I always do weird things at the Bendix Diner. But today was different. Today something weird happened to me.
Like this: when my brother said that his new girlfriend wanted to meet me, and that he’d told her about my writing and she’d asked if maybe she could read something one day, I glared at him and slurped my milkshake. I hated milkshakes, and a week earlier my brother had informed me that I was lactose intolerant because I was Jewish, but he said it in that hushed tone because religion wasn’t allowed anymore, and so I had ordered one out of spite: double chocolate with whipped cream and a maraschino cherry. I only ever ate maraschino cherries because real cherries made my mouth itch.
Andy told me about his girlfriend and I glared. “Stop looking at me like that,” I said. The chocolate was thick, and I imagined that my tongue was turning black. It did that once, after I ate a pink pepto bismol, and I felt like a vampire, a werewolf. And then I realized that neither of those had a black tongue, and so I invented my own creature, one that looked just like me.
Andy frowned and tilted his head. “Like what?”
“Like you feel sorry for me.” I took another sip of my milkshake.
Andy sighed. “I don’t feel sorry for you. I know you’d hate that.”
I swung my feet back and forth and traced the pull in my tights with the tips of my fingers. The floor was checkered tile, black and white. Andy still stared at me. Tanya, our waitress, was pouring coffee for an old man in a hat who sat at the counter. A couple, about our parents’ age, sat in a booth across the aisle from Andy and me. She idly drew her fork around some scrambled eggs and he kept clearing his throat over and over. He looked up at her and she darted her eyes away, called Tanya’s attention. Tanya poured them more coffee.
Hanging above the counter was an old TV, the signal glitching in and out, and on the screen were the Governor’s team of news anchors, sitting around that half-circle table, hats low, bodies coated in sludge. The slippery men weren’t new, but they’d grown in number, I heard Andy say the other day. We had to watch out. They didn’t just follow the Governor anymore, didn’t just give the news. Some of them were going rogue. I didn’t really know what that meant, but it stuck in my head anyway.
“Cat.” Andy was tapping my hand lightly. “Where do you go in that head of yours?”
“Where do you go at three in the morning? I see you climb out your window,” I spat, and then I bit my lip. I hadn’t meant to attack Andy. I barely wanted to talk at all. But he had been odd lately. Middle of the night adventures in a black car. New girlfriend, not from school. Nervous around the hands. There was talk in town about a new group forming, one that could get too loud for its own good. They liked to meet in the old shed behind Saint Mary’s, they’d say. Talk shit about the Governor, plan demonstrations with no end. Andy—graduated early, tie and slick shoes everyday—would fit right in.
Andy dropped his head and slouched his shoulders, stared at his plate of french fries. He seemed to breathe heavy then, like each inhale was a labor. Out the window, all we could see was the hazy darkness of the highway, the sporadic headlights that lit up the double yellow lines in a quick haze, then disappeared again. On the outside, I knew, the red neon sign read Bendix Diner, and below that, A Staple of New Jersey! in bright blue, although Mom said this wasn’t even New Jersey anymore, just a remnant of the place she once loved. I used to come to this diner with your Dad when we were kids, she told us. We would turn the radio way up, drive down the highway and sing. We could do anything, back then. Anything.
And then yesterday I heard Mom talking about Nancy’s son, how they hadn’t seen him in a while and that was strange because he always called home, even when he was out late planning things. She sounded worried. He was three years older than Andy; they used to be on the same baseball team.
“Where do you go?” I asked again, and this time my tone was softer.
“It’s not important,” Andy said finally. And then: “You’re too young.”
“I’m four years younger than you.”
“But, Cat—you won’t understand. You don’t remember a time before.”
“I do too!” I whacked my hand on the table, making my milkshake jump. Andy shook his head. “I do too remember,” I protested, although I didn’t know what I was supposed to be remembering. I racked my brain hard. Andy shook his head.
“It’s political. You won’t understand,” he said, and then he glanced around the diner and rubbed his eyes. He leaned in closer to me. “Besides, we shouldn’t be talking about this here.”
I sighed, took another sip of my milkshake, crossed my feet beneath me. “You and your stupid secrets. Fine. I don’t care.”
Andy took a deep breath and nodded. “Good,” he said, and then he cleared his throat, made his voice sound tough like Dad’s used to be, before he got sent away for whatever he got sent away for. “Anyway, we’re here to talk about you.”
He knew I hated when he used that voice, but it always worked. “Do we have to?”
Andy nodded again. I looked down into the muddy depths of my milkshake and wished they’d absorb me whole. I knew what he was gonna say. Mrs. Hale made me stay late because I kept talking in class, and then when she asked me the answer to a math question she knew I knew, I wouldn’t say it. Andy sighed and said he didn’t know what to do with me anymore. He said he couldn’t keep handling me, that Mom’s gonna have a conniption if he has to keep handling me, that she’s worried about him enough, that she shouldn’t have to be worried about me too, not with Dad gone now and all. Andy kept talking and so I thought of a girl of thirteen standing alone on the moon. She can’t breathe very well, but she’s okay. She looks down at the world spinning without her, and it spins on.
“Are you even listening to me, Cat?” Andy dropped his head in his hands. “Are you, like, processing anything I’m saying?”
The girl on the moon blinks, and she is gone.
Andy picked up his head and his eyes were wide, pleading. “I said that you have to be more careful, okay? Can you do that? Can you do this one, small thing?”
“I don’t like it when you tell me what to do,” I hissed through gritted teeth.
“Then stop making it so I have to.”
“Andy, Cat? Anything else I can get you?” Tanya stood in front of us with her pen above her notepad, and I silently thanked her for saving me. Andy sighed and shook his head while I ordered a slice of blueberry pie. “Of course, sweetheart,” Tanya cooed. Over her shoulder, the TV turned to static, black and white particles bouncing, and then showed the news anchors again. The sludge that dripped from their coats was piled high, hiding their ankles, and from the little box in the corner of the screen I could tell they were talking about the shooting at the protest on Mulberry. Tanya followed my gaze. “A pity,” she said, pursing her lips. “Such slippery men, they are.”
I shrugged. There’d been an announcement about the shooting at school, but it was the same old, same old. I hadn’t thought much about it.
But Andy had. “I had friends there,” he whispered, so quietly that I thought he was talking to himself. Tanya and I turned to him and his face went red. “Sorry,” he murmured. He shifted in his seat.
Tanya touched his shoulder gently, looked as if she wanted to say something more, bit her lip, and walked away.
“So are we done?” I said, sipping my milkshake.
“Well, that depends,” Andy seemed back to himself. The TV had turned to static again.
“On what?”
“On whether or not you understand.”
I tried to keep myself from rolling my eyes, since Mom said that was about the rudest thing a girl could do, but then I rolled them anyway. “I do, Dad,” I muttered.
“What?”
“I said yes, Dad.” I crossed my arms and leaned back. Andy’s face melted. He didn’t like talking about Dad but I didn’t know why. I always wanted to bring him up. Mom hated it even more. Sometimes she’d say his name and then her face would crumble. Whenever I asked about him, she just said he’d be home soon. When? Eventually. Where is he? Away. Okay.
“I’m not Dad,” Andy whispered. He picked up a french fry, stared at it, set it down.
“Then stop acting like it.”
Andy shook his head. “I’m just trying, okay? Can’t I try to help?”
I was going to say something mean, I’m sure, something that Mom would call “going for the jugular,” like she always said when I said something bad and made her cry, but just then the bell above the diner’s door chimed. It was late by then. No one usually came to the diner so late; if you were there, you stayed till you felt like you could go, but you didn’t come in at night.
Andy looked up and over his shoulder as the bell shuddered to a stop. I couldn’t see who had come in because he was in the way, but when he turned back to me, his face was pale.
“Cat,” Andy said. “Talk about something normal. Anything. The science fair. You just did a science fair project, right?”
“I mean yeah, but why do you—” I stopped protesting. Andy was digging the nail of his right thumb into the fleshy part of his left hand, almost deep enough to draw blood. He hadn’t done that in a long time.
“It was on the moon,” I said, and as I spoke I peered further over Andy’s shoulder to see what was going on. The couple at the other booth kept their heads down, stared deep into their grilled cheeses and coffee. The man at the counter didn’t move. Tanya looked worried. “I mean, it was about the moon. I used an old telescope. It was about the connection between art and science, how you can find art even in science, I guess. I don’t know. I made it up. Anyway, I traced pictures of people and places on the moon.”
And then I saw who had come in. The man was tall, taller than anyone I’d ever seen. He wore a black hat that obscured his eyes and a dark gray coat that went down to his ankles. It looked so expensive; that’s what I was struck by the most. We didn’t have shops in town that sold coats like that.
As he made his way to the counter where Tanya stood, he kept his head turned toward the tiled floor. He moved slowly and purposefully, but it wasn’t a walk: he slid on what I could only assume were feet, leaving a trail of gray sludge in his wake. After a few impossibly long seconds, he reached the counter and heaved himself onto one of the red vinyl stools. The sludge dripped from the bottom of his coat and onto the floor, piling up beneath him.
“I found a thimble,” I said. The man sat so still he could have been a statue.
“What else?”
“Um. A sunflower. Or maybe it was a lily, I don’t know.” Above the man’s head, the TV had flickered back to the news broadcast. On the screen and at the counter, the slippery men sat, waiting and waiting, never looking at us, but listening to our silence, the hushed swell of our voices when we finally spoke.
“Well, did you win?”
I looked back at Andy, confused. “Win what?”
“The science fair.”
“Oh,” I said, turning back to the man and Tanya, who was now trembling behind the counter. “No, of course not.”
The sludge continued to drip to the floor. I could have sworn it smelled like metal, like the pound of hammer on nail. The man picked up the menu in front of him and opened it. He seemed to study the pages, and then he put the menu down. He motioned for Tanya to lean toward him and she did. He opened his mouth—or I guess he must have opened his mouth, because what else could have happened?—and a high-pitched snarl came out, the sound of off-kilter clockwork, of a broken machine. The older couple looked up and their faces turned pale like Andy’s, and then they gingerly lifted their feet and sat on them, as children would. The old man in the hat, a few seats away from the diner’s newest guest, continued to drink his coffee, unfazed.
“Yes, sir,” Tanya said, her voice unsteady. She went into the kitchen and came out with a grilled cheese sandwich. She set it in front of the man and he shook a few coins onto the counter. Tanya picked them up, thanked him, and dashed to the cash register. She dipped into the kitchen, came out with my blueberry pie, and placed it in front of me. She turned to leave but hesitated and glanced between Andy and me. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it. I knew she wanted to say something. She glanced at the slippery man. What did she want to say?
But she just walked back to the counter and resumed her post behind the register.
My stomach rumbled. A curl of steam rose from the crust of the pie and I could smell the blueberries. I picked up my fork and took a bite. Andy sat still, not daring to move.
For a few seconds we sat there in silence, me slowly digging my way through the pie, Andy uneasy. I quickly glanced up at the slippery man. He had almost finished his grilled cheese. The sludge pooled underneath him, metallic smell growing stronger. I wondered what he kept beneath that hat.
Above the counter, the TV flickered to life again, back to the news anchors sitting around the half-table, sludge high and grainy. Now I knew what that sludge looked like in real life, how it smelled so strong and toxic. The news anchors hissed a few words and introduced footage of boys in slick shoes getting shot. There had been another protest, they said. Didn’t the youths ever learn from these protests? The camera panned to a man—no, a kid, a boy Andy’s age—hanged in town square by his own necktie. My breath caught in my throat. I knew that face, blue eyes glassy and vacant, from Andy’s baseball team.
“Fuck,” I said, and I slammed a hand over my mouth. Hearing my exclamation, the slippery man turned toward me. I froze, fork perched above the pie, and all I could see, all I could hear was the thick crackle of static as the man’s gaze bore into mine.
His face was gray, the color of the sludge that leaked from beneath his coat. His eyes were black. His pupils, too big, inhumanly big, dug into my skin. I could feel everything in that diner—the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchen, the sharp whistle of the highway outside, the nervous heartbeats of Andy, of the couple, of the old man with the coffee, of Tanya, of me. Something was wrong. Something felt off. As the man and I locked gazes, neither one daring to breathe, I realized what it was: the heavy weight of too much looking.
He slid off the stool and inched toward me. I couldn’t see Andy but I could tell he was digging into his palm, could feel our heartbeats thumping. The slippery man came closer and his pupils seemed to grow. He opened his mouth, and his tongue was black. He spoke, his words echoing in a high-pitched clamor. He wanted to know why I spoke in his presence, he had said. Who was I, to speak in his presence.
My head felt light. Who was he, to come up to me? Can’t I be who I want? Can’t I say what I want?
But I could tell something was bad. I couldn’t look away from those pitch black pupils, but I imagined Andy across the table from me, Andy who cared about our town and the government and our world, who kept so many secrets from anyone who asked, whose secrets had to be kept. I blinked hard and imagined his eyes, so much like mine, wide, pleading, like I knew they must be. Quietly, ever so quietly, I heard him whimper.
For the first time in my life, it didn’t feel like he was looming over me. For the first time in my life, he was what I always knew he was: a child.
“I’m sorry, Sir,” I managed. I cleared my throat. “I bit the inside of my cheek.”
The slippery man leaned even closer. The metallic burn was so strong that I breathed through my mouth. He narrowed his eyes, if they even were eyes, and stared at me: a girl with that mouth that said bad things, thirteen. I stared back.
And then the man turned away, and I could see color again, could hear more than that buzz. He flopped onto the ground, hat tilted down, face hidden in shadow. He slid across the diner, sludge trailing in his wake. He reached the door, pulled it open, and left as those familiar bells chimed once, twice, three times, then silence.
I unclenched my hands. Andy let out a sigh. He took his tie off and set it on the table. Tanya ran into the kitchen, returned with a mop, and began cleaning up the sludge. The couple put their feet back on the ground. The old man took a sip of his coffee.
Andy and I sat quietly again, both of us taking bites of the blueberry pie until there was nothing but crumbs. As he scooped the last remnants of syrup I studied him. I wondered if he still felt sorry for me, for the way I acted in school and how I would never show his girlfriend my writing. For how angry I felt. For how I always thought that he was okay while I wasn’t.
But when he spoke his voice wasn’t Dad’s, but his own. “Just be careful, Cat, okay?”
I nodded. “You too,” I said, and I meant it.
I looked down at the table. My milkshake was almost gone. I dug into the ice cream, pulled out the maraschino cherry, and ate it in one bite, savoring that slick artificial sweetness, that neon red dream.