Intruders
I finished in the bathroom and dressed in an old suit. I planned to spend the day working around the restaurant, so I didn’t see any reason to wear anything better. I chose a grey flannel which Walt never approved of, ate a quick breakfast, and headed for the door. I took the keys for Walt’s Special from a hook over the hallway table. I also gathered up the cash Doc had tossed down the night before. It was a hundred dollars in fives and tens.
I flattened it out and tucked it in a separate place in my wallet. I didn’t want his money. I didn’t want any payment for what I’d done for him. I’d barely done anything at all. The next time I saw him, I’d put the money in his hand while I spoke my apology. He didn’t have to accept the apology, but he would take the money if I had to make him.
I went downstairs. As I opened the door onto the sidewalk, the December cold bit into my flesh. I thought about going back to get my overcoat, but I decided not to. “To hell with it.” I said aloud. I’d be inside again before the cold had a chance to make me shiver. My one and only precaution was to stuff my hands into my pockets to protect my arthritic joints.
I went around the building into the alley to let myself into the restaurant through the kitchen. I hadn’t used the front door to enter the closed restaurant in a while. The last time I did, one of the passers-by thought I was opening for the day and tried to walk in behind me. He was upset when I explained that Walt’s Special was closed. I was upset that I had to explain myself. Since that encounter, I always entered and exited from the alley.
As I unlocked the steel security door, I tried to make up my mind about whether to start with the inventory or the books. I didn’t mind the work of counting all the movable goods in the entire restaurant. The work was tedious and dull, but it wasn’t taxing. I was dubious about having to do the books. I was especially dubious about having to reconcile the entire year.
I’d done the work in the ledgers before, but I never liked it. I didn’t trust myself with the green accounting sheets and all the arithmetic which went into them. I’d seen Walt fly through the entries and never make a mistake. On the rare occasion when he did, he always knew right where to find it. My errors were inevitable, and they hid from me like naughty children who were out past curfew.
I shoved the security door open and stepped into the kitchen. I was getting ready to lock the door behind me when I heard a noise. Someone dropped a box, then muttered as he picked it up. The sound came from the dry storage room.
No one would have been scheduled to work that early. Someone must’ve broken in. I looked around for something to arm myself against the intruder. I remembered the gun I bought for Benny the bartender to keep next to the cash register, but I dismissed the idea. Benny always took the gun with him to make the nightly cash drop at the bank’s overnight deposit. The gun would be with him, not behind the bar.
My roving eyes landed on a heavy meat cleaver stuck in the end of the butcher block. I grabbed the handle and hefted the broad-bladed knife. I’d used the cleaver to split chickens in half. It was both heavy and sharp, good characteristics for a weapon.
I tip-toed to the storage room door and heard footsteps on the concrete floor inside. The footsteps neared the door. I flattened myself against the wall on the doorknob side of the opening and waited for the criminal to exit. I raised the cleaver over my head. The door opened, and a man walked out. I shouted. “FREEZE!”
He didn’t freeze. He sprang at me. With a lightning-fast movement, he grabbed my wrist, shook the cleaver from my hand, spun me around, and slammed me against the wall. He smashed my face into the plaster and bent my arm behind my back.
A voice I knew very well said my name. “Law, what are you doing here?”
The man released me and stood back while I turned around. I shouted as I rubbed my elbow and shoulder, both of which ached from being bent too far. “GODDAMNIT, OWEN! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE?”
He answered my question with another question. “I was doing the inventory. What are you doing here?”
I pointed at the dry storage room. “I CAME TO DO THE FUCKING INVENTORY!” I picked up the meat cleaver and shook it at him. “I might’ve split your skull!”
He was much calmer than I was. “I might have broken your arm.”
“DAMN YOU AND YOUR MARINE TRAINING!”
I was about to blast the WWII veteran with more anger when the swing door between the kitchen and the dining room opened and Bea Arlott walked through. “What in all that is holy is going on in here?”
I shook the cleaver in Bea’s direction and blasted her with the anger I’d intended for Owen. “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING HERE?”
She pointed two fingers and a smoldering cigarette at me. “Don’t you point that cleaver at me, Law Edwards! I’m doing your books without so much as a cup of coffee as thanks!”
I carried the cleaver back to the butcher block and hung it on the peg which was there for the purpose. I rubbed my face with both of my hands to smear the fear and anger out of my expression and held my hands up to surrender to my friends. “I give up. Please, tell me again what both of you are doing here.”
Owen went first because Bea was busy puffing her cigarette. “I came to do the inventory. I knew Walt wouldn’t be able to do it because he’s…uh…not available. It’s got to get done for the end of the year, so I came to do it.”
I looked from Owen to Bea. “And you?”
Bea spoke from inside a pall of cigarette smoke that was haloed around her head. “What do you think I’m doing, you silly old man? I’m your accountant. I’m doing your books. I know poor Walt wouldn’t be able to do them and I wasn’t going to let you muddle them up.”
She turned on her high heels and strode through the swing door into the dining room while she muttered the whole way. “Points a cleaver at me. Wants to know what I’m doing.” She stopped on the other side of the door and shoved back through it. “I’M LEARNING TO RIDE A HORSE!” She shouted, then withdrew from the kitchen a second time.
I pointed at the swing door. “What the fuck was all that about?”
Owen shook his head of white hair. “You scared her with your yelling. She’s already overwrought from worrying about Walt. She kept asking if I’d heard anything new. I didn’t have anything to tell her that she didn’t already know. She’s worried and she’s scared. She loves Walt, and she loves you, and she’s worried about what might happen.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “She said she loves me?”
He shook his head again. “Not in so many words, but she beat my ear all morning about what you did for her and her brother, back during the war. She said how you helped punish the men who killed him and how you encouraged her to learn a profession so she could stand on her own. She even said how you and Walt offered her an apartment and let her use the little storefront office next door when she wanted to open her accounting business.”
“She said all that?”
“Yeah, that and more. You shouldn’t have yelled at her.”
“Oh fuck.” I rubbed my face again. “I meant to yell at you.”
He grinned like an ass. “You can yell at me as much as you want. I can take it. She can’t.”
“You can take it, can’t you? I seem to remember you taking a lot of yelling in the early days.”
Owen’s grin stretched into a broad smile. “Yeah, but that was all Walt. You and I always got along.”
I shook my arm back and forth. “That was before you tried to break my arm.”
He chuckled over my teasing, then frowned with concern. “How’s Walt?”
My face frowned to match his. “He’s alright, I guess.”
“You guess?”
I shrugged helplessly. “You know Walt. He hates to sit still. He’s bored. He keeps trying to do things and I have to keep stopping him. It’s been hard on both of us.”
“I’m sorry.” His words were simple and heartfelt. He was genuinely sorry for both of us. His sorrow wasn’t pity. It came from a different place. He was sorry for us, for our struggles, for the uncertainty of life. Owen cared for Walt and me, and we cared for him. Much of that was because he’d been with the restaurant for fifteen years. The rest of it was because he was married to my niece.
When Owen started as an assistant chef, my niece Julie was a hostess. I didn’t even know she was my niece at the time; that came out later. She and Owen took up together and fell in love. They married within a year and eventually had three children. Owen always thanked me for saving his job when Walt tried to fire him over an early mistake. A little bit of his thanks was because he enjoyed his work at Walt’s Special. Most of it was because he wouldn’t have gotten to know my niece if I hadn’t saved his job for him. I always thanked him right back for taking care of Julie and giving her a nice home and children to raise. She was a wonderful mother who regularly brought her kids around for Walt and me to spoil.
“How are the kids?” I asked to change the subject to happier things.
Owen wasn’t so easily distracted. “They’re ok.” He immediately brought us back to the topic of Walt. “Will he be able to come back here to run the restaurant like he used to?”
I shook my head to tell him the bitter reality which my husband had yet to face. “The doctors say if he wants to stay alive, he’ll have to give this place up.”
“Shit.” He squared his shoulders and stood at military attention. “I want to buy the restaurant. I want to buy Walt’s Special, and I want you to help me convince Walt to sell it to me. I promise I won’t change a thing. It will always be Walt’s Special. I’ll keep the menu the same. I’ll even ask Walt for his advice on all the major decisions. You and him can have the apartment upstairs as long as you live, and if Walt is up to it, and he wants to come down here and work, he’s welcome anytime.”
I was stunned by his announcement. I stared while I tried to understand everything he said. I’d never considered the idea that Walt’s Special could be owned by someone else. Ever since Walt’s heart attack, I’d thought about the fate of the restaurant, but only in a vague way. My husband was my only priority, and the restaurant a very distant secondary concern.
Owen’s idea was a novel one to me. I liked it. I wondered how Walt would react. There was a beauty to it, a simplicity that I hoped would help to make it palatable for him. My husband’s doctors had warned that he could no longer endure the strain of being the sole proprietor of a demanding business. If he tried to continue, the stress would kill him. If Owen was willing to take over the demands of the business, and if he would continue to involve Walt in decisions, that sounded like the best of both worlds.
Owen grew uneasy from my continued silence. “Say something, would you?”
“I’m with you as far as the idea goes, but there’s a lot of stuff that would need to get worked out. I also have no idea how to put a value on a business like this. The building is one thing, but the business is something else. I don’t know how this stuff works, but if Walt has to give this place up, I can’t think of a better person to carry on with it.”
He exhaled a long breath with a ‘whew’ noise. “I was worried you were going to yell at me. I want this place to thrive. Walt didn’t just build a business; he built a reputation. I won’t do anything to change that. My offer is based on respect and friendship, not opportunism. I hope you know that.”
“I know. If I thought otherwise…” I paused and shook my head at the intensity of the upset I’d feel if I thought he betrayed Walt and me. “If I thought otherwise, I would be very disappointed to lose you as a friend. If I thought otherwise, I’d encourage Walt to close this place rather than let you have it.”
He grinned at what he thought was a joke, then he frowned when he realized that what I’d said was the absolute truth. “You’d sooner see this place closed than let someone have it who you didn’t like?”
I tried to explain how important Walt’s Special was to me and my husband. “This restaurant is Walt’s life’s work. It was his dream from the time he was a young man. His whole life, he worked and saved to open this place. Once he opened it, he worked constantly to keep it going and make certain it was the very best it could be.”
Owen nodded like he understood. “I want the same thing.”
I shook my head again. “You don’t understand. You can’t because this restaurant could never hold the same place in your life that it holds in Walt’s. You’ve got a wife and children. They are your world. They’re the most important thing. Your kids are your legacy. This place will always come second, and that’s how it should be…for you.
“This place is Walt’s legacy. Because of what we are, we can’t have children. All we have is each other and our work. Walt would have been a great dad. He would have loved to be a father, but his nature denied that to him.” I shrugged to dismiss what couldn’t be changed. “That’s alright as far as it goes, but it means that this restaurant is Walt’s child. This is the proof that he lived. If I thought you wouldn’t show it the proper respect, I’d sooner burn it to the ground than let you have it.”
He grinned again at what he thought was a joke. He frowned again when he realized I wasn’t kidding. “You’d really set fire to this place, wouldn’t you?”
“You should never doubt who I am, my friend. Just like your Marine training never left you, the ruthlessness which carried me through The Great War never left me. If I thought that Walt would try to keep going even though the doctors said it would kill him; I’d burn this whole block and not lose a wink of sleep over it.”
I stepped forward so I could speak directly into Owen’s face. “What’s more, if you were in my place, you’d do the same thing. You and I are very much alike. That’s why I trusted you to marry my niece and why I trust you to keep Walt’s dream alive. Or am I mistaken? Maybe you’re not as ruthless as me when something or someone you love is threatened.”
“No, if someone ever threatened my family, that someone would cease to exist.”
I clapped my friend on the shoulder. “Good man. I knew I was right about you. Men like us can always recognize each other, can’t we?”
“Sometimes I wish it wasn’t so. A lot of the time, I wish the world was a kinder place.”
“Me too, my friend.” I stepped back and changed the subject, slightly. “About the other thing, the restaurant, how do we figure it out? I think the easiest way to make our case to Walt is to go to him with all the details settled. I want this to be a relief to him, not another source of stress.”
Owen jerked his head toward the swing door between the kitchen and the dining room. “I think your accountant can help. In fact, I may have already talked to her about it. I might have asked her to do the books here instead of at her office for that very reason. She might have already done the numbers. I might have telephoned a friend who works at the bank to see how much they’d be willing to loan me. They might plan to get back to me by the end of the week.”
I stared again until he got nervous.
“Is that alright?”
“I trust you. I guess I’ll go talk to my accountant.”
“Don’t forget to open with an apology.”
“Yeah, yeah."
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