Free Say When by Elizabeth Berg Page B

“Rice pudding any good?”
    “Nope.”
    “Is anything back there any good?”
    She turned around, surveyed the cakes and pies, the glass goblets of Jell-O and pudding. “The apple pie’s all right.”
    “All right. That, then, à la mode.”
    She served it to him, then went back to her crossword puzzle. Griffin took a bite of the pie. “This is awful.”
    The waitress shrugged. “It’s better than the rice pudding.”
    Griffin pushed the ice cream off the pie, ate it in three bites. Ellen made wonderful apple pie, and she always made cutouts of apples and leaves from the extra dough to arrange artfully on top. She made great rice pudding, too. Stop.
    “How’s the crossword coming?” he asked the waitress.
    She looked up. “Sorry?”
    “Just wondered how the crossword puzzle was coming.”
    “What’s an eleven-letter word for ‘argument’?”
    Griffin thought for a minute, then said, “Altercation.”
    “Oh, yeah.” She wrote it in. Then she stood back and stretched, arched her back like a cat would. “I hate doing these things. I mean, you do all this work and what do you get?”
    “Satisfaction,” Griffin said.
    “From what?”
    “From filling in all the blanks.”
    “That doesn’t give me any satisfaction.”
    “Why bother, then?”
    “I don’t know. It’s something to do until closing time.”
    “When is closing time?”
    She looked at her watch. “Twenty-three minutes. And twenty-six seconds.”
    She looked at him frankly now, as though seeing him for the first time. Raised an eyebrow. Was this an invitation? She walked past him, intentionally slowly, Griffin thought, and he watched her fill the salt and pepper shakers. She had a very nice figure, her youth visible even in her back. It had been so long since he’d been with another woman. He had a hard time remembering it. Was it…Peggy something? Was that the name of the last woman he’d slept with before Ellen? Yes, Peggy Swenson. She was auburn-haired, studying to be a pharmacist, came from a big farm family in Minnesota. She was nice. Boring, but nice. Piano legs. She’d wept when they parted, said that she’d thought they’d made such a nice couple.
    He looked at the waitress’s legs. Very nice—long, muscular calves, trim ankles. She wore hot pink shoelaces in her waitress shoes. She turned back to him, smiled. She had sprayed her bangs into a kind of startled, stand-up style, and pulled the rest of her blond hair into a ponytail. She was wearing a lot of makeup—black mascara that clotted her lashes into irregular spikes, a purplish color of lipstick unlike anything Griffin had ever seen in nature, blotches of blush high up on her cheeks. It was too bad, really—she was kind of pretty beneath all that. He stirred what was left of his coffee, tried to imagine her naked. Her breasts were large, and they would be high and perky. She’d have a flat belly, no stretch marks. Blond pubic hair? He saw himself on top of her, her mouth open in pleasure, maybe moaning a little.
    “More coffee?” He started, looked up. She was standing right next to him now, only a young girl, really; somebody’s daughter, wearing a tacky watch with fake diamonds.
    “Yes, please,” he said, and realized with horror that he was feeling close to tears.
    “You’re feeling bad, huh?”
    He nodded, examined his thumbnail, tried to remember some spectacular plays in the last Bears game he’d watched.
    “Yeah. I knew it as soon as you walked in here.” She put the pot back on the burner, turned it off. Then she took off her apron and came to stand in front of him. “It’s all over your face.”
    “I suppose.”
    “What’s your name?”
    “It’s Griffin. Well, it’s Frank. Frank Griffin, I go by Griffin.”
    “You married?”
    “I’m…” Was he? “Well, I guess I’m separated.”
    “You guess?”
    “My wife wants a divorce, so I guess I’m getting divorced.”
    “But you don’t want to.”
    “No. I don’t.”
    “Well,