Empire Falls

fact that she hasn’t closed the grill down suggests just how deep her affection runs. Either that or she enjoys watching you suffer.”
    Though Miles understood this last observation to be a joke, he found himself—and not for the first time—considering whether it might not be the simple literal truth. Viewed objectively, Mrs. Whiting did appear to cut him more slack than was her custom, and yet there were times when Miles got the distinct impression that she bore him no particular fondness. Which probably explained why he was not all that eager to meet with her now, though he knew their annual meeting could not be postponed for long. Each autumn she left for Florida earlier than the last, and while their annual “State of the Grill” meetings were little more than a pro forma ritual, Mrs. Whiting refused to forgo them; and in her company he could not shake the feeling that for all these years the old woman had been expecting him to show her some sign—of what, he had no idea. Still, he left every encounter with the sense that he’d yet again failed some secret test.
    T HE BELL JINGLED above the door, and Walt Comeau danced inside, his arms extended like an old-fashioned crooner’s, his silver hair slicked back on the sides, fifties style. “Don’t let the stars get in your eyes,” he warbled, “don’t let the moon break your heart.”
    Several of the regulars at the lunch counter, knowing what was expected of them, swiveled on their stools, leaned into the aisle, right arms extended in a row, and returned, in a different key altogether, “Pa pa pa paya.”
    “Perry Como,” Horace said when he realized, without actually looking, that the seat next to him at the counter had been filled. “Right on time.”
    “Big Boy,” Walt said, addressing Miles, “you hear the news?”
    “Oh, please,” said Miles, who’d been hearing little else all morning. Over the weekend a black Lincoln Town Car with Massachusetts plates had been reported in the lot outside the textile mill. Last year it had been a BMW, the year before that a Cadillac limo. The color of the vehicle seemed to alternate between black and white, but the plates were always Massachusetts, which made Miles smile. The hordes of visitors who poured into Maine every summer were commonly referred to as Massholes, and yet when Empire Falls fantasized about deliverance, it invariably had Massachusetts plates.
    “What?” Walt said, indignant. “You weren’t even here.”
    “Let him tell you about it,” Horace advised. “Then it’ll be over.”
    Walt Comeau looked back and forth between Miles and Horace as if to determine who was the bigger fool, settling finally on Horace, probably because he’d spoken last. “All right, you explain it. Three guys in eight-hundred-dollar suits drive all the way up here from Boston on a Sunday morning, park outside the mill, hike down to the head of the falls in their black patent leather shoes, then stand there for half an hour pointing up at the mill. You tell me who they are and what they’re doing.”
    Horace set his hamburger down and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “Hey, it’s clear to me. They came to invest millions. For a while they were thinking about tech stocks, but then they thought, Hell, no. Let’s go into textiles. That’s where the real profits are. Then you know what they did? They decided not to build the factory in Mexico or Thailand where people work for about ten bucks a week. Let’s drive up to Empire Falls, Maine, they said, and look at that gutted old shell of a factory that the river damn near washed away last spring and buy all new equipment and create hundreds of jobs, nothing under twenty dollars an hour.”
    Miles couldn’t help smiling. Minus the sarcasm, this was pretty much the scenario he’d been listening to all morning. The annual sighting was born, as far as Miles could tell, of the same need that caused people to spot Elvis in the local Denny’s. But why always autumn? Miles wondered. It seemed an odd season to spawn such desperate optimism. Maybe it had something to do with the kids all going back to school, giving their parents the leisure to contemplate the approach of another savage, relentless winter and to conjure up a pipe dream to help them through it.
    “Hey,” Walt said, sounding hurt. “All I’m saying is something nice could happen here someday. You never know. That’s all I’m saying, okay?”
    Horace had gone back to his hamburger, and