The Midnight Bride

I put the pot back on the burner and wiped my hands on my apron. I took my time with it. Every night at that counter I watched men decide whether to tell me the truth. The ones about to lie always did something with their hands first. I kept mine on the apron.

"Some guy ran past the window toward the train," I said.

And right then, like I'd paid for it, a freight horn went off a few blocks west where the tracks crossed Archer. Long and loud. Two blasts.

I pointed at the sound with my chin. "That way."

The younger one turned on his stool and looked out the front window. There was nothing out there but an empty bus shelter and wet street.

The older one didn't turn. He looked at me.

"He was running," he said.

"Yeah."

"He look hurt?"

"He looked like a guy running past a diner at two in the morning. I didn't go out and ask him."

"You get a lot of guys running past?"

"It's Archer," I said. "You'd be surprised."

He didn't smile. His eyes went down from my face to my hands, and then to my right wrist. To the cuff.

He looked at it for a long time.

I could hear the freezer motor behind the wall. I could hear the clock over the register tick, which I had never once heard in six years. I could feel my own heartbeat in my cut thumb, pounding.

I held my left hand up so he could see the paper towel. A red spot had soaked through the middle of it.

"Chili can," I said. "Our cook went home sick, so I'm doing his job and mine. I'm a waitress. I'm bad at cans."

"That's a lot of blood for a thumb."

"You should see the can."

I picked up the pot again and topped off his cup, even though he hadn't touched it. It was something to do. It was what I would do for anybody. A full cup said nothing was wrong here.

The younger one had turned back around. I saw him look past me, through the pass-through window into the kitchen. From his stool you could see most of it. The grill. The prep table. The cases of eggs stacked crooked against the cooler door, and the cardboard sign hanging off the handle.

And the mop bucket by the back door, full of pink water.

His eyes stopped on the bucket.

I wiped the counter in front of him with a rag that was already clean.

Then he looked down at his coffee, like he hadn't seen anything at all. He picked up the cup and drank half of it.

Maybe he hadn't understood what he was looking at. Maybe he had.

"Good coffee," he said.

"It's burnt," the older one said.

"It's two in the morning," I said. "It's always burnt."