59. Brian

FIFTY-NINE

brian

I hadn’t actually seen the diner a few miles back, I’d seen the sign for the diner a few miles back. And as it turns out, those are two completely different things.

Once we got off the highway it was another three miles before Laney’s Diner appeared before us like an oasis in the desert with a lit-up neon blue sign.

A neon pink arrow points down at the diner—as though we could ever miss the one building in a vast wasteland of nothing as far as the eye can see. A flickering sign beneath the first sign reads, “Home of Laney’s famous blueberry pancake stack.”

There are only a few cars and a couple of semi-trucks in the cracking and buckling parking lot. It needs to be filled in and blacktopped. I park at the side of the building and go around to get Mina’s door. I do a quick weapons check and notice Mina doing the same. It’s been instinct for me for a long time now. These patterns of behavior are still new to her, yet it’s beginning to become her second nature as well.

I’m so proud.

I take a moment to become aware of my surroundings. There isn’t much to see. It’s all just flat desert with the occasional cactus popping up out of the ground. Even in February, it’s hot here in the day, but at night it’s far cooler than I expected. Mina’s not wearing her jacket so I take mine off and drape it over her shoulders.

“Admit it, you just bought this so you could wear it.”

She smiles at me and pulls the leather tight against her.

How a diner this far out in deserted bumfuck stays afloat is anybody’s guess. But it was the only food stop for miles and miles on that patch of highway, and the sign from the main road makes it seem like it’s much closer than it is. I guess Laney is betting once you’ve started down the road to the diner, you’re committed so you may as well see it through and get something to eat while you’re out here.

The diner itself is floor-to-ceiling glass windows all the way around except for the back where the kitchen is. It feels like we’re about to eat at a car dealership. The roof is all weird jutting angles, making me think this place may not just be mimicking a 1950’s aesthetic, but may actually have been standing here this long.

The door chimes when I open it for Mina.

“We’re on a date on Valentine’s day,” she says.

“It is not a date,” I grumble.

She punches me in the arm and winks. “You know it’s a date, Brian. And just in time, too.” She points up at the clock over the counter that, if correct, tells us it’s 11:47. Only thirteen minutes until this disgustingly sweet love holiday is over.

There are red roses on all the tables to celebrate this day of saccharine sweetness. Large pink and red paper hearts hang down from a water-damaged ceiling. The hearts sway lightly back and forth from the air vents.

An elderly woman with long gray hair pulled back into a bun and a light blue dress with small white polka dots and a white apron greets us with menus. “You can just sit wherever you want doll, I’ll get ya in just a minute. We serve breakfast all day and all night,” she says to Mina.

She’s a transplant from some southern state, and has a thick drawl.

She doesn’t make eye contact with me or even acknowledge my existence, but I know she just had that hairs standing up on the back of your neck feeling with me. She feels me, even if she won’t look at me. Well, that at least makes me feel a bit better about myself. I’m still me, and stranger danger still means something in the world.

Mina takes the offered menus and guides us to a booth at the back.

“This okay?” she asks me.

I nod and take the seat facing the door. I know we’re in the middle of nowhere, far from the danger of opportunists who know me, but old habits die hard. There’s only one customer entrance. I imagine there’s an emergency exit next to the bathrooms and if there isn’t one there, there’s definitely one back in the kitchen.

From what I can tell there’s a cook and two waitresses working tonight—the older woman and a younger redhead taking care of the other side of the diner. A lone man sits at a table between the front door and an old-fashioned jukebox that thankfully isn’t playing. Maybe it’s just decorative.

A few tables down directly between our booth and the exit sit two large men. I assume the two semi-trucks out in the parking lot are theirs. They’re wearing old blue shirts with a white patch and thick red embroidery that has their name stitched on it.

Floyd and Mack. It’s anybody’s guess if these are their real names or if they got the shirts at Goodwill.

There’s an older man in a tattered brown coat slurping on a bowl of soup. He’s sitting at the counter directly across from us and just a few feet away from Mina, which I don’t love, but I’m not going to relocate us over it. Besides his proximity, our location is perfect, and it’s not as though he’s a threat to anyone.

A few minutes later, the older waitress returns. She sits a nearly full coffee pot on our table that she just used to pour refills for the truckers. She wipes her hands on her apron and pulls out a pad of paper and a pencil. Her name tag reads, “Dottie.”

Given the clientele of this diner, it’s immediately apparent how they stay in business even staying open all night in the middle of nowhere. It seems to be a popular place for truckers.

“Now, what can I get you two?”

She’s looking at Mina, still avoiding my gaze, but I speak first. “Dottie, I’ll have a T-bone, medium rare, hash browns, two eggs sunny side up, and a coffee. Black.”

She furiously scribbles down my order. “And for you, darlin?” She looks at Mina a little too intently, as though she’s looking for signs I’m beating her.

“Blueberry pancakes, the famous ones, and coffee,” Mina says, tossing her a disarming smile.

“Cream and sugar?”

“No, black.”

“Coming right up.” She’s barely stepped away from the table when she yells: “Hank!” and proceeds to take the order back to a cook who just appeared in the window as if by magic. He was probably taking a nap back there. She clips our order to a creaky metal wheel and spins it to the large guy in the kitchen who looks at it, grunts, and then gets to work.

There’s a TV suspended from the ceiling at an angle that most of the patrons can at least partially see, and it’s on.

“Turn that up!” someone shouts.

The redheaded waitress turns the volume up.

“We’re here at the scene of the aftermath of a Valentine’s Day gang war with over twenty victims, including, tragically, a teenage girl who seems to have stumbled upon the night’s events. Earlier tonight, firefighters were called to what appeared to be a house fire at the isolated Nolan Estate, only to find an even more grizzly and shocking scene. Cole Nolan, CEO of Nolan Tactical, a mid-sized handgun manufacturer has long been suspected to be the leader of one of the Phoenix area’s most notorious criminal organizations...”

My muscles go rigid. The absolute last thing I need right now is for Mina to be reminded of that shit—not like she can forget it, but still, having it shoved in our faces every five minutes isn’t exactly conducive to our continued relationship.

Dottie returns with our coffee. She glances up at the TV news report and shakes her head as though she’s disappointed more than shocked by all the evil in this world. I’m sure she wouldn’t be calmly pouring my coffee right now if she knew I was the one who killed that girl.

“Such a shame,” she says. “And why did it have to be on Valentine’s Day of all days? These psychopaths can’t just let us have one good day of love and candy hearts?”

I smile tightly at her and thank her for the coffee. She leaves our table and turns the TV off to groans from some of the patrons.

“We’ve had a nice day today,” she says, “And we aren’t spoiling it with the news.”

A few minutes later she returns and sets a plate of fluffy blueberry pancakes in front of Mina. “Yours will take a little longer,” she says to me, before darting back to the kitchen.

No honey, darlin’, doll, or sweetheart for me, I guess.

Mina digs into her pancakes and I take a sip of my coffee and continue to people watch. I tense as two black cars pull up right in front of the double doors. I take a long slow breath.

Stop being paranoid, Brian. Nobody’s out to get you. Nobody knows we’re here.

And yet, I can’t help the way my body seems to coil like a viper ready to strike as car doors open and shut in tandem.

The cars are still running. The headlights shine through the diner’s front doors. I look again frantically for that emergency exit, when four men dressed in black and strapped down with weapons burst into the diner. The waitresses scream as a bullet tears through the old guy. He falls face first into his soup. Before I can pull my gun or say a word to Mina, his blood is splattered all over her pancakes and shocked face.

She reaches for her gun, and turns and stands and then… just like that, a bullet rips through her. She stumbles and falls.

Everything around me seems to slow, mere seconds stretching into infinity before me, and I have the closest thing I have ever felt to an out-of-body experience. The Tower card from the tarot spread on Christmas Eve flashes in my mind along with Benjamin Barker’s warning… “Tell her before it’s too late.”

And I suddenly know exactly what he meant. I never told Mina I loved her. Not once. I had a million opportunities. I knew she wanted to hear it back at the motel and still I couldn’t make those fucking words come out of my worthless mouth.

“Mina! Mina!” I shout, choking back sobs that already threaten to overwhelm me. I don’t recognize my own voice. I sound like a dying animal. I’m completely oblivious to my own safety and how I’m leaving myself open to attack. I stare, frozen as her hand falls open, lax, the fork with a bite of blueberry pancake rolling out onto the floor.

She doesn’t move.

The diner is pandemonium now. One of the gunmen has gone to the kitchen. Another is taking out the redhead and Dottie. I don’t know where the third one is, but the one that shot Mina is now focused on me. He releases his magazine, and it clatters on the black and white checkered floor. And suddenly my instincts re-engage. By the time he’s slammed the next one in, I’ve already pulled my gun and started shooting.

I keep walking as I unload the gun into him. When it’s empty, I drop it and pull a second one from a holster at my back and just keep firing. He’s dead, but I keep shooting until I’m out of ammo on that one, too.

“Dominic!” one of the gunmen shouts, frantic… echoing the way I said Mina’s name only a few moments ago. And I know someone else besides me now has a vendetta. Well, play stupid games, win stupid prizes. I pick up the corpse and spin around, planning to use him to absorb gunfire, but the other gunman hesitates, not wanting to put more bullets in someone he obviously cares about.

“You motherfucker!” He shouts. He starts to rush me, but I pull another gun from a holster at Dominic’s waist and fire it over the dead guy’s shoulder, taking out probably his only mourner.

Now we’re down to two. The third gunman just shot the truckers, and as he turns his focus to me, I lift a coffee pot filled with hot coffee and fling it at him. He screams as the searing liquid hits him, drops his gun, and I grab it and shoot him in the back of the head before he can regroup. Mack is dead but Floyd is still with us… just barely.

“Help… me…” he coughs out. But the blood is already coming out of his mouth. There’s no help for him. I put two bullets cleanly in his head, then I look for the last shooter.

He comes out of the kitchen, covered in blood. I vaguely recall hearing the clattering of pots and pans in the kitchen. Hank fought back, valiantly, it appears. But it wasn’t enough. We are the only two living souls left in this diner. And I need answers right the fuck now!

I’m keenly aware that I can’t just shoot this motherfucker or I won’t get what I need. Instead, I start flinging throwing stars at him. When I run out of those, I start throwing plates of hot food, then flinging forks. I pick up a full napkin dispenser and chuck it at him. The sharp edge clips him on the shoulder, causing him to let out a howl of pain. If that hurt him, he’d better brace himself for what’s coming next.

He tries shooting at me, but his shots keep missing and going wildly off course as he tries to shoot and avoid the endless cascade of shit I’m throwing at him at the same time. Finally I’m out of small things and start throwing chairs.

He drops the gun and decides to join me in a grown-up fight. We swing punches and throw kicks, and grapple.

He grabs a piece of broken glass and goes for my throat, but I manage to keep him off me. He slashes out and gets the side of my face instead, causing warm sticky blood to start a trail down my cheek. I choke him until he drops it, grateful that he doesn’t die on me.

I finally gain the upper hand and flip him and slam him down on a table. It knocks the wind out of him, and I take the opportunity to relieve him of the remaining weapons on his person, then I grip him by the collar and slam him back against the jukebox so hard a quarter actually comes out of the machine. It spins around several times before lying flat and still on the floor.

I throw another punch at him, and shout in his face. “Why? Why? Motherfucking why? Why this diner? Why us? Why her ?”

The logical answer is that they’re getting some vengeance for tonight… that someone saw us. But that doesn’t feel right to me. There is no way these guys are with those guys. They dress and carry themselves too differently.

Tears are streaming down my face as I scream at him, but I don’t care. Is this what it feels like to be human? If so, I want to claw it out of me. I want to go back to being cold and dead inside so nothing like this can ever touch me again.

I can’t look back at her body, I just can’t. This is all my fault.

I release my grip enough so he can talk. He coughs a few times and then finally says… “The money. The contract.”

“What contract?” I growl.

“Valentino put out a hit on you for ten million dollars.”

This is the problem with pissing someone off with far deeper pockets than sense. I’d suspected he might have done something like that at the Krampus run, but it shouldn’t still be in effect with him out of the picture.

“He’s dead,” I say. “So no contract.”

The guy shakes his head. “It’s not that simple, Sloan. He set up a trust, and the money’s in escrow. It doesn’t matter if Dante is alive or dead. This contract is bigger than him. The contract is open until you’re dead. They’re just gonna keep coming for you, you sad, sad motherfucker.”

I pull my knife, the one I used to cut Mina’s clothes off what feels like a lifetime ago, and stab him in the throat. He gurgles and flails for a moment before hitting the floor, His blood spilling out to mix with all the others.

I should have asked him how he found us out here at this diner, but obviously they were watching us, probably put a tracking device on the car. It doesn’t even matter anymore.

I glance up at the clock. 11:59. Somehow I have lost the only thing I have ever loved in under thirteen minutes. My ears are still ringing from too much gunfire in such a small space. I can barely hear my own sobs, my own screams as I lose what’s left of my quickly fraying mind.

I kick over a table and then start throwing chairs back at the kitchen. I smash every fucking plate. Every glass. I hurl forks into booths, and then start dragging them down the vinyl, ripping out the insides the way I desperately want to rip out my own insides. And I scream like the wounded and broken animal that I am.

I pick up one of the guns and start shooting at the windows, just to hear that satisfying shatter of glass. And I think about Mina shooting bottles with me out on my gun range. And it only makes me cry harder.

My ears are still ringing from these last gunshots, and I finally completely break down. I’m kneeling in a pool of blood sobbing. It’s not hers. I still can’t even look over at her. I can’t. I need to pretend for just a little longer.

“Mina, why? God, why? Why take her? She didn’t deserve it. It should have been me.”

It should be me. It still could be. There’s no point in any of it anymore. I’m so fucking tired.

I pick up one of my guns that I dropped. I can barely see through my own tears. I slam a new magazine in and turn the gun on myself. I’ve got no reason to be here. I just want to be where she is. We could never have our happily ever after here. I’m too dark and broken for that… but maybe in another life, another world… some place that’s not this place... This sick fucked-up world where monsters like me are allowed to run free destroying people’s lives, killing other people’s loved ones. Maybe this is my karma.

I rack the slide, still trying to shake off the ringing in my ears, trying to think… as if I need strategy anymore. My thinking days are done.

“Brian, No!”

I freeze. I swear I heard her. But I’m afraid to turn around. If I turn around and she’s still just lying there, lifeless, I won’t be able to take it.

“Brian…” she says, through tears. “I’m right here… I’m fine. I’m okay. Everything is okay, just put down the gun.”

I shake my head. “No. You’re not real. You can’t be. I saw it. I saw you go down. There was no life in you.”

“Just turn around, Brian. Turn around and look at me. I’m sorry I didn’t move. The Kevlar took the bullet, but I stumbled and fell. And when I went down, something inside me said to stay down, so I listened so they’d forget about me and you would have a chance... so we both would have a chance.”

I drop the magazine and clear the chamber. Then I turn slowly to find Mina standing there, alive.

“I tried to say something after the last one was dead, but you didn’t hear me. You just kept going. So I was going to just wait it out, wait until you ran out of steam, so you could hear me.”

“It’s the ringing,” I say pointing at my ear as I make my way around all the dead bodies and through the endless pools of blood to reach her.

When I finally get close enough, I cup her face in my hands. “Are you really real, Mina? Are you really here right now?”

“Yes, Brian. I’m here. I’m so sorry. I was afraid if I did anything else, we’d both end up dead.”

I press a kiss to her forehead, smearing the blood from the old man. “No, you did the right thing. Smart. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.”

I pepper kisses over her face as I tell her over and over the words I should have told her a long time ago, the words I thought I wouldn’t have the chance to say. The only real deep feeling for anyone I can feel.

Her corset has the hooks in the front, and I carefully unhook it, to reveal the Kevlar and the embedded and flattened bullet. I can’t believe what I’m seeing.

“I think I have a bruise,” she says.

“Where did this come from?”

“The Kevlar factory,” she snarks.

“You know what I mean.”

“You told me to pack extra vests. Remember?”

I don’t remember, but that sounds like me. I don’t bother telling her that I’m not actually wearing Kevlar right now. She’d fucking kill me. And I try not to let my mind spiral… to think about how careless I was with my own life when I thought she was gone. What if I, unprotected and stupid, had died and left her here to mourn me?

But I just hold her in my arms as we sway back and forth. “I love you,” I sigh into her hair.

“Hey…” she finally says.

“Yeah?”

“You know what we need to do right now?”

“What’s that?”

“I mean… if you really love me…”

“Mina…” I growl, already not liking where this is headed.

She pulls out of my arms and crosses the diner. She bends over right next to the jukebox, giving me a delightful view of her leather-clad ass, and then she picks up the quarter from the floor and slides it into the coin slot.

Against all odds, the machine actually lights up. She flips through the selections until she’s finally found what she’s looking for. And I know exactly what she’s looking for.

A moment later Frank Sinatra’s voice begins to croon out My Funny Valentine . Mina crooks a finger at me. “You have to…”

I let out a long, slow sigh. This diner is completely destroyed, littered with shattered glass, weapons, blood, and dead bodies. She’s right. We have to. I cross to her and take her in my arms and we slow dance.

“I love you,” I say again.

“I love you, too,” she says.

And then we kiss under the giant pink and red paper hearts riddled with bullet holes.