, as if the title of his office automatically took the place of his first name—swaggered over to Austin’s booth with an off-balance side-to-side totter, like a character out of a bad television Western.

“Austy, Austy, Austy…I hear you done gave ol’ Robert the runs…” The mayor laughed, as if this was supposed to be funny. He sat across from Austin. Though not fat, the mayor’s girth was just wide enough to cause the table to rock slightly—indicating that one of its legs was a little shorter than the others. Though the vinyl seat cushion on the mayor’s side seemed to be in as equally pathetic condition as the one on Austin’s side, the cushion didn’t squeak when the mayor took his seat. “Austy, we’ve got a lot of work to do. And I’m glad you’re on board with us. Robert—now don’t get me wrong, he was a fine fella—but he just didn’t understand what Conyers was all about. He wanted all development, and business and liquor by the drink, and I guess that’s fine for other places, but it’s just not who we are. That’s what I said to the other folks on the board, I said, ‘that Austy…Austy is a boy who knows what we’re about. He’s our man. That’s Austy.’”

Why the hell is he calling me Austy, and how can I get him to stop?

“Austy, do you know what the biggest problem is facing our town? Seriously, what is the biggest problem facing our town?”

Didn’t we go over this in the job interview? Why am I sweating again? I just took a shower.

“Well, Mr. Mayor, many towns like Conyers find that they can become revitalized as presenting themselves as a bedroom community to a larger city. We’re about an hour-and-a-half from some larger areas. If we can convince folks that they can get bigger, better, housing, a safer place to raise the kids—they might be willing to make a longer commute. Especially if they can carpool. Now, if we could become a hub for a train or bus service—”

“Hippies.”

“What?”
Hippies? Does anyone even say that word any more? Are there any hippies still around?

“Hippies. That’s the problem. One word, and it’s hippies. With their tie-dyed nonsense.”

“I’m sorry. I thought you said ‘hippies’.”

“Of course I said hippies. Let me give it to you straight. You know Jane—she just got elected last spring—she’s trying to establish an Arts Council for Conyers; have visiting artists, musicians, all that stuff. They can work with the kids in the school, donate works of art to be auctioned for charity, you know how it goes. All we got to do is let them stay for free at her place, Jane’s Bed & Breakfast, and they can give a free concert or painting or whatever it is that they do. I’ve been trying to tell her this is just one of those crazy little dreams she gets. Last year she wanted to try to get us to be an official bird sanctuary—whatever that means. She just gets these ideas in her mind and she’s like a Rottweiler just shaking it and shaking it and not letting go. You know how women are.”

“Yes.” Austin had no idea “how women are.”

“And now she wants us to become some kind of touchy-feely-artsy place? Like Seattle or Sedona or San Francisco. Can you believe that?”

“Well, many towns find that having an active arts community can actually increase—”

“You’re not listening, boy. They stay for free. The artists. They freeload off the town’s dime. They don’t pay taxes, they don’t have jobs, and they probably have outstanding warrants for smoking weed or something. You get stuff going and pretty soon it’ll be like Berkley, hippies playing music on the street, expecting you give them a handout. Then after hippies you get the other two h’s coming into town: the homeless and the whores.”

What planet has this man been living on?

“But don’t you worry, Austy. You know, I’m the third generation of my family to be leading this town. It’s a tradition. Ought to change our surname to Mayor, you know, put it on the mailbox and whatnot. And you and me, Austy—we’re a team.”

“Austin.”

“Excuse me?”

“I go by Austin, thank you.”

The mayor gave Austin a perplexed stare. His eyes seemed to glaze over and his left eyebrow developed an odd twitch. A low, guttural, gravelly ‘errrr’ slouched its way across the table, sounding strangely like a growl. Austin wasn’t sure if the noise was coming from the mayor, or if someone in the café was grinding coffee. Would they grind their own coffee here? It has to be the mayor. Austin picked up the crossword puzzle again, only to leave a small piece of the newspaper behind on the small, sticky syrup patch on the Formica table. He desperately searched for another crossword clue to complete in an attempt to take his mind off the mayor and whatever unearthly sound seemed to be vibrating from being.

Austin glanced at the crossword.
Honorable sandwich. Four letters down. Second letter “E.”

The mayor tapped his fingers on the paper placemat that featured a map that highlighted all of North Carolina’s tourism spots. The mayor nervously kept tapping Grandfather Mountain over and over and over and over—

“We’ll talk about this later, Austy. I’ll catch up with you first thing in the morning. We got a lot to go over.” He slowly turned back to Austin in a manner that looked intensely rehearsed for dramatic effect. “You know, I told them to hire you. They wanted to get some guy from over in Aberdeen. I told them you may be a young fella, but you’ve got a lot of sense. You’ve got a way of seeing things the way they are. You’re grounded in reality. You know what Conyers is all about.”

The mayor exited the restaurant, lingering in the parking lot to shake hands and shoot the breeze with his constituents. Austin watched him from the window. He picked up his pen.

Honorable sandwich—four letters—H-E-R-O.

“Mercy, children!” A frizzled, bright red perm slathered into sight, connected to a young woman with bright blue eye shadow and even brighter blue fingernails. With a smooth, almost disturbing movement of her wrist, she slammed a huge tray of food directly in front of him. She shook her head, shut her eyes and let out a low groan.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, hon. It’s just my stomach. I’m on my period.”

“Oh.” Austin tried not to stare.
Dear God, please don’t let this be my waitress.

“Here you go, sir,” she said. “One plate eggs over easy with the decorative parsley carefully stacked to the side and not touching the food. Grits and hash browns, bacon and a side of sausage. Don’t you love places that serve breakfast all day? They were out of fresh blueberries for the pancakes, but we do have some of the canned stuff, though Grandma over there won’t tell you it’s canned, so I wanted to hold off because I know the canned stuff makes you irregular. Here’s your check. Comes to five seventy-five and I took the liberty of already adding in my tip—since you obviously never do—and an extra fifty cents for a pretty smile.”

Her bright pink lips parted to reveal well-kept, surprisingly straight, teeth.

“Now, if there’s nothing else you’ll be needing, I’ll take that whenever you’re—”

“Uh, miss…I’m sorry, but this is not my order.”

“Whadaya mean it’s not…” Her pale fingers darted into her apron pocket, pulled out a small, black notebook, and scurried through the pages, searching for the culprit. “Then if this isn’t yours, you must have ordered the tenderloin steak?”

“No.”

“The ham hocks?”

“No.”

“Barbecue? Caesar salad?”

“No and no. I ordered—”

“You ordered the fifth of vodka.”

“I wha—”

“Just foolin’. I remember now. Grandma over there told me. One slice of pecan pie. Coffee.”

“Decaf.” Austin gently reminded her.

“Decaf coffee. That’s like saying ‘I want to spend the night with you, I just don’t want to have sex.’”

“Excuse me?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to say ‘sex’ before two o’ clock.”

Austin wondered why the time made any difference.

“And I guess this delectable feast was for…ooo…” Her eyes curved into narrow slits, looking through the window and pulverizing the mayor with what Austin could assume would be a felony assault. “I always thought that man would skip out on his bill one day. I don’t care who he is. I don’t care if his grandfather fought in the such-and-such war. I don’t care if his ancestry dates back to Stonewall Jackson. I don’t care if he helped tie up the Mayflower when they put it in dry dock. I even don’t care if he’s related to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That man is not skipping out on his bill.”

“I think he’s just outside talking to some folks. He’ll probably come right back.”

“That sonofabitch.” She hauled the overloaded tray up on her shoulder as if she were burping a baby and darted out the front door.

Austin couldn’t hear the conversation that followed, but he could tell by the mayor’s startled expression and the animated bobbing of the waitress’ head that the discussion was definitely, and enthusiastically, one-sided. She pushed the entire tray into the mayor’s arms. As he struggled to balance the tray, a few biscuits tumbled onto the pavement where a constituent’s beagle was more than happy to help himself to a free sample. The waitress then reached into the mayor’s back pocket, pulled out his wallet and removed funds to pay the bill. She returned into the café casually, confidently, totally unaware of the stares and whispers beginning to sizzle from the background. Some country music station was playing on the kitchen radio, and she seemed to walk in easy rhythm to the music.

“Sorry about that, dear. I always knew he was going to slip out on me.”

“I think that was actually my fault.” Austin was almost afraid to volunteer who he was. “You see, I’m the new town manager, and I don’t think he was pleased with—”

“Town manager?” Her bosom was uncomfortably close to Austin’s eye level. “I didn’t know we had a town manager. I thought the town just managed itself.”

“Believe me, I wish it did.”

She brought out a cup and poured his coffee.

Austin noticed the handle on the coffeepot was black, not the bright orange that signified decaf. She also brought him the pie à la mode, though he didn’t ask for it that way. But after seeing what she did to the mayor, he decided not to argue.

“So, Mr. Town Manager…how long have you worked here?

Austin looked at his watch. “Officially, just a couple of hours.”