Free The Listener by Christina Dodd Page A

State Olympic Peninsula, and sooner or later, everyone in the area showed up at the Oceanview Café. Tourists wandered in for breakfast, or lunch, or dinner, and once they tried the pie, they always came back. Locals came in to eat, gossip, and use the free Wi-Fi. Cops and truckers came in for fresh donuts and coffee. The whole west coast population came in to tell Rainbow their joys and troubles.
    Now two tourists came in and seated themselves at the far end of the counter. That meant the whale-watching vessel was back in port and the diner’s afternoon rush had started.
    Rainbow got them water, took their order, clipped it up for Dax, the owner and cook, then headed back toward Kateri.
    A timer beeped in Rainbow’s pocket, redirecting her. She walked to the refrigerator, pulled out the whole milk, poured a glass, and put it in the microwave for fifty-three seconds. While it was heating, she got the pie, measured a width of crust, cut the piece at precisely the right angle, put it on a plate, got a fork and wrapped it in a napkin, and with a roll of the eyes toward Kateri, she headed toward the middle table where Cornelia Markum worked.
    As she walked up, Cornelia’s computer pinged.
    Rainbow put down the pie and the milk. “Here you go, hon. The milk is exactly 140 degrees. The pie is two inches at the crust. It’s blackberry today.”
    Cornelia looked at the pie and the milk, then up at Rainbow. She raised her eyebrows.
    Rainbow nodded. “You’re welcome,” she said, and headed back for the counter.
    In a low voice, Kateri asked, “Has she ever said
Thank you?
’
    Rainbow laughed. “God, no. But I wait anyway, thinking someday a smidgeon of human behavior will leak through the weirdness.”
    Kateri turned on the stool to stare at Cornelia. She knew it didn’t matter if she stared. Cornelia was oblivious to everything but placing the napkin in her lap, sliding two bites of the pie into the glass, stirring it until the milk turned purple, then pouring one quarter cup of the milk into the plate. She waited precisely a minute, then began to eat.
    “That’s quite a ritual.” Kateri turned back to the counter. “I never could decide whether she was autistic or a dysfunctional genius.”
    “For sure the genius. Maybe autistic. But you have to admit, having your mother skip out when you’re twelve is going to do some damage.”
    “I went to school with Cornelia. You know, when I lived here before. She was always … odd. Smarter than the rest of us. Our third-grade teacher had an Apple Macintosh, one of the early models, and it was her prize possession. That woman humiliated Cornelia for being
too gifted
in math class, told her if she didn’t stop acting so intelligent, she’d never catch a boy.”
    “Was that Mrs. Noble?”
    “Yep.”
    “What a bitch
.
”
    “So Cornelia programmed the Macintosh to make a farting sound every time Mrs. Noble moved the mouse. Took that woman about a hundred phone calls to Apple before she found the speaker Cornelia had installed into the computer.”
    Rainbow cackled. “Good for Cornelia. That old harridan has been making children miserable for forty years.”
    “Tell me about it.” Kateri had a white cowboy father and a Native American mother with a drinking problem. From the moment she was born, someone had been looking sideways at her, making fun of her, or picking a fight. Which was why she’d gone to the Coast Guard Academy. The fire that melts the candle forges the steel, and Kateri had been born in a furnace. Now she was an adult, back in Virtue Falls after a ten-year absence, commander of the local Coast Guard station and master of her own destiny. She, by God, intended to sail along with no more trouble. She nodded toward her former classmate. “That’s spooky. Why is Cornelia smiling?”
    Rainbow filled the napkin holders. “I
think
that when she takes her pie break, she also takes a break from her work.”
    “Which is … ?”
    “Shit if I know. It’s