won’t be closed. This is one of their busiest times of the year. We’ll be able to find coats and whatever else we need, and we’ll find it all in a hurry.” He left a generous tip for the waitress and got to his feet. “Come on. The sooner we’re out of this town, the safer I’ll feel.”
She went with him to the cash register, which was near the entrance.
The cashier was a white-haired man, owlish behind a pair of thick spectacles. He smiled and asked Elliot if their dinner had been satisfactory, and Elliot said it had been fine, and the old man began to make change with slow, arthritic fingers.
The rich odor of chili sauce drifted out of the kitchen. Green peppers. Onions. Jalapenos. The distinct aromas of melted cheddar and Monterey Jack.
The long wing of the diner was nearly full of customers now; about forty people were eating dinner or waiting to be served. Some were laughing. A young couple was plotting conspiratorially, leaning toward each other from opposite sides of a booth, their heads almost touching. Nearly everyone was engaged in animated conversations, couples and cozy groups of friends, enjoying themselves, looking forward to the remaining three days of the four-day holiday.
Suddenly Tina felt a pang of envy. She wanted to be one of these fortunate people. She wanted to be enjoying an ordinary meal, on an ordinary evening, in the middle of a blissfully ordinary life, with every reason to expect a long, comfortable, ordinary future. None of these people had to worry about professional killers, bizarre conspiracies, gas-company men who were not gas-company men, silencer-equipped pistols, exhumations. They didn’t realize how lucky they were. She felt as if a vast unbridgeable gap separated her from people like these, and she wondered if she ever again would be as relaxed and free from care as these diners were at this moment.
A sharp, cold draft prickled the back of her neck.
She turned to see who had entered the restaurant.
The door was closed. No one had entered.
Yet the air remained cool—
On the jukebox, which stood to the left of the door, a currently popular country ballad was playing:
The record stuck.
Tina stared at the jukebox in disbelief.
Elliot turned away from the cashier and put a hand on Tina’s shoulder. “What the hell…?”
Tina couldn’t speak. She couldn’t move.
The air temperature was dropping precipitously.
She shuddered.
The other customers stopped talking and turned to stare at the stuttering machine.
The image of Death’s rotting face flashed into Tina’s mind.
“Stop it,” she pleaded.
Someone said, “Shoot the piano player.”
Someone else said, “Kick the damn thing.”
Elliot stepped to the jukebox and shook it gently. The two words stopped repeating. The song proceeded smoothly again — but only for one more line of verse. As Elliot turned away from the machine, the eerily meaningful repetition began again:
Tina wanted to walk through the diner and grab each of the customers by the throat, shake and threaten each of them, until she discovered who had rigged the jukebox. At the same time, she knew this wasn’t a rational thought; the explanation, whatever it might be, was not that simple. No one here had rigged the machine. Only a moment ago, she had envied these people for the very ordinariness of their lives. It was ludicrous to suspect any of them of being employed by the secret organization that had blown up her house. Ludicrous. Paranoid. They were just ordinary people in a roadside restaurant, having dinner.
Elliot shook the jukebox again, but this time to no avail.
The air grew colder still. Tina heard some of the customers commenting on it.
Elliot shook the machine harder than he had done the last time, then harder still, but it continued to repeat the two-word message in the voice of the country singer, as if an invisible hand were holding the pick-up stylus or laser-disc reader firmly in place.
The white-haired cashier came out from behind the counter. “I’ll take care of it, folks.” He called to one of the waitresses: “Jenny, check the thermostat. We’re supposed to have heat in here tonight, not air- conditioning.”
Elliot stepped out of the way as the old man approached.
Although no one was touching the jukebox, the volume increased, and the two words boomed through the
