Chapter 5: The Quiet Years
The first year without Sadie, Gus learned to count anniversaries he would rather forget.
Elena had been gone eleven years, and every October Rosa set a white carnation on the counter stool where Elena used to sit with the account books, and Gus pretended not to notice until the lunch rush was over.
"She would be mad at you," Rosa said.
"Elena was never mad at me."
"Elena was mad at everybody."
Gus opened the register. The tray had its slots, and in the front left corner a smooth worn hollow the size of his thumb, where the turquoise stone had sat for twelve years. He ran his finger across it the way other men worried beads through their fingers.
"You could buy another rock," Rosa said.
"It is not the rock."
"I know what it is."
"Mind the coffee," Gus said, and closed the drawer.
That was the year Big Sal parked his rig for good.
He came in on a Tuesday with his cap in his hands and stood by the door like a customer until Rosa told him to sit down before he fell down.
"Company retired the truck," Sal said. "Then they retired me. Same week. Efficient."
"They can have the truck," Gus said. "They cannot retire you from breakfast."
Sal managed a tired grin. "Doctor says the ticker. No more long hauls. No more twelve-hour coffee."
"Good," Gus said. "Twelve-hour coffee was killing you."
"Everything is killing everybody, Gus. It is a question of scheduling."
They drank their coffee. After a while Sal said, "I saw a girl in Tucson. Maybe ten. Braids. Stole a roll off a cart and the vendor chased her two blocks."
Gus's hand stopped on the coffeepot.
"Was not her," Sal said. "Wrong hair. But I thought about ours for a week."
"She is not ours," Gus said.
"She ate here every morning for four months. She is ours."
Gus poured the coffee and walked away before he had to answer.
Another October came. Mrs. Abernathy started missing Tuesdays, then Thursdays, and one morning her grandson drove her in and her purse was full of appointment cards from a Phoenix eye doctor.
"Cataracts," she announced. "The doctor says they are ripe."
"Ripe," Gus said. "Like fruit."
"Like me," she said. "Ripe and going soft. He wants to cut them out."
"You will let him."
"I will let him if you promise to stop serving decaf to people who order regular."
"You ordered decaf."
"I ordered coffee. You heard decaf because you are old."
The surgery took, mostly. She came back, but she did not drive anymore, and the grandson only brought her Saturdays, so her booth sat empty most of the week and Gus wiped it down anyway.
The cafΓ© got older with him. The turquoise paint on the door faded to dishwater. The coyote mural peeled in long strips, and twice Gus priced repainting it and twice he put the money toward the roof. One red booth split its seam, and Rosa patched it with electrical tape that matched almost exactly.
"New booths," Rosa said one morning.
"No."
"New paint."
"No."
"A new sign that does not buzz."
"The sign works."
"The sign buzzes like a dying wasp, Gus."
"It is a working wasp."
Rosa looked at him the way she looked at the health inspector, without blinking. "You know what your problem is? You think if you change one thing, everything changes."
"That is not my problem."
"It is exactly your problem. The roof is fixed. The booth is taped. The girl is gone, the stone is gone, and you act like the world ends if you repaint a door."
Gus turned a pancake he did not need to turn. "My problem is pancakes sticking."
"Twenty years on this counter," Rosa said. "You want to know why I stay?"
"I pay you."
"You pay me late and in stew. I stay because this is the only honest room in the county. I know your problems. I dust them."
She went back to work, and Gus stood at the grill feeling scolded by his better angel.
The rumors came the way weather comes to the desert, first as a feeling, then as talk.
Big Sal, who still came every morning and nursed one cup for two hours because the doctor had rules and Sal had opinions about the rules, said the state had survey crews staking orange lines east of town, out by the dry wash.
"They are just measuring," Gus said.
"Nobody measures for fun, Gus."
"What would they build out there? There is nothing out there."
"There is a wash, a fence, and forty miles of nothing," Sal said. "That is exactly what they like to build on."
Rosa refilled both cups. "If they build a highway around Juniper Flats, the trucks stop stopping."
"The trucks will still stop," Gus said.
"For what? To look at a town the map forgot? This is how places dry up. First the road goes around, then the gas station closes."
"You are cheerful today."
"I am realistic. It is worse."
Years folded into years. The anniversaries came every October, white carnation, Elena's stool, Rosa pretending she had not put it there. The register drawer kept its empty hollow, and some mornings Gus opened it just to run his finger over the spot before the day began.
"You are going to wear a hole through the tray," Rosa said.
"Already wore one," Gus said.
He never said it out loud. He said it to Elena's stool after closing, to the grill, to the brass bell he polished every Sunday though nobody asked. She had carried that stone on the Superstition trail for years, and he had carried it in the register for twelve more, and then he had put it in a nine-year-old girl's hand and told her somebody in Juniper Flats believed in her.