Page 145 of The Lonely Road

I sit and let it drip.

“Welcome back, dirtbag.” She puts the empty glass down.

“Thank you, Eunice.”

“I should pour the next one hot.”

“That seems like a liability issue.”

“I own the place.” She doesn’t give two shits about liability. She’s been managing other people’s behavior since before I was born and is fully prepared to continue. “You want something, or are you here to sit in your own mess?”

“A beer would be nice.”

“A beer would be nice,” she parrots.

She places a cold one in front of me, and I’m relieved she didn’t pour it on me. She puts a menu down without making eye contact.

Joy Kincaid materialized from a booth I didn’t clock, because I was distracted by the water. She stands in front of me with her arms folded and her chin up. She looks like she’s been waiting to have this encounter.

“Joy,” I greet.

“I’m not talking to you,” she snaps.

“Okay.”

“I’m just standing here looking at you so you understand the full weight of my disappointment.”

“I understand it.”

“Good.” She unfolds her arms, refolds them, and stands there.

From across the diner, at a table by the window, Hugh Dillon watches all of this with the contained amusement of a man who came here for dinner and is getting considerably more than that.

He raises his beer to me.

I nod back.

Joy eventually returns to her booth.

“I’m with Hugh,” I tell her.

She glances at the Sheriff. “He with you?”

He shakes his head. “Don’t know him.”

Everybody is a fucking comedian.

I slide into Hugh’s booth across from him.

“You’re paying,” he tells me.

“I figured. Dilbert managed to get forty out of me for Mac’s dinner.”

“Yeah, you gonna leave Eunice a nice tip.”

I pick up a napkin and wipe the water off my face. “For dousing me with cold water?”

“For not dousing you with hot coffee.”