The Never-Open Desert Diner Read Online Free Page B

piece?”
    This was the kind of conversation made worse by the glare of indirect lighting and the time of night, the bright floors, sterile air-conditioning, and minimum-wage work. Was she seventeen? Eighteen? Maybe it had been closer to ten years since I’d last seen Ginny and Nadine, her mother.
    “Let it go, Ginny,” I said. “Please?”
    “Fine,” she said. Among the few constants in life is the certainty that when a female uses the word
fine
to a man, things are about as far from fine as they can get. “What brings you to Walmart in the middle of the night?”
    I told her what I wanted. She stepped around me and surveyed the bins of CDs. “Cello?” she asked, as if maybe she had misunderstood me.
    “Cello,” I repeated.
    “I can look, I guess. Unless George Strait or some rapper has taken up the cello, it’s a waste of time.”
    I thanked her.
    She asked me if I had an MP3 player, and the look on my face answered her question. “Same Ben, huh? No cell phone or GPS, either, I’ll bet.”
    “I have a computer now,” I said proudly.
    “If that’s true,” she said, “which I doubt, I’m guessing it was made before I was born. Maybe before
you
were born.” She was just messing with me now, and we were both enjoying the change-up. “I’ve got a break coming. Let me see what I can do.”
    We agreed to meet at my pickup before her break was over.
    When my passenger door opened I knew I had fallen asleep. In a couple of hours I would be at the transfer warehouse beginning my day. Ginny sat in the passenger seat and handed me two silver-colored CDs. “You do have a CD player, don’t you?”
    I nodded. It came with the new truck. I left out the part about never having actually used it.
    Satisfied her time wasn’t wasted, she said, “I downloaded some random stuff off the Internet, mostly Yo-Yo Ma, and used my laptop to burn you a CD. My break is over. I got in a hurry. I’m not sure which one has what you want. One is probably some mix left over from my youth. Most people my age are pretty digital these days.”
    I saw no trace of humor on her face. To her way of thinking, her youth was over and all she had now were souvenirs.
    “So who’s the woman, Ben?”
    I was still half asleep. “Woman?”
    “Yeah,” she said, “woman. Maybe I’m only seventeen and knocked up, but I’m not an idiot.”
    I saw the sharp, playful little girl I remembered, so wise beyond her years, and now years beyond her wisdom. I also saw a silver stud in her tongue.
    “It’s the middle of the night at the Walmart in Price, Utah. A truck driver I haven’t seen in years walks in and asks for cello music. Yeah, woman. If she’s into the cello, then I already know you’ve upgraded from the likes of my mom. I’ve always figured you for a romantic.”
    “That’s not saying much,” I said. “These days anyone who believes the sun will rise in the morning could qualify as a romantic.”
    I thanked her again for the CDs.
    “When’s the baby due?”
    This was my clever way of changing the subject. It worked perfectly. Ginny burst into tears.
    The simple answer, the one I expected but wasn’t all that interested in, was one, maybe two months, give or take. Between sobs and in quick order I also learned that the baby’s father was thirty-eight and her mother’s unemployed live-in boyfriend. He said he loved Ginny. When she could no longer hide the pregnancy, she confessed both the pregnancy and their “bad love” to her mother. The boyfriend denied his love and everything else. Her mother responded by kicking her out and telling Ginny she had gotten herself into this mess and she could damn well get herself out. The mother and the boyfriend moved to Salt Lake City to start over. That had been four months ago. Since then Ginny had quit high school and got her GED and had been living with friends and in her car. She concluded by asking me for a job, a second job, so she could afford her own place when the baby came.
    I