Free All We Had by Annie Weatherwax

both smoked Camels and loved Wheel of Fortune . Mel had disappeared oneday into the basement of Tiny’s with Phil’s old TV and emerged with it working better than ever. It now sat on the stainless-steel counter by the grill and every afternoon, Arlene and my mother would catch bits of the show while their customers waited.
    And like my mother, Arlene wasn’t afraid to tell anyone to fuck off if she had to. And she used that word almost more than my mother did. Arlene hawked the k out with a fierce staccato, infusing the word with sharpness. My mother pronounced fuck as if it were Yiddish—with a breathy, phlegmy, exasperated tone. Fhhhhuuuuuuk. The word itself seemed to bind them together. In no time, the two of them were standing, each with a knee bent against the wall, hissing a form of the word back and forth, using it to describe everything: the customers, the work, the weather.

    â€œYou can have the whole fucking lot,” Arlene said to my mother about men. It was the last Friday in June. The restaurant was empty. My mother and Arlene were standing up against the wall. “I’m through with them!” When Arlene was off again with her husband like she currently was, complaining about men was her favorite thing to do.
    Mel suddenly appeared from the kitchen without his baseball cap, smelling of cologne, and Arlene stopped talking. She watched him leave through the front door and back out of his parking space. When his tailgate disappeared around the bend, Peter Pam burst headlong through the kitchen doors.
    â€œI can’t believe we almost forgot!” Arlene said.
    And the two of them sprang into action.
    Arlene pulled out a white tablecloth from under the counter and handed it to me. “Here. Go put that on the table by thewindow over there. And you,” she said to my mother, “get some fresh bread and butter.” Peter Pam walked around and spritzed the air with pine-scented air freshener. Arlene turned down the lights and set the music to smooth jazz. Everything was done in such a flurry, it took them a while to tell us what all the commotion was about: Svetlana was coming. Once a month, Mel picked her up and brought her back for an early dinner. And apparently she liked things just so.
    It took twenty-three minutes for Mel to return with her. Arlene and Peter Pam knew this exactly because the minute before they arrived, we were instructed to put on clean aprons and stand behind the counter. Two seconds later, Mel pulled up to the restaurant.
    Peter Pam and Arlene talked about Svetlana nonstop. Some of their most heated conversations were about her accident.
    When Svetlana was young, she was an aspiring Olympic gymnast. But just before the trials she took a tumble down a flight of stairs and twisted her knee. According to Peter Pam, the injured knee sent her into a depression so deep that she threw herself in front of the truck on purpose. Her “ accident” was no “ accident” at all.
    According to Arlene, she’d landed on her feet at the bottom of the stairs and a squirrel had caused the truck to swerve and hit her. As evidence, she’d cite the dead one they found plastered to the grill of the truck when they pulled it from the water where it had skidded off the bridge. But Peter Pam would point out there were no skid marks. They’d debate the time of day, the weather conditions, and the angle of the truck where it landed in the river, each building evidence to support their arguments.The only thing Peter Pam and Arlene agreed about on the topic of Svetlana was that she was mean to Mel.
    â€œHe treats her like a queen and she barely looks at him,” Arlene said.
    â€œMm-hm, that’s right,” Peter Pam nodded, as if this were church gospel.
    â€œWhy he hasn’t wheeled her off and left her somewhere, I’ll never know,” Arlene continued.
    But just watching him, I could tell that no one had a sense of duty quite like