Leaving the Comfort Cafe (8 page)

But when he entered the room for that first board meeting, he had a feeling he was entering a nickel-and-dime poker game, low in stakes, but high in theatrics.

The aldermen met in what used to be a bingo hall, which enjoyed a successful run until the more conservative citizens voiced their concern of having a gambling establishment in town during an election year. To solve the problem, the town simply bought it, the mayor waxing poetic about how it could be transformed into a youth center or could be a valuable investment in Main Street real estate. Robert told Austin the whole saga over the phone the week before Austin came to town. The mayor had a rare talent of bulldozing through an idea and giving you the impression that you had come up with the idea yourself. Of course, there was a small meeting room at the Town Hall, but the mayor thought it was important to move the meeting to a larger building to accommodate the large numbers of citizens who would attend meetings to voice their opinions on issues. So they conveniently moved to the old bingo hall that was just one block from Town Hall. The building never got the extreme makeover. Whether it was because the parlor couldn’t shake its previous reputation as a cesspool of sin or if the building was just in such dire need of extensive maintenance, Austin wasn’t sure. What he was sure of was that, despite the intensive steam cleaning, the beige carpet could not shed the smell of old cigarettes and a strange odor that reminded Austin of old ketchup.

The mayor was adamant that arrangements be made for overflow seating for every meeting, but Queen told Austin not to worry about it—the meetings were rarely attended by more than three citizens, including the reporter from the Conyers Clarion.

The Clarion was the only media outlet that covered Conyers—a weekly newspaper that carried only local news. The larger newspapers didn’t consider it worth the 45-minute trek from Raleigh to cover the mundane politics of a town with a population of only nine thousand.

Queen warned Austin that that board meetings began at 5:30 and frequently continued until 9:30, and nothing would be accomplished. Aldermen would drone on about the issues, somehow tying the topic to a totally unrelated family event or something they saw on the news yesterday, and in the end saying absolutely nothing. It was merely an effort to create wonderful quotes for the local weekly newspaper, although the local reporter never used them.

The three town aldermen sat at a long table in the front of the room. Before each meeting, Queen placed the corresponding alderman name plate and left the gavel for the mayor (the mayor actually wanted to take the gavel home with him, but after he failed to return it on several occasions, Queen became the unofficial “keeper of the gavel.”) They sat in the same order, left to right. At far right, Alderman Richfield equated everything to the breakdown of the family unit, though what that had to do with water and sewer rates had yet to be discovered. Alderman Ingram was the only minority on the board and there was so much PC paranoia in the room that everyone agreed with him no matter how ridiculous his ideas. Queen said Ingram did it on purpose, just for kicks and to see how far he could go. It was just a matter of time before he suggested setting up an alien-monitoring network like SETI to search for intelligent life just to watch all the Anglo-Saxon board members nod their heads and struggle to hide their consternation.

Jane, who sat in the middle, slightly toward the left, was the infamous Bed & Breakfast owner and patron saint of hippies. Her mother’s maiden name was Conyers, but despite the name, neither she nor her relatives had any remote connection to the town’s name. However, she still insisted she was the child of someone, somewhere, whose second cousin founded the town with great General Isaac Conyers, who fought off Sherman on that very ground during the Civil War, praise God and pass the ammunition. But she never mentioned that it was doubtful Sherman ever came through Conyers, and General Isaac Conyers was a relative unknown except among the most OCD of historical scholars, and General Conyers was better known for his hasty retreats than his military strategy.

Austin knew Blythe was in the building before ever seeing her. He had noticed on the agenda that the Comfort Café would provide a sandwich snack, a treat Queen said was necessary to ensure that board members arrived on time. Austin had assumed that, given Blythe’s recent generosity treating folks to dessert at the mayor’s expense, the Comfort Café would have sent a different employee, but he felt her presence the same way you sense an impending thunderstorm by the hint of electricity in the air. He faintly heard her awkward gait coming down the hallway. She scuttled into the room pushing a stainless steel tray full of sandwiches, neatly placed beside labels to distinguish between turkey, club and chicken salad. She seemed to take special pleasure in looking at the sign that said “No food or drink allowed in meeting hall.”

The sign, of course, did not apply to the town board.

Her tousled hair was somewhat redeemed that night, caught in back with a purple scrunchie that matched absolutely nothing she was wearing. Her fake fingernails were actually a subdued shade of pink, but the nail on her right index finger had chipped off and been hastily reapplied, and it made her hand look off center, and even a bit unnerving.

She doled out the sandwiches—even serving from the correct side, just like a waitress at a “real” restaurant. Her classic white Oxford shirt and black slacks made her look almost elegant, until the fluorescent lights hit her silhouette just right and Austin noticed she was wearing a blue bra underneath.

The mayor glared at her when she handed him his sandwich. “This is wheat bread. I wanted white.”

“Wheat is better for ya,” Blythe countered. “It’ll keep you regular.”

“And it’s turkey. I asked for salami,” he continued.

“You know they genetically engineer turkeys so they have these huge breasts so you can get better pickin’s at Thanksgiving? Some of them have chests so big they can hardly walk, they just teeter and totter here and there. Like a farm full of Dolly Partons, it is.”

“I ordered a—”

“A farm full of Dolly Partons it is, it is.”

Austin didn’t know what that had to do with the mayor’s request, but it effectively ended the conversation. When Blythe served Austin, she slipped him an extra brownie. Unfortunately, councilman Ingram noticed.

“Hey, he got a brownie and I didn’t,” he said, half-kidding, half-serious. “I don’t have dessert.”

“Hm. I guess you don’t.” Blythe did not volunteer any more information.

Instead of pouring the glasses of tea herself, she simply left the pitcher on the meeting table, strategically placed so it covered the mayor’s nameplate. She gave Austin a quick wink as she took her cart and headed out of the room.

“Miss…” the mayor was desperate to have the last word. “This is not what I ordered.”

“Don’t complain,” Blythe called behind her. “I didn’t even spit in it this time. I’ll be back to pick up the plates.”

“I don’t know why they keep that girl on staff,” the mayor said, once he realized that Blythe was out of earshot, as if he were afraid angering her would mean he would inadvertently treat more townspeople to dessert. “She’s trouble.”

“Actually, Blythe started a campaign to help support our artist residency program,” Jane said. “She truly wants what is best for this town.”

“I don’t have a problem with your residency, I just don’t know if it’s the town’s responsibility to contribute to it,” Richfield said.

“I’m not asking for the town to sponsor or contribute to it.”

“But you expect the town to provide police protection and fire protection for all these folks you’re going to bring in,” the mayor said. “Now maybe it’s not direct dollars being put in your hand, but the bottom line is it all comes from the tax payers.”

“Three. I’ll be bringing three people in. I don’t think this is going to put a strain on our resources. Just what do you have against me anyway?” Jane leveled her gray gaze at the man, as if threatening to reveal some type of personal information about his wayward hippie child in the middle of a town board meeting, where it would be recorded in the town minutes and sealed forever in town history.

“I still didn’t get a brownie,” Ingram said.

The meeting drained on until around 10:30—sucking the life out of everyone in the room. It started when Richfield brought forth a constituent’s request to rename a road after Josephine Williamston, a longtime Conyers matriarch. Austin suspected that Williamston was a relative of Richfield—otherwise, why wasn’t the constituent here to present the request in person? Each issue lent itself to a new draft of comic book adventures. Austin sat at a small side table on the right of the aldermen. From their angle, it appeared that he was making important notations on town policy. From Austin’s angle, it was an unfolding adventure. He checked them off one by one:

• Garbage trucks in disrepair? Their problems were due to an infiltration of snakes in the engines, the very curses of Eden that followed only the commands of the Snake Lady.

• Proposed expense of repaving the sidewalks? The magical waitress will use her superior culinary skills to stuff the cracks in the sidewalks with a special type of sage raspberry tart. The tart not only magically heals the concrete, but every spring, raspberry plants line the sidewalk.

All the issues came down to one principle: innovate or die. Change and encourage new businesses, expand the tax bases, build more apartment complexes to draw residents who wanted to escape the traffic and inflated housing market of the larger cities…

…or disappear into a dried up ghost town with nothing but a gas station.

When Austin left the meeting, he saw Blythe sitting on the hood of his truck like some type of Southern belle ornamentation.

“Don’t tell me you don’t have anything better to do than wait for the town board meeting to end?”

“I just came back to pick up the plates. It’d be easier to do it just box-lunch style, but the mayor likes to use plates. Says it’s better for the environment.”

“Hm.” Austin wondered how using plates in Conyers, North Carolina, at one town board meeting was going to reverse the effects of global warming.

“I know it must seem like such a crazy little town…and it is.” Blythe took out a pack of cigarettes from her pocket and withdrew one, but didn’t light it. She placed it between her fingers and held it like she was about to take a long drag on it, but instead, it just dangled there, loosely in her fingers, almost like a community theatre actor who didn’t smoke but wanted to convince the audience that she did.

“Well, I guess it’s a good thing that I’m just passing through.”

“Don’t say that you’re just passing through. That’s what I told myself. I’ve been here six years now. Every year I tell myself, this is the last one. That I’ll leave before the next cotton harvest. And every year I look out my window to see those flaky white boils and I realize that while I’ve been making plans that another year has passed.”

“Do you know when I first interviewed for a job here, I got this town confused with the Conyers in Georgia, where they had a sighting of the Virgin Mary. Queen told me no such miracles occurred here.”

“I’ve seen the Virgin Mary in Conyers.”

“What? When?”

“Meet me after work tomorrow night, and I’ll show you.”

“Where?”

“At the café. Bring a bottle of water and a helmet.”

“A helmet? What kind of helmet?”

“Never mind. I’ll take care of everything.” She shook her head as if throughout her entire life, she was always taking care of everything. “Meet me at the café when you get off work.”

****

Austin thought he understood the bottled water, but he didn’t want to venture a guess at the helmet. Helmet? To see the Virgin Mary? And what kind of helmet did she mean? Football? Motorcycle? Crash! He hadn’t asked after the town board meeting—his sugar buzz from the brownie had long since fizzled and he found himself wanting nothing more than to go home and sink into bed. So he did. It was only the next morning before he realized he had fallen asleep in his clothes.

He thought she had been kidding about the helmet and the water, but when he stopped by the café to grab a cup of Joe to go, Blythe made a very dramatic effort to indicate to all the waitresses present that from here on out, no matter what, Austin was not to get decaffeinated coffee—he would either have to take it “leaded” or get over it.

“You and me,” she pointed her slender index finger at him, “you and me have a date to see the Virgin.” She said “virgin” so loud, Austin believed half of the next county would strain their necks to hear, thinking this was some kind of bizarre sexual escapade.

****

When he pulled into the Comfort Café that afternoon, Blythe darted out the front door before he could turn off the engine, wearing shorts and a t-shirt that read, “Reality is Overrated,” and her hair was pulled into a tight ponytail.

“Um…just what exactly is it that we’re doing?” Austin asked.

She laughed. “We’re biking to the Virgin, silly.”

“Biking?” Austin didn’t even own a bike—well, he did, but it was gathering rust in his parents’ basement. It was not among the priority items he had brought with him to Conyers. “But I don’t have a bike. At least, not here.”

“I had a feeling you didn’t. You don’t look like the biking type.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Your butt’s too narrow.”

“Too…my wha—”

“Relax. I got ya covered.” She gestured to the back of the Comfort Café. She darted behind the business and then emerged with two bikes that looked as if they must have purchased at a yard sale featuring things that didn’t sell at an earlier yard sale. The rusty handlebars were on their last stop to the junkyard…unless Blythe had somehow managed to pull them from the junkyard.

She also had two helmets with her, and she slid their straps across the bike handlebars. She then got in between the two bikes, placed one hand on each of the handlebars, and awkwardly walked them over to Austin. The uneven parking lot caused the bike on her right to bob more than the one on her left, and she stumbled, kicking up a few stray pieces of gravel. One helmet was pink and looked as if it were borrowed from an elementary school girl with a very large head, and the other was an older black helmet that had a slight crack in its base. Austin chose the one with a crack.