Empire Falls

couldn’t keep from admiring the other man’s ability to sustain such pleasant fantasies in the complete absence of plausibility. Walt seemed to know better than to do the numbers and study the odds; such things only squeezed a man’s heart, as surely as a tightening fist.
    “What’s that mean? Idyllic?”
    “It means not a Conch in sight,” Miles told him. “Do me a favor and put that away.”
    To Miles’s surprise, Max complied without comment, even getting the glove compartment door to stay shut somehow. If Miles hadn’t known better, he’d have sworn his father had intuited the significance of the listing and those numbers and what it all must have meant to his son.
    But then Max began to whistle. It took Miles a minute to recognize the bouncy tune, which he hadn’t heard since he was a kid. When Max got to the chorus, he stopped whistling and mouthed the words, just loud enough to be heard, and anybody who didn’t know Max Roby would’ve sworn his mind was drifting elsewhere:
Git along home, Cindy, Cindy
Git along home, Cindy, Cindy
Git along home, Cindy, Cindy
I’ll marry you someday .
    T HERE WERE NO parking spaces in front of the Empire Grill, so Miles parked in back behind the Dumpster, next to Charlene’s Hyundai. People were waiting in the entryway for tables when they drove up, and Miles could tell at a glance that the place was full up. Friday-night Mexican. Shrimp flautas on special.
    “They could probably use some help inside,” Miles told his father, fully expecting Max to take a powder. The old man had money in his pocket and he probably was eager to head over to Callahan’s or the Olde Mill Pub. “We’ve got a new busboy on tonight, but he won’t be up to this crowd.”
    “I could use the extra scratch,” Max said, falling in step and causing Miles to make a mental note to keep an eye on him tonight. His father hated work but loved crowds, probably because chaos created many more opportunities than order.
    “Put on a clean shirt before you go out front,” Miles reminded him.
    “I’ve worked here before, you know.”
    “And an apron,” Miles said. “And wash your hands.”
    “Wash my hands so I can bus dirty dishes?”
    The back room was thick with steam, and Tick was stacking dishes when her father and grandfather entered.
    “How’s it going, darlin’?” Miles said.
    “Okay,” she told him. “The Hobart’s acting up.”
    Miles smiled and gave her a kiss on top of the head, breathing her in, this kid who wasn’t a kid anymore but still smelled like one. Everything about his daughter seemed just about right, including the way the second thing she said often contradicted the first. Things were going okay. Except they weren’t.
    “Do the best you can and I’ll look at it later. How’s your friend John doing?”
    “Okay,” she said. “A little slow. You shouldn’t have started him on a weekend night.”
    “Grandpa’s going to give him a hand,” Miles said as Max stepped out from the storeroom buttoning a starchy white shirt two sizes too big for him. Coming up behind her, he circled his arms around her tiny waist and pulled her against him. Tick, Miles knew, was fond of her grandfather, but not his embraces, and would’ve told him so if she could’ve devised a way of doing it without hurting his feelings. Miles had tried to explain that Max probably didn’t have feelings in the conventional sense, but she couldn’t quite accept that, preferring to believe that he kept them hidden away somewhere. And who knew? If Max did harbor genuine feelings for anybody, Miles conceded, they were for his granddaughter.
    “How’s my girl?” Max wanted to know.
    “Your beard’s scratchy, Grandpa. Plus you smell.”
    “So do you,” Max said. “The difference is you’re young and you smell good. When I was your age, all the girls used to tell me I smelled like a ripe apple.”
    “Ripe I can believe,” Miles said, handing his father a rubber dish tub. “Just the dishes. Charlene catches you swiping her tips, she’ll gut you like a fish.”
    Max followed him out through the swinging door. “Down in the Keys, waitresses share their tips with the busboys.”
    “Suggest that to her, why don’t you?” Miles grinned, knowing full well that Max was neither so brave nor so foolhardy.
    “All right, then,” David said when he heard their voices. “The cavalry has arrived.”
    “What do you need?” Miles asked.
    “Help Charlene,” David suggested.