Empire Falls

“She’s trying to hostess and wait tables both.”
    Four parties were waiting in the tiny foyer, three of them probably from the college in Fairhaven. Miles seated a couple in a freshly cleared booth, then started a waiting list. A waiting list at the Empire Grill? If this continued he’d have to add that damn “e” to “Grill,” just like Walt Comeau kept suggesting. Three tables were finishing up at once, so Miles manned the register, then filled Charlene’s drink orders. He saw David watching and read his thought: how many of these Cokes and ice teas would have been four- and five-dollar glasses of wine if they had the license?
    “That old man takes so much as a dime off one of my tables,” Charlene said in lieu of a hello, “I’m going to castrate him.”
    “I already warned him,” Miles assured her, pleased that Charlene’s threat so closely paralleled the one he’d imagined. She looked tired but fully capable of carrying out her threat, and, to Miles, as beautiful as the girl who’d already been waitressing for several years when he, at age fifteen, started work at the Empire Grill.
    “You got here just in time,” she said. “When was the last time we had a rush like this?”
    “It’s all David’s doing,” Miles said. “Who knew Dexter County would go for flautas?”
    Charlene shouldered a large silver tray stacked with plates. “We’re going to need that corner booth, Miles,” she said. “Those are Tick’s friends in there now.”
    Miles had been too busy to notice the group of seven high school kids crowded into the booth that the girls from the beauty school usually occupied in the afternoon, and his expression darkened when he saw that one of them was Zack Minty. Now that he thought about it, for the last few days Tick had acted like she was on the verge of telling him something.
    “How you doin’, Mr. Roby?” the Minty boy said in that slow way of his when Miles appeared at the table. Miles knew several of the other kids and liked them well enough. There was also a slightly overweight girl in a unicorn T-shirt and spiky hair of a color not found in nature: this, Miles suspected, must be Candace from art class. “It’s good to see you, sir,” Zack Minty continued. “You need this booth?”
    Why, Miles wondered, were adults so insistent that kids be polite? The ones who were most polite always seemed fundamentally untrustworthy. The others at the table were shy and awkward with adults, unable to make eye contact. Young Minty always looked right at adults in a way that made most of them look away first.
    “I’d appreciate it,” Miles told him. “I think we could manage some free refills over at the counter.”
    “Sure thing, Mr. Roby. My dad said your business was picking up,” the boy said, sliding out of the booth. Standing up, he was nearly as big as Miles, and he seemed to know it. Miles wondered two things. Was he using steroids? And how would his father, who rarely came into the grill, know that business was improving? Okay, maybe it wasn’t all that big a mystery. He’d probably driven by and seen more cars than usual in the parking lot lately. Or somebody could’ve told him. Mrs. Whiting, for example. He still couldn’t help thinking that when he’d seen them talking earlier that month outside the Planning and Development office, they’d been talking about him. A crazy thought maybe, but he couldn’t shake it.
    “You going to the game tomorrow, Mr. Roby?”
    Miles nodded. “We’re closing after lunch.”
    “We might actually kick some Fairhaven butt for once,” Zack said, the other kids at the table seconding this hopeful prediction. “Make Empire Falls proud.”
    “Zack’s starting at running back,” said the girl Miles thought must be Candace.
    “Linebacker,” Zack said, without looking at her, a hint of contempt creeping into his tone, and Miles could tell it registered on the girl. “It’s my big chance to make an impression, though,” he admitted, looking directly at Miles again.
    “Good luck,” Miles said, his voice as neutral as he could make it.
    “Thanks a lot, Mr. Roby. We know the whole town’s behind us.” Then, as Miles began to clean off the vacated booth with a rag: “See you hired some more help.” He nodded in the direction of John Voss as he disappeared through the swinging door into the back room, causing Miles to remember that the Minty boy himself had applied for a part-time job last spring. “He’s a good