Empire Falls

head. “A surprise health inspection the same week as the Liquor Control Board?”
    That had been on Tuesday, the state Liquor Control agent showing up late in the afternoon in response to allegations that Bea was serving minors. A second violation, he warned her as he sat at the bar filling out the paperwork on his clipboard, could result in the loss of her license. When she asked what the first violation was, he’d pointed over to the booth where Tick sat doing her homework. She’d come in just a few minutes earlier, slid into her favorite booth and pushed aside two half-full glasses of beer that Bea hadn’t had a chance to clear away. “You aren’t going to tell me that girl over there is twenty-one, are you?”
    “No, I’m going to tell you she’s my granddaughter and she’s not drinking beer, which you can see for yourself.”
    “She’s sitting at a table with glasses of beer . You know the law, Mrs. Majeski,” he said, initialing the report. “You can appeal, of course. Otherwise, you’ll want to take care of this fine within sixty days.”
    “Where’s Curtis?” Bea said, referring to the regular state guy.
    “I believe the man has retired,” he said on the way to the door. When he got there, he stopped. “Oh, Mrs. Majeski? Good luck on your new restaurant.”
    “No,” Miles now told Charlene. “That’s no coincidence. And next week, when she gets an offer on the place from some stranger, that won’t be a coincidence either.”
    “I know,” Charlene conceded. “I do. It’s just … I don’t know what I’ll do if I don’t have a job.”
    “Don’t worry about that,” Miles said, giving her hand a squeeze, sure of this much, anyhow. “Mrs. Whiting isn’t going to close the Empire Grill. She wants it open. She wants us all right here. Or me, at least.”
    Charlene shook her head. “I don’t understand.”
    “I do,” he said, meeting her eye. “It took a while, but I do.”
    “Big Boy!” Walt called again. “Come on down here! Today’s the great day, my friend! No more running!” He had his elbow planted firmly on the counter, his hand open, fingers wiggling.
    He was seeing everything clearly, it seemed to Miles, even Walt Comeau. In marrying Janine, Walt had no doubt hoped to enhance his reputation as a man’s man and a smooth operator. The Silver Fox. Now, a week into his marriage, he was beginning to realize that Janine could very well be his unmanning. Behind all the bravado, Miles could see—almost smell—the man’s panic, which increased noticeably when he saw Miles coming toward him with a stool, which he set down right across from him on the other side of the counter.
    “Jesus,” Horace Weymouth said, as if he’d just been dealt a hand of gin the likes of which he’d never seen before.
    “Say go, Horace,” Miles commanded without looking at him.
    “Go,” said Horace, and Miles slammed the back of Walt’s hand onto the Formica so hard that three water glasses leapt off it and shattered on the floor, so hard that the Silver Fox’s legs shot straight out and, for a split second, his whole body was parallel to the counter, a victim of a sudden levitation, the stapled hand his only connection to Mother Earth. At that moment Miles released him, and it was his hips that struck the hard linoleum floor first, then the back of his head, then both feet, which bounced just once. Then the Silver Fox lay still, his eyeballs having rolled up in their sockets.
    Miles was already out the door.
·  ·  ·
    T HE GATE WAS STILL OPEN , but Miles parked outside on the street and walked between the stone pillars. In all the years his mother had worked at the shirt factory, he’d never passed beyond the arch, a fact that now seemed astonishing. After Grace’s death, of course, there’d been no reason to come, but as he entered the courtyard, he couldn’t help feeling that he was finally attending to some long-ignored obligation.
    The white limo was still parked there, and on the other side of the brick wall sat Mrs. Whiting’s Lincoln, invisible from the street. Motionless on the shelf behind the backseat was what Miles thought at first glance must be one of those mechanical animals that nodded rhythmic agreement when the vehicle was in motion, but he then realized it was Timmy the Cat. The animal was regarding him curiously, marking his progress along the courtyard and smiling, it seemed, if cats other than the Cheshire variety can be said to smile. When he