Free Hitchers by Will McIntosh

mask so the rubber band wasn’t rubbing against my ear.
    I’d arrived at the Blue Boy Diner fifteen minutes early, got us a window booth with a view of the muddy brown Ogeechee. The Blue Boy was an old aluminum diner that smelled of home fries and cinnamon buns. Usually there was a half-hour wait for a seat; today there were less than a dozen people in the place.
    I hadn’t been back there since the day Lorena died. I’d expected memories to come flooding in as soon as I drove up, but my mind was preoccupied with the voices-both mine and Mick Mercury’s.
    Mick Mercury. As I waited I tried to estimate how old he would be. In his heyday he’d probably been in his early 30s. That was twenty-eight years ago, so he’d be in his late fifties.
    I wasn’t sure what to expect. Mercury had been arrested a few times in the past decade, most famously for heaving a car battery through a bar window, nearly braining a man who had taunted him for the way he was dressed. From what I remembered he wasn’t superrich any more. Bad investments, divorce, greedy managers, and
a lengthy legal dispute with the guy who co-wrote a lot of his songs had all taken bites out of his net worth.
    A man appeared at the entrance. My heart began to thump, then I saw he was with a woman, and he was short and bald, and I relaxed. The hostess led them to an open table. It occurred to me that, even when Atlantans began returning to their normal routines, there would be far fewer filling restaurants and subway cars. Close to fifteen percent fewer, at least until others started moving to Atlanta to take advantage of all the job openings and drastically reduced rents. Assuming people wanted to live in a place that had been the target of the worst terrorist attack in history. My guess was that wouldn’t stop people. The city would eventually rise again.
    â€œCan I get you something to drink?” The waitress’s voice pulled me out of my thoughts. I looked up and was immediately drawn to the tattoos on her forearms: assault rifles morphing into flowers. I laughed, shook my head in disbelief.
    The waitress tilted her head, smiled beneath her mask. “What’s funny?” She was an attractive woman, with warm, bright eyes and a relaxed self-assurance that was slightly disconcerting. She was in her late twenties, small and thin, black hair pulled into stubby pigtails with orange rubber bands.
    â€œI’m sorry,” I said. “You wouldn’t remember me, but you’d remember my wife.”
    She folded her arms, masking the flower on her right forearm, leaving only the rifle. “Why’s that?”
    â€œYou got into an argument with her once.”
    The waitress shook her head. “When was this?”
    â€œTwo years ago? Springtime. My wife was lactose intolerant,” I explained. “She told you to keep all the dairy products off her plate. You forgot to hold the butter-there was a big scoop on the pancakes. She asked you to get her new ones, but you didn’t see why she couldn’t just scrape the butter off.”
    The waitress was still shaking her head, no hint of recognition.
    â€œYou got huffy. That’s when she got in your face, told you she
didn’t like your tone of voice. She was tall? Latino?”
    Her eyes got wide. She pointed at me. “Perfect hair? Expensive hiking boots?”
    I pointed back. “That’s her.”
    The waitress let her head loll back until she was looking at the ceiling. “God, that was a terrible morning. My daughter had been throwing up all night, then I couldn’t find anyone to watch her and I was late getting to work.” She pressed her hand to the side of her face. “By the time I got to the butter thing I had nothing left. I just couldn’t conjure up the cheery singsong waitress voice.”
    â€œNo,” I laughed, “you definitely couldn’t.” I didn’t know what it was about this