taking you for a drink.”
It felt as though we’d been walking through the hostile, darkling night for hours before we stumbled upon a place of refuge, safe from the ravages of the storm and the possibility of cold-blooded murder.
We found a café.
That is, it said it was a café. But if you, like I, think of a café as being small but elegant, French and atmospheric – the kind of place where one might as well write a poem as order an espresso – then the Purity Café was a diner. From the looks of it, it had probably been a diner for about fifty years.
I wiped a circle of dirt and steam from the window and peered inside. I could see booths, a Formica counter, a chrome-and-glass fridge, and, strung above the griddle, dulled red foil letters that spelled out MERRY MAS.
I stepped back so Ella could see. “What do you think?”
Preparatory to taking him in among the people, Ella was wiping the vomit from Stu’s shirt with a tissue and didn’t bother to look.
“So long as there aren’t armed men inside holding everyone hostage, I think it’s great,” said Ella. “I just want to sit down.”
She was definitely surprising me, I have to admit it. The Ella I met when I first moved to Deadwood would have been in tears by now, running from corner to corner looking for a public phone that was working so she could call home collect.
“Come on,” said Stu, lurching to the door. “I really need a drink.”
The wall that ran along the booths was covered with mirrors. As we stepped into the steamy warmth of the Purity Café, I could see three figures staring back at us over the clutch of condiments that graced each table. Two teenage girls in bedraggled party gear and a drunken twenty-nine-year-old man with string and shredded paper clinging to him and vomit all over his boots. We looked like people routinely picked up by the cops.
The other customers of the Purity Café, glancing up from their drinks and food, saw what I saw. You could practically hear them praying that we wouldn’t sit near them.
“Get him into a booth,” ordered Ella as the waitress bore down on us. “Quick, before she sees his feet.”
We dragged Stu to the nearest booth. I got in first and pulled him after me.
As soon as he hit the fake leather seat, Stu started talking.
“Everybody wants something from me,” he informed us again. “Even people I don’t know. Everybody thinks they own me.”
The waitress stopped by our table, pad in hand. If this were Deadwood, the sight of us would have put her into cardiac arrest by now, but this wasn’t Deadwood, it was New York. She had the jaded, seen-it-all air of the waitress in a depressing play. She looked at Stu.
“What’ll it be?”
“You think I have any real friends?” Stu asked her. “None of my friends give two cents about me. If I lost everything tomorrow, I’d never see any of them again.”
Her eyes fell on his sodden silk shirt with the bits of vomit Ella hadn’t been able to get off and the tentacles of paper and string.
“You’re in luck then,” the waitress told him. “’Cause it looks like you have lost everything.”
“We’ll just have coffee,” said Ella politely.
“Not me,” said Stu. “I’ll have a boilermaker and a deluxe hamburger platter, with a large side of onion rings.”
Ella and I exchanged a look of panic. We didn’t have enough money for a deluxe hamburger platter and a large side of onion rings.
“This isn’t a bar,” said the waitress. “How do you want your patty?”
Ella leaned across the table and touched Stu’s hand. “You’re not really hungry, are you?” she inquired gently. “Why don’t you just have a coffee for now?” She smiled encouragingly. “Or mineral water. Mineral water would be better than coffee.”
Stu acted like he hadn’t heard her. “Rare,” he ordered. “Swiss cheese.”
Ella turned her smile on the waitress. “Just bring him a coffee,” she said sweetly. She winked. “He isn’t really up to a meal right now.”
Stu stood up. He’d heard her that time.
“I want a deluxe hamburger platter and onion rings!” he bellowed. “And I want it now!”
The waitress raised one eyebrow. “You two better keep him in line,” she warned. “The boss won’t stand for any nonsense.”
I looked over at the heavy-set man behind the counter. The one talking to the two cops who were eating doughnuts and drinking coffee. He seemed to be deeply engrossed in their conversation, but all the time he was glancing around the room. His eyes met mine for one very long second, and then he laughed.
“Don’t worry,” Ella promised. “He’s all right; he just had a little too much to drink.”
After the waitress shuffled off, Stu fell back in his seat and turned on Ella and me.
“What do you want?” he demanded. He seemed a little obsessed with this question. “Autographs? Money? A quick roll in the hay?”
I stared at him, agog. Was this the poet whose words of light had lit my darkest days; the genius whose intuition and wisdom had so inspired me? I was shocked, I admit it. Shocked and disappointed. Stu Wolff is a spiritual being. He is supposed to be above things like rolling in the hay.
Ella’s treacherous words repeated themselves in my mind.
“We don’t want anything,” I enunciated carefully into his ear. “We’re trying to help you.”
Stu laughed. It was a laugh of torment and pain.
“You don’t want
“Precedent,” I automatically corrected.
Stu wasn’t listening. He was still talking.
“What are you two, aliens or something?” He listed to the left, knocking over the menu propped against the napkin holder. “Hey!” he shouted to the other customers. “Hey! These girls are from another planet!”
The waitress and the counter-man looked over. The two tired-looking workmen in the next booth looked over. The women at the back looked over. The cops looked over, too.
Ella leaned across the table again and put both her hands on Stu’s. “Shhhh…” Ella calmed him. “You have to be quiet or they’ll throw us out.”
Stu pulled roughly away. “Why? I don’t
One of the cops looked over again.
Genetics is a complicated thing. As different as I am to Karen Kapok, when I opened my mouth I sounded just like my mother.
“No you can’t,” I told him firmly. “You’re making a spectacle of yourself.”
It didn’t work when my mother told me I was making a spectacle of myself, and it didn’t work with Stu, either.
“But I am a spectacle,” he announced to the Purity Café in a working-the-stadium roar. “You think I’m a regular guy? I’m not a regular guy.”
“Shhh!!” I hissed. I didn’t have Ella’s patience.
Stu didn’t
“I’m a three-ring circus,” he boomed on. “You think anybody knows me? Nobody knows me!” He knocked the bowl of sugar packets off the table. “I don’t even know myself.”
I gave Ella a look. “Didn’t I tell you?” I whispered. “He’s a tortured soul.”
The waitress arrived with our coffees. “Food’s coming,” she muttered. The cop who was eating the powdered doughnut was watching her over his shoulder.
Ella squashed her mouth into a line. “Torture’s involved,” she agreed. She shook her head sadly. “But it makes you think, doesn’t it? I mean, why shouldn’t he be happy? He has everything he could possibly want…”
