Cute Town

Rebecca found Sal’s Diner in much the same state she remembered leaving it. Cracked vinyl booths, dirty windows with handprints, and a chimney that sported a thick bib of creosote. A few patrons spun idly on vintage bar stools, while a stooped and aged fry cook stood next to a sizzling grill, his attention elsewhere. Rebecca strolled in and seated herself in a corner booth next to the dirtiest window she could find.

Though the height of summer, it was unseasonably chilly, which suited Rebecca just fine. To say that she was overdressed would have been equivalent to saying that Marie Antoinette was overdressed for Woodstock, or Audrey Hepburn for a Sex Pistols concert. Rebecca wore a black ermine coat, flecked with silver, and round black-jade earrings that resembled the pupils of a dragon. Her makeup was demure, that of an empress in the provinces; a wrist-flick of mascara and a daub of lipstick the color of sweet-potato skins. Her bleached hair hung straight, severed in an angular line that met her chin. She looked, in all, like she was in town either to buy it or burn it to the ground.

“Hi there, may I take your order?” a teenage girl with turquoise nails asked.

“You may not,” Rebecca said politely. “Send Sal over please.”

She watched with pleasure as the girl, annoyed, relayed the message to the old fry cook who squinted uncomprehendingly in her direction. He doffed his apron and trotted over, stopping one too many times to check the condiment levels on tables. Upon arrival, his look of perplexion remained.

“You don’t recognize me, do you, Sal?”

“I suppose I should, shouldn’t I?” Sal scratched his chin. He had large ears that made him look a bit batty, and the drooping eyes of a burdened professor.

“Rebecca Addison.”

“Becky?” Sal asked, again squinting.

“Rebecca,” she corrected him.

“Rebecca. Well this is a surprise. How long’s it been?”

“Twenty years.”

“Twenty years. My, my. That long? And you live in...France, is it?”

“Ljubljana.” She let the Slavic syllables unfurl like silk. “Slovenia.”

“That-a-fact?” said Sal, uninterested. “Your parents with you?”

She gave a razor-thin smile. “Just me.”

“How’re your folks getting on? Haven’t seen them in a few years.”

“They’re well. I was in Pittsburgh yesterday,” Rebecca lied.

“You know they live in Arizona now, right?”

Rebecca faltered. “It was a reunion.”

“In Pittsburgh?”

“Of all places,” she said flatly.

Sal bowed his head. “Pittsburgh it is. What can I do for you?”

“I would like a slice of your famous chocolate cake and a cup of decaf, please.”

Her order, however, had fallen on deaf ears as Sal’s attention was suddenly diverted, his eyes transfixed on the window. A hundred yards away, the traffic on Water Street had halted. In the middle of the road, unmoving, was a striped skunk, its tail twitching apprehensively. But rather than horns blaring, every stopped car had a patient and amused head sticking out of its windows. Fingers pointed jovially at the confused creature, who, after starting and stopping a few times eventually made up his mind and shuffled off the road and into the brush.

“Would ya look at that,” muttered Sal, utterly enraptured, his posture improved and his eyes alight. “Incredible.” It took him a few seconds to settle back into reality. “I’m sorry,” he said, “what was it?”

“Chocolate cake and a cup of decaf,” she repeated, irritated.

“I’m sorry. I haven’t served cake in years. The coffee I can do. Something else to eat, maybe?”

Rebecca felt her blood pressure rising, but swallowed her frustration and managed to say, politely, “just the decaf.”

Rebecca had been dreaming of this particular cake the whole journey over the Atlantic. She hadn’t come to Sal’s for a dry cheeseburger, or for his too-chewy chicken tenders, or his crusty lasagna. She had come here for a single, appalling slice of chocolate cake. She intended to sit in her booth with a pen and paper in hand, eat every dry, unfortunate bite, wash it all down with a mug of char-broiled coffee, and make a short list of all the people she wanted to drop in on during her four hours in Cedar Crest. She would be back in the City in time for a real dinner, and back in Europe in time for breakfast.

She should have known this town would never give her what she wanted. Suddenly she was sixteen again, her jeans rubbing against the worn vinyl and lips shut tightly around her sharp braces. She remembered a much more youthful Sal, his hair twisted into crooner’s curls, covering the table with jumbo-sized greasy plates and laughing along with her parents as she ordered a grilled cheese with ‘Moon-ster’.

She tried to find bittersweet solace in the fact that Sal, and by extension Cedar Crest, could not even produce a bad slice of cake. As she turned this new perspective over in her mind, a smile developed. It grew like a wave until it parted her perfectly-painted lips and exposed thirty-two moon-white teeth.

This was why she had come back, after all. To remind herself of what this town had never - could never - offer her. And also to remind a few, hand-picked people what the world outside of Cedar Crest did have to offer. The inability of Sal’s diner to produce even a subpar slice of cake, she realized, not only met, but succeeded her expectations.

“Excuse, me, ma’am, but you’re not Becky Addison, are you?”

A chirpy woman in rubber sandals and her husband’s flannel was regarding her with a cocktail of doubt and excitement.

“I am.”

“Oh, wow. Dave it is her,” the woman called out to her similarly clad and shod husband, who eased his girth out of another booth and clambered over, stopping to shake someone’s hand and inquire as to their health on his way over.

“Well, shit,” he said good-naturedly. “Becky Addison. Dave Miller.” He thumbed towards himself as if she had forgotten. She hadn’t, which disappointed her.

“Shit, indeed,” replied Rebecca.

“Josie,” said the woman. “Josie Collins, well, Miller,” she added with a chuckle and a nod towards the larger flannel.

There followed a long silence as the Millers’ excitement, unreturned, petered out, like a boiling kettle being turned off.

“Well….shit,” exclaimed Dave. “How long you in town for?”

“A few hours.”

“Oh wow,” said Josie. “Too bad you’ll miss the fair.”

“Perhaps next year.”

“You should,” said Josie. “It’s really a great time. I’ve got a booth there. I make jewelry.” She pushed back her hair to reveal a small wind chime dangling from her ear. “Kids are in high school now,” she went on, “and Dave does guided tours on the Delaware. Canoeing. Kayaking. Hey, does Annika’s mother know you’re in town?”

“No,” said Rebecca, folding her paper napkin and creasing it along the diagonal.

“If you’ve got the time, you should go and see her. I know she’d love that. She talks about you all the time. I think she’s still holding out hope that you and Annika will get married some day and move back here.”

“I haven’t seen Annika in over ten years,” Rebecca mused.

“Gosh, wow. I figured you two would’ve been, oh I don’t know, sailing on a yacht in the Mediterranean right now.” Both Millers laughed heartily.

“The Mediterranean is seething with tourists this time of year. October is preferable.”

“Oh,” said Josie, the laughter vanishing. Rebecca smiled inwardly. Let them imagine her and Annika as goddesses, sunning their nude bodies under a golden sun while flutes played in the background, she thought.

“Dave sails, too, you know,” Josie added.

“Really?”

“Not regularly,” Dave admitted shyly, “but a few years ago the wilderness guides entered a lottery that Nat Geo was putting on and I got lucky. Got to be part of a crew that sailed a replica of Shackleton’s ship, the Endurance, down to Antarctica and back. Not as dangerous as you might think, but a hell of an adventure. Got on the cover and everything. The expedition - not me, personally. Gosh, I’m sorry, Becky, but we gotta skedaddle. Liam’s band practice is just about to end. Clarinet. First chair,” he finished with a thumbs up. The pair turned, their rubber sandals squeaking in unison and their flannel fluttering behind them like ancient tartan warriors.

“Nice to see you,” Rebecca said, feeling a strange sense of relief and loss watching the pair disappear. She imagined them waking up that morning and drinking coffee on some balcony overlooking pines. In her mind she saw Josie with a dented enamel mug and sleepy eyes, saying something mundane, like “the finches really love the new feeder.”

Rebecca creased her napkin again. She looked at her list and hesitated, trying to decide whether or not to include Annika’s mother, Holly. What a disappointing woman. All crochet and positivity. None of the venom Rebecca had required in an in-law. Long ago Rebecca had had fantasies of her and Annika dashing off in a busted robin’s egg-blue Volkswagen, Annika’s furious parents hurling a vase of flowers which shattered against the rear window and sent water pouring down it like sad rain. Rebecca wanted to leave Cedar Crest with Annika dangling from her neck in tears, a crater of ash and fire and ruin in their rear-view mirror. Instead, Holly had welcomed her with open arms and been hellishly supportive.

It had doomed their relationship, really. If only Annika had had a witch of a mother, a crisp Puritan with a starched denim-skirt, the kind who would glower with snake-slit eyes as Rebecca teased a hand along her daughter’s neck at Christmas - if only that had been the case - Rebecca would have loved Annika until her dying breath.

She wrote Holly’s name down - just to cross it out.

She looked out the window and sighed. Two men were hiked up on a telephone poll. As she watched, they tacked something up and then, pulling on it, a silver banner rose from the ground like a graceful heron, reading River Days Art and Folk Festival. It caught the sun with such radiance that she had to block the glare with her hand.

“I found you some cake after all,” Sal said, appearing out of nowhere with a two tiered slab of luscious looking cake, its center filled with a luminous white frosting the texture of stucco. “Nice bakery opened up down the street. I popped over and picked you up a slice. Fancy stuff. She makes it with ricotta cheese, which I don’t care for, but everyone seems to love it. This one’s on the house, Becky. And here’s the coffee. Sorry for the wait. Made you a fresh pot.”

“Thank you, Sal,” she said grimly.

“My pleasure.” He vanished into the greasy crucible of a kitchen like a djinn diving back into its lamp.

Rebecca cut into the cake with the side of her fork. It squished marvelously, its ivory center quivering, full of promise.

She took a bite. It was perfect. Heavenly. The faintly tart ricotta balanced out the earthy backdrop of raw, rich cocoa. It was as good as any cake she’d ever had.

She laid her fork down and crumpled up the list, dropping it into the depths of her purse. Taking out a hundred dollar bill, she folded it into a neat little triangle and planted it like a flag in the spunky frosting.

“I thought you said four hours,” her driver remarked, hastily removing his feet from the dashboard and starting up the engine as she slid into the leather interior. “Cute town.”

“Drive.”

“Yes, ma’am. But just so you know, they blocked the main road a few minutes ago to set up for some fair, so I’m gonna have to take the scenic route.”

“Just drive and don’t stop until I can see the Atlantic.”