Chapter One
Regular or Decaf
Glenn was on the step at five fifty-eight, stamping snow off his boots like the snow did something to him personally.
“You’re early,” I said, unlocking the door.
“You’re open.”
“I open at six.”
“It’s six somewhere.” He came in on a gust that dropped the room ten degrees and took his stool, second from the register, the one he has occupied every weekday morning for eleven years. I had his coffee in front of him before the door finished closing.
“Cold out,” Glenn said.
“It’s December.”
“Colder than yesterday. I’m reporting it.”
“File it with the front desk.” There is no front desk. This exchange, or one of its cousins, is how Glenn and I have said good morning since the second Obama administration. There are conversations you can skip entirely if you keep your hands moving, and after thirty years behind this counter I can skip most of them.
The Fairhaven Diner opens at six, which means I start at five, which means my alarm goes off at four fifteen, and I have opinions about all of it that nobody gets to hear. Twelve stools. Nine booths. A flat-top I know better than my own face, a pie case that fills by seven on Thursdays because Thursday is a baking day, and a schedule that is not open to negotiation. I’ve run this place for thirty years, minus nothing. People ask when I last took a vacation and I tell them I closed for two days in 2011 when the water main broke, and it counts, because I repainted the bathroom.
In December the whole town comes through my door wearing half the weather. Road salt on my clean floor by six forty. Wet wool on every hook by seven, steaming. The daylight clocks in around the time the rush dies and clocks out before the meatloaf, and everybody orders cocoa on top of their coffee, which wrecks the rhythm of a ticket wheel that got set in 1996 and has not needed adjusting since.
And this December, on top of the weather, there is the wedding.
Three weeks out. Christmas Eve, at the Torres vineyard, Valentina and Ronan, and if you stand anywhere in my diner for ten minutes you will learn more about that wedding than the bride knows. Booth two had a theory about the dress. Glenn had a position on the parking, which was rich, because Glenn wasn’t invited.
“Two hundred and forty guests,” booth four announced, to booth three. “That’s what I heard.”
“You heard the version with the geese counted,” I said, passing with the pot.
“The geese are invited?”
“The geese are staff.”
“I’m invited,” Glenn said, to his eggs.
“You’re catering-adjacent. You’re coming as my taste tester and you’re wearing the good cardigan.”
“These eggs are trying to kill me.”
“They’ve been trying for eleven years. They’re not in a hurry.”
I’m catering the wedding. Nobody asked. Somewhere back in October the wedding acquired a date and a venue, and the food was Patti’s doing it the same way the sun was coming up, no phone call required. That was the correct way to handle me, and everybody involved knew it. I would have said yes. It’s easier on the whole town if nobody makes me say it out loud.
