Nodaway Falls

There’s magic linoleum at Crazy Cousin Betty’s.

I first noticed it when I was six. My mother had brought me in to get my special Birthday Waffle Surprise – a different surprise tucked between two waffles every year, one year it was fried tomatoes. I didn’t like that year. Anyway, the year I turned six, Helen Philpott – proprieter of CCB’s and as such the center of Nodaway Falls’s social universe – came to our table to deliver my breakfast, her arm raised in a flourish and her ruffly blue waitress uniform dancing around her like Cinderella’s ball gown. I remember thinking that she was too old to be Cinderella, although she was only in her mid-forties at the time.

I pointed to the one sparkly blue square in the midst of all the solid, checker-boarded blue and whites and asked, “Why is that square different?”

Helen bent down to bring her crinkly cinnamon eyes level with my wide green ones. “Well, that’s a magic square.”

“There’s no such thing as magic.” I sniffed with authority and pushed my glasses up on my nose.

“I beg to differ with you there, young Miss Kiskey.” Helen respectfully shuffled away from the square as she knelt in front of me so that we could both look at it while she talked, her slight Scottish lilt making her words sound like music. “Not only is the square magic, sweet girl, but it’s the best kind of magic.” She leaned in closer, her face so close to mine that I could feel the warmth emanating from her skin. “If you stand on it and make a wish, your wish will come true.”

“No, it won’t.”

Helen made a noise of mock affront. “Sure, it will. But you have to be careful; you only get one wish, and you can’t go jumping on it every time you want a new doll, or a motorcycle. Wishes are very powerful and dangerous things. Like lions. You don’t want to mess with lions, do you?”

I said no, and she motioned to the melting candles on my breakfast surprise waffle – two chocolate chip waffles with fried bananas and hot fudge inside, that was a good year – and I took a deep breath and blew them out, not bothering to make even a mundane birthday candle wish, because I was too sensible for that kind of stuff.

Still, in the years that followed, I developed a second sense about that square. I didn’t pay it direct attention, but there was a back-burner awareness of it whenever I was in CCB’s. I always took care never to step on it, just in case I accidentally had a random wistful thought and wasted my wish. It was similar to how some kids avoided cracks so they wouldn’t break their mother’s backs, or stomped on the cracks, so they would. Childhood superstitions stay with you, even when you know they’re ridiculous.

I started working at CCB’s the day after my eighteenth birthday, two weeks after my mother’s death. I was too overwhelmed at the time to even think about going to college, and working for Helen made me feel secure, so that’s how I ended up there. For eight years. To this day, I carefully step around Helen’s magic square, standing either too close or too far away from Booth 9 when I take orders and deliver food. Part of it was just habit, and part of it – if I’m really going to be honest and hell, isn’t now the time to be honest? – part of me wanted to save it for a special day, a day when I absolutely had to have it.

I don’t know what made that midsummer’s Tuesday night any different from the gazillion other nights I’d stood in my periwinkle blue waffle waitress uniform mopping over that singular sparkly blue square, but for some reason, I suddenly knew.

It was time to make my wish.

I looked up from where I stood, my position in CCB’s tiny dining room allowing me to see directly through the pass into the kitchen, and I caught a glimpse of Tobias ambling by as he took his cleaning rags and bucket of bleach water to the sink.

Tobias. He was an incredible cook, a good man, and he had an incredible name. Tobias. I hugged the mop handle to me, nibbled my lip, and glanced down at the magic square.

Come on, Kiskey. It’s now or nev—

The side door – also known as the Private door for the big Private sign that hung on it, because it opened up to a hallway that gave us access to the office, and the upstairs apartments – flew open. I started mopping with ridiculous earnest as Helen’s niece, Millie, thudded out into the dining room in her standard civvies – an ankle-length cotton dress in her favored shade of gutter-water gray.

“I’m going out,” she grunted. Wiry curls of her shoulder-length ash-blonde had escaped the tremendous plastic clip she wedged them into every day, giving her a Medusa-ish look. She grabbed her dull blue knapsack/purse off the counter and unzipped the top. “Don’t ask me where, it’s none of your damn business.” She looked up at me, right as I was sneaking another peek at Tobias, then rolled her eyes and hoisted the pack onto her shoulder.

“Forget it, will you?” she said, no small amount of bitterness in her voice as she stomped toward the door in her duck boots. “It’s not going to happen. It never happens.”

My heart squeezed tight and I continued mopping. “I have no idea what you’re talk–”

“It’s impossible,” she said. “Get over it.”

“Get over what?” I said casually.

“Guys like that never go for girls like us,” she said. “Learn it now, save yourself the  pain.”

Girls like… us? I put my hand on my waist – soft, a little thick, I knew, but some men liked that – and looked at Millie. We weren’t at all alike. She was squat, and troll-like, and angry, and kinda bitchy. I glanced to my left, where the front windows became mirror-like against the dark outside. In all honesty, my reflection looked… well…

A little squat.

I straightened, gripped my mop tighter. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Millie.”

She stared at me blankly for a moment, then said, “Oh, I don’t know why I even said anything. I don’t care.” She headed toward the door then stopped and looked back at me. “Helen will be back from Bunco in a half hour. Tell her I’ll be back when I’m back.”

And then, Millie and her charm thudded out into the night. The second the door shut behind her, I stopped mopping and nibbled my lip as my heart beat furiously in my chest. How did she know? I mean, sure, I’d been in love with Tobias for… well, something like four years, but even I’d only been aware of it for one year and I was pretty damn sure he had no idea.

Still, if Millie, sensitivity of a dead cockroach, was picking up on it, then…

I looked up at the pass, just catching a glimpse of Tobias dancing by as Al Green played from the kitchen radio. A warmth took over my entire body. I loved Al Green. I dropped what I was sure was a dopey smile and straightened up.

… then it’s time to use the magic square.

I put the mop in the bucket with determination. A little too much determination, actually, and I splashed some dirty mop water on the floor. I twisted the handle to wring the mop out and swished the graying cotton ropes, once again, over the magic square. I know it was my imagination, but it seemed to sparkle just a bit more, looking swirly and ethereal as the mop washed over it. What if I stood on it and just made the wish? Would Tobias come rushing out of the kitchen, pull me into his arms and put me out of my misery?

No. It couldn’t be that easy. Could it? Although, once you’re desperate enough to start contemplating magic squares, reality’s pretty much taken a back seat anyway.

I raised my head and looked toward the kitchen, pushing my glasses up on my nose. I put the mop back in the bucket – more gently this time – and lifted one white-Kedded foot an inch in the air over the sparkly blue square. I wish, I thought, closing my eyes as I prepared to place it on the magic spot.

I wish–

“Liv?” I opened my eyes to see Tobias standing in the kitchen doorway, silhouetted in the dimmed dining room, the white T-shirt that hugged his broad shoulders glowing in the light streaming in from the kitchen behind him. He hunched a bit as he tucked his hands in his front jeans pockets. “What are you doing?”

Lie, I thought, but instead of putting down my foot and picking up the mop, I stood there, toes still hovering over the magic square, and said quietly, “Wishing.”

“What?” He started toward me, and I thanked God that I’d turned off all but the hanging lights over the counter, because I was sure my face was raging red by now. But I’d gotten this far; I had to keep going.

“I’m w-wishing.”

“You’re finishing? You need help?” He reached for the mop handle but I pulled it closer to me. His dark, wavy hair was tinged with a few random hints of early-onset gray and his brown eyes were soft as they landed on mine, their expression inquisitive and tragically clueless to my designs. But it was more than his looks that I loved. He was kind; he always slid a sausage link under a whole wheat waffle for Andrew Garvey to sneak while his wife, Skipper, extolled the virtues of vegetarianism to the people in the next booth. He was funny, too; whenever it got slow out front, I’d duck in the back and he’d tell me bad jokes, but something about the boyish glee with which he told them always made them funny anyway. And he was smart; his back jeans pockets were always misshapen from the paperbacks he forced into them for when things got slow. Today, it was Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

“Something wrong with your foot?” he asked, glancing down at my hovering toes and then back up at my face.

I put my foot down – on the normal linoleum – and let out a strained laugh. “No, I–ha, funny story. I was just thinking – looking – I mean… you know.” I cleared my throat and motioned downward. “The magic square.”

“The magic square?” Tobias’s forehead crinkled with skepticism. His eyes were a little too big for his head, and his teeth were a little too big for his mouth, but his smile was perfect set in the midst of the permanent five o’clock shadow he wore.

I pushed my glasses up on my nose again. “Yeah. You see this one blue square, how it’s different from the others? It’s got sparkles in it.”

Tobias glanced down. “Really?”

“Well. It’s subtle. If the lights were on–”

He touched my elbow. “Hang on.” He went to the front door, flicked on the house lights, and walked back over to me, the dimple at the left side of his smile deepening with his amusement. He knelt down and examined the magic square, while I watched the back of his dark head and willed myself not to reach out and run my fingers through his hair.

“I’ll be damned.” He straightened up. “I never noticed that before.” He met my eye and I tried to look casual. “So, it’s magic, huh?”

“Yeah,” I said, but I wasn’t sure how exactly to elaborate. Explaining the magic square didn’t seem right, especially since I didn’t really believe in it myself, so I just looked at him and repeated, “Yeah.”

“Cool. We’ve got a magic square.” He met my eyes and grinned. “Good to know. You ready to call it a night, then?”

No. My heart boomed in my chest. This was my chance, this was my moment. Magic square or no magic square, if I didn’t do this now I knew I would never do it and I just didn’t have it in me to spend one more day in love with a man who had no idea.

“Actually…” My voice caught and I cleared my throat. “Actually, Tobias, I w-wanted to–”

“Oh, thank god you’re open!” The voice pealed out over the tinkling bells attached to the front door, and I was thrown for a moment – I had locked the doors, hadn’t I? – but when I looked past Tobias, there was a short, roundish black woman standing in the open door, a swoosh of hot summer air ruffling the skirt of her bright orange sun dress as it went into battle with our underpowered air conditioning. “I’m starving!”

Tobias and I looked at each other, then back at the woman, who apparently didn’t require a response, as she kept talking. “I took the first exit I could off the Thruway, but there is not a single light on down Main Street except yours. Nine o’clock at night. Y’all have some kind of power outage or something?”

“Nope. Welcome to nightlife in Nodaway Falls,” I said. Next to me, Tobias let out a small laugh, and it was shameful – shameful – how happy that made me.

The woman smiled. “Nodaway Falls. I like that. Nice name for a town, Nodaway Falls. I like a town with a nice name.” Her voice had a tinge of southern honey, and her face sparkled with good will. “I’m so glad you’re open, as I just happen to have the most unnatural craving for waffles.”

“Actually,” I said. “We’re closed.” I turned to Tobias. “I’m sorry, I really thought I locked the doors–”

“It’s okay.” Tobias touched me on the elbow. “I’ll take care of it. You go on home.”

“Huh?” But… I love you… “But–”

He leaned closer to me, speaking in low, gravelly tones. “I’ll fix her something quick and then clean up. You go on home.” He turned and retreated away from me and my mop and my love and my magic square. Damn.

“Menu’s gonna be kind of limited,” Tobias said as he rounded the counter where the woman had seated herself, rather presumptuously, I thought. “We were just about to close, so most everything is put away, but I can whip up some waffles for you.”

The woman raised one dismissive hand in the air. “Don’t you worry, baby. I don’t even need a menu. You just give me the sugariest, most fattening thing you’ve got. Two of ‘em.”

Tobias smiled at her as he leaned both hands on the counter. I curled my hand around the mop handle and watched him, trying not to sigh. If Al Green were there, I would have disgusted him with my goopy sentimentality.

“Well, that’d be two orders of the chocolate Belgian waffles,” Tobias said, “with hot fudge, vanilla ice cream, and whipped cream. You want the cherry on top or is fruit too healthy for you?”

The woman leaned forward. “Are they those little radioactive red ones, all soaked in sugar and artificial dye?”

“Maraschino?” he said. “Yep.”

She ruminated, then said, “Give me four. On each order. And some coffee.”

“You got it,” Tobias said, and pulled out the baby coffee-maker the morning waitress, Cissy, kept under the counter for days when she had to open at the crack of dawn; our industrial coffee maker didn’t deliver the goods fast enough for Cissy. I leaned the mop in the back corner against Booth 9 and hurried over.

“That’s okay,” I said, quickly rounding the corner and taking the coffeemaker from him. “I’ll make it. You get the waffles.” I plugged it in, flipped open the filter basket and grabbed the carafe to fill it with water, then looked up to find him still watching me. Our eyes met, and for a moment it seemed like there might be…

“I’ll be quick,” he said, and he ducked back into the kitchen, taking my moment with him. Then I felt a strange tickle inside my nose and sneezed, turning my head into my shoulder in classic waitress style.

“You all right, baby?” the woman asked, watching me intently.

I picked up two mugs and set them on the counter, shaking my head to rid myself of the tingly sensation in my sinuses. “Yeah. Guess it’s a bit of hay fever.”

“I see,” she said, her eyes still on me. “You get hay fever often?”

“Not typic–” and then I caught a scent of something sharp and sneezed again. I sniffed a couple of times and sneezed again. “Hell,” I said once I recovered. “What is that?”

“Hmmm?” She reached for the ceramic bowl filled with sugar packets.

“That… smell. It’s kind of tickly, like pepper but it smells more like… licorice, maybe?” I leaned back and called through the pass-through. “You light something on fire back there Tobias?”

Tobias whipped one hand behind his back and flipped me off with it as he poured batter into the waffle iron with the other. I laughed and turned to find the woman watching me, one eyebrow raised, as she took her purse off the counter and set it on the stool next to her.

“Hmmm,” she said, pushing the sugar packet bowl away from her with a mild exclamation of disgust. “What is wrong with women these days, filling their bodies full of unnatural chemical substances until they’re nothing but skin and bones?” She narrowed her eyes at me, but they maintained their playful glint. “Let me tell you something, baby. Any man who can’t appreciate a  woman with a little meat on her doesn’t like women much in the first place. You got any real sugar?”

Her eyes were a light maple brown, twinkling with amusement, and I had to admit, I was starting to like her a bit despite her tragic sense of timing. I reached under the counter and grabbed the sugar dispenser, then got some real cream from the cooler and set that in front of her as well. I pulled the carafe from the coffee maker, poured us each a cup, and put it back. I left my coffee black, sipping it while she loaded up her mug. I don’t really like black coffee, but the calories in cream and sugar weren’t worth it, and it wasn’t like I could dump my usual sugar-free non-dairy creamer in my cup after all that.

“So, what’s your name, baby?” she asked as she stirred.

“Olivia.” I glanced down, noticed my hair was covering my nametag again, and pulled it back. “Most people call me Liv.”

She stared at my name tag for a moment. “Pretty name.” Her eyes met mine. “Was your father’s name Oliver, by any chance?”

“No,” I said, a little taken aback by the oddness of the question. “According to my mother, my father was Some Guy Named Jim. I don’t know; I never met him.” I shrugged. “What are you gonna do, right?”

“Right.” She watched me for a moment, evaluating me, then held out her hand. “I’m Davina, by the way.”

I took her hand to shake, and that was when things started getting weird. She held on to my fingers a little too tightly, and when I looked up, she was staring at my face, not in the way that people did when I was getting hit on – an occupational hazard that I was quite used to, regardless of the gender of the person doing to the hitting – but with a different kind of interest I couldn’t quite place. Then, suddenly, she released my hand.

“Sure is pretty out this way,” she said, sipping her coffee, keeping her eyes on me. “I was just out here visiting my two aunts in Buffalo. Terrible people. I’m convinced one of them is the reincarnation of Elizabeth Bathory.” She lowered her mug. “Your have family, Olivia?”

“No,” I said, feeling a slight hesitation as I spoke, but spilling all anyway. “My mother died when I was eighteen.”

“Oh, now, that’s a shame,” she said.

Tobias slid two plates onto the pass and dinged the bell.

“I’m standing right here,” I said as I turned. “You don’t need to ding the–” When I caught his eye, he was grinning at me playfully, and the rest of my sentence devolved into unintelligible gibberish. Blah blah blah, have your babies.

“I’ll just be a second in here,” he said.

“Okay, that’s fine.” I slid the plates in front of Davina, still watching Tobias through the pass. “Here you go.”

“Thanks, baby.” One edge of her lip curled up in a knowing smile, but she didn’t say anything out loud, thank god.

The metal kitchen door swung open, and Tobias came out and leaned against the back counter next to me.

“Get out of here,” he said quietly. “She doesn’t need two people watching her eat. I can close.”

“No, I’m fine,” I said. “You go on. I got it.”

See, that’s where he was supposed to argue with me. Then we were both supposed to stubbornly stay put until Davina was gone, at which point he’d whip off my glasses, tell me I was beautiful, pull me over to the magic square and kiss me senseless, but instead he just raised his eyebrows and said, “You sure?”

I looked down at the mundane, solid, boring tiles under my feet. “Yeah.”

“If you’re sure.” Two seconds later, he pulled the front door open. “I owe you one, Liv.” He nodded at Davina. “Nice to meet you.”

“Mmmmm,” Davina said with a nod and a wave of her fork as she chewed happily.

He gave me a quick wave. “See you tomorrow, Liv.”

“Actually, I have Wednesdays off,” I said, but it got lost in the whoosh of warm air coming through the door as it closed behind him.

“‘Night,” I said quietly, scuffing the toes of my Keds against the stupid floor. After a moment, I looked up to see Davina watching me again. “Stop that.”

She dug the side of her fork into her waffles, breaking off a huge chunk. “Stop what?”

“You keep staring at me,” I said. “It’s weird, and this is by small town standards. You wouldn’t believe the bell curve on weird here.”

She put her fork down. “You’re direct. I like that. It’s a good quality to have. Can I ask you a question?”

“I… guess… so.”

She leaned forward, her head tilted slightly to the side, her eyes boring into me. “Do you believe in magic?”

I laughed, but her expression didn’t change, so I stopped laughing and straightened up. “Well, I mean… yeah. Like magicians, and people who do, you know, quote-unquote magic, but… you know, it’s all tricks and illusions.” I paused. She kept staring, so I kept going. “So in the sense that there are people who perform magical illusions, then yeah, I guess I’d say… sure.”

She sat back a bit, her eyes running over me suspiciously. “Now, I think you know that’s not the kind of magic I’m talking about.”

“No,” I said, stepping back from her a bit. “I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Then why are you getting so nervous?”

“Because you’re getting so weird,” I said.

She eyed me for another moment, then sighed. “Fair enough.”

“Okay, then. Enjoy your meal.” I headed out from behind the counter toward the mop bucket, where I figured I could finish my work polishing the stupid magic square and by the time I was done, she’d be done, and I could go home and watch movies alone and dream about my waffle cook. Just like every other night.

It wasn’t until I splashed the mop down on the magic square that I looked up to see her turned around on the counter stool with her back to her waffles, watching me, her eyes sharp on me as if she was looking for something. I sighed and wrapped one hand tight around the mop handle. She had size on me, but I had a hefty wooden handle and age on my side, and if I could get Ray Skipp to stop patting my butt when I came to take his order, I could handle this woman.

“Look,” I said, “you seem really… well, I suppose, nice… and everything, and I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s been a long day and I’d like to get out of here, so if you could just eat your–”

At that moment, without a word, she pulled something out of her purse and lobbed it at me. On instinct, I moved forward, one hand still on the mop handle, and grabbed it out of the air.

It was a gym sock, filled with some sand-type of substance and tied in a knot in the middle. “Ugh.” I pinched the cuff between my fingers and held it up, then looked at her. “Okay. You just busted the bell curve.”

And then I sneezed. And I sneezed again. The weird peppery smell from earlier came back stronger, overwhelming my senses, and my eyes watered and I sneezed again.

“Yeah, I thought so,” Davina said, and through my sneezing and watery eyes I could see her advancing toward me. “Now don’t be alarmed, baby, but you know it had to be done. It wasn’t right, them not letting you be what you are.”

I stared at her through watering eyes, my sinuses screaming. “What the —achoo—hell?”

She took the sock from me and I backed up, sneezing again. She tossed it toward the stool where she’d been sitting, a good ten feet away, but still, I couldn’t stop sneezing, and I was starting to panic. I stepped back again, and this time, my foot landed on the wet strands of mop, my arms flailing like a cartoon character’s. Davina shouted something and ran for me, but gravity won out and I fell, cracking the left side of my face against the magic square. Dazed, I blinked a few times, then saw Davina leaning over me, saying something I couldn’t make out, and looking concerned.

“What did you do to me?” I asked, or at least I tried to ask, but my ears were still ringing from the impact, so I’m not sure how it came out.

Then, everything went black.