This morning Hattie’s was busy as usual. Between 6:30 and 9:30 on weekdays, Roof, the black cook, could not fry eggs fast enough to fill all the Hattie’s Specials — two eggs, toast, home fries and coffee for a dollar forty-nine. When Sully and Rub arrived, there was no place for them to sit, either at the short, six-stool counter or among the dozen square formica booths, though a foursome of construction workers was stirring in the farthest. Old Hattie herself occupied the tiny booth, half the size of the others, nearest the door, and Sully, to Rub’s dismay, slid gingerly into the booth across from the old lady, leaving Rub in the crowded doorway. “How are you, old woman?” Sully said. Hattie’s milky eyes located him by sound. “Still keeping an eye on business, I see.”
“Still keeping an eye on business,” Hattie repeated, nodding vigorously. “Still keeping …” Her attention was diverted, as it was during all conversations, by the ringing of the cash register, the old woman’s favorite sound. She had manned the register for nearly sixty years and imagined herself there still, each time she heard it clang. “Ah!” she said. “Ah …”
“There’s a booth,” Rub said when the road crew got up with their checks and started for the register.
“Good,” Sully said. “Go sit in it, why don’t you.”
Rub hated being dismissed this way, but he did as he was told for fear of losing the booth. It was the perfect booth, in fact, the last in the row, away from traffic, where he could beg a loan from Sully in relative privacy, the threat of interruption greatly reduced.
“What do you say we go dancing some night?” Sully suggested to Hattie in a loud voice, partly because the old woman was hard of hearing, partly because their conversations were much enjoyed by the regulars at the lunch counter, several of whom rotated on their stools to watch.
“Dancing?” Hattie said, then bellowed, “Dancing!”
Now everyone turned and looked.
“Why not?” Sully said. “Just you and me. First dancing, then we’ll go over to my place.”
A sly grin crossed the old woman’s face. “Let’s just go to your place. Nuts to the dancing.”
“Okay,” Sully said, winking at Cass, who was watching now also, with solemn disapproval, as usual.
“Just tell me one thing!” Hattie shouted. When she got revved up, her voice always reminded Sully of walruses at the zoo. “Who are you?”
“What do you mean, who am I?” Sully said in mock outrage. “What are you, blind?”
“You sound like that darn Sully.”
“That’s who I am, too,” Sully told her.
“Well, I’m too old to dance,” Hattie said. “I’m too old for your place too. You live on the second floor.”
“I know it,” Sully said, massaging his knee. “I can hardly get up and down those stairs myself.”
“How old are you?” Hattie said.
“Sixty,” Sully said. “Except I feel older.”
“I’m eighty-nine.” Hattie cackled proudly.
“I know it. Aren’t you ever going to go meet St. Peter? Make room for somebody else?”
“No!”
Sully slid back out of the booth, his leg straight out in front until he could get it safely under him and put some weight on it. “Take it slow, old girl,” he said, patting one of her spotted hands. “Can you still hear the cash register?”
“You bet I can,” Hattie assured him.
“Good,” Sully said. “You wake up some morning and you can’t hear it, you’ll know you died in your sleep.”
In fact, the old cash register’s ringing did have a soothing effect on Hattie. Together with the sound of dishes being bussed and the loud rasp of male laughter, the rattle and clang of the ancient register opened the doorway of Hattie’s memory wide enough for the old woman to slip through and spend a pleasant morning in the company of people dead for twenty years. And when her daughter closed the restaurant behind the last of the lunch customers and ushered Hattie out back to the small apartment they shared, the old woman was exhausted and under the impression that the reason she was so tired was that she’d worked all day.
A stool had been vacated at the end of the counter, so Sully slid onto it and accepted one of Cass’s dark looks. “How will you know when you’ve died?” Cass wanted to know.
“I guess everything will stop being so goddamn much fun,” Sully told her.
“Those don’t look like your school duds,” she observed. “No classes today?”
“None for me.”
She studied him. “So. You’re giving up.”
“I don’t think I’ll be going back, if that’s what you mean.”
“What have you got, three more weeks till the end of the term?”
Sully admitted this was true. “You know how it is,” he said.
Cass made a face. “No idea. Tell me how it is, Sully.”
Sully had no intention of explaining how it was to Cass. One of the few benefits of being sixty and single and without the enforceable obligations to other human beings was that you weren’t required to explain how it was. “I don’t see why it should frost your window, in any case.”
Cass held up both hands in mock surrender. “It doesn’t frost my window. In fact, I may have won the pool. You lasted three months, and all those squares were vacant. Either Ruth or I must’ve won.”
Sully couldn’t help grinning at her, because she was upset. “I hope it was you, then.”
“You and Ruth still on the outs?”
“Not that I know of. I try not to have that much to do with married women, Cassandra.”
“Sometimes you don’t try very hard, the way I hear it.”
“I’ve been trying pretty hard lately, not that it’s anyone’s business but mine.”
Cass let it go, and after a moment she nodded in Rub’s direction. “Somebody’s about to hemorrhage, in case you haven’t noticed.”
Sully smiled. “There’s the real reason I gotta go back to work. Rub’s going to hell without my good example to live by.”
Ever since Sully had slid onto the stool at the counter Rub had been waving, trying to catch Sully’s attention. Sully waved back now and called, “Hi, Rub.”
Rub frowned, confused, unable to figure out whether to leave the many places you could safely stand on the back of a garbage truck, and the Squeers boys owned and occupied these, so that when Rub was permitted to tag along he had to latch onto the side as best he could. The turns could be treacherous, and Rub sometimes had the impression that his cousins were waiting for him to be thrown from the truck so they wouldn’t have to stretch their already thin profits with an extra worker. Being family, they couldn’t deny him the work, but if Rub let himself get tossed on some sharp turn it’d be his own fault.
“I could do all the hard jobs,” Rub offered.
“You might have to,” Sully told him.
“I don’t mind,” Rub said, which was true.
“I’ll see if I can find us something for tomorrow,” Sully told him.
“Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving,” Rub reminded him.
“So be thankful.”
“Bootsie’ll shoot me if I have to work on Thanksgiving.”
“She probably will shoot you one of these days,” Sully conceded, “but it won’t be for working.”
“I was wondering …” Rub began.
“Really?” Sully said. “What about?”
Rub had to look at the floor again. “If you could loan me twenty dollars. Since we’re going back to work.”
Sully finished his coffee, pushed the cup toward the back of the counter where it might attract a free refill. “I worry about you, Rub,” he said. “You know that?”