B Is for Burglar

without consulting me. If you don't like the way the place is run, you go somewhere else. She finished writing and squinted at the pad, checking the results. She wouldn't quite meet my eyes.
    "You didn't come in for a week so I figured you was mad at me," she said. "I bet you been eating junk, right? Don't answer that. I don't want to hear. You don't owe me an apology. You just lucky I give you something decent. Here's what you gonna get."
    She consulted the pad again with a critical eye, reading the order to me then with interest as though it were news to her too.
    "Green pepper salad. Fantastic. The best. I made it myself so I know it's done right. Olive oil, vinegar, little pinch of sugar. Forget the bread, I'm out. Henry didn't bring fresh today so what do I know? He could be mad at me too. How do I know what I did? Nobody tells me these things. Then I give you sour oxtail stew."
    She crossed that off. "Too much grease. Is no good for you. Instead I give you tejfeles suit ponty, some nice pike I bake in cream, and if you clean your plate, I could give you deep-fried cherries if I think you deserve it, which you don't. The wine I'm gonna bring with the flatware. Is Austrian, but okay."
    She marched away then, her back straight, her hair the color of dried tangerine peels. Her rudeness sometimes has an eccentric charm to it, but it's just as often simply irritating, something you have to endure if you want to eat Rosie's meals. Some nights I can't tolerate verbal abuse at the end of the day, preferring instead the impersonal mechanics of a drive-in restaurant or the peace and quiet of a peanut butter and dill pickle sandwich at home.
    That night Rosie's was deserted, looking drab and not quite clean. The walls are paneled in construction-grade plywood sheets, stained dark, with a matte finish of cooking fumes and cigarette smoke. The lighting is wrong – too pale, too generalized – so that the few patrons who do wander in look sallow and unwell. A television set on the bar usually flashes colored images with no sound, and a marlin arched above it looks like it's fashioned of plaster of Paris and dusted with soot. I'm embarrassed to say how much I like the place. It will never be a tourist attraction. It will never be a singles bar. No one will ever "discover" it or award it even half a star. It will always smell like spilled beer, paprika, and hot grease. It's a place where I can eat by myself and not even have to take a book along in order to avoid unwelcome company. A man would have to worry about any woman he could pick up in a dive like this.
    The front door opened and the old crone who lives across the street came in, followed by Jonah Robb, whom I'd talked to that morning in Missing Persons. I almost didn't recognize him at first in his civilian clothes. He wore jeans, a gray tweed jacket, and brown desert boots. His shirt looked new, the package folds still evident, the collar tightly starched and stiff. He carried himself like a man with a shoulder holster tucked up under his left arm. He had apparently come in to look for me because he headed straight for my table and sat down.
    I said, "Hello. Have a seat."
    "I heard you hung out in here," he said. He glanced around and his brows gave a little lift as though the rumor were true but hard to believe. "Does the Health Department know about this place?"
    I laughed.
    Rosie, coming out of the kitchen, caught sight of Jonah and stopped dead in her tracks, retreating as though she'd been yanked backward by a rope.
    He looked over his shoulder to see if he'd missed something.
    "What's the matter? Could she tell I was a cop? Has she got a problem with that?"
    "She's checking her makeup. There's a mirror just inside the kitchen door," I said.
    Rosie appeared again, simpering coquettishly as she brought my silverware and plunked it down on the table tightly bound in a paper napkin.
    "You never said you was entertaining," she murmured. "Does you friend intend to have a little bite to eat? Some liquid refreshment perhaps? Beer, wine, a mixed drink?"
    "Beer sounds good," he said. "What do you have on tap?"
    Rosie folded her hands and regarded me with interest. She never deals directly with a stranger so we were forced to go through this little playlet in which I interpreted as though suddenly employed by the U.N.
    "You still have Mich on tap?" I asked.
    "Of course. Why would I have anything else?"
    I looked at Jonah and he nodded assent. "I think we'll have a Mich