Shoes - Bonnie Smetts

It was a busy week for me at the diner, not that I’d asked for it or anything. The night after I’d had my conversation with Randy and she promised me she’d do right, I was doing my cleaning up late when the little bell jingles telling me and Raulo that somebody’s in our place. I look up because I was bending down below where the coffee machine sits, I got to sweep down there because the coffee’s always falling down like snow there, so I look up and There’s Roy. Now I hadn’t seen Roy since that sweet night after my momma’s funeral. Didn’t expect to see him for along time, just because that’s the way it is with us and the way it shall be, forever. I’m not fooling, I’m not a fool.

So I must have been looking at him like, what in godsaname are you doing here, when he says, hey baby.

“Baby, why you calling me baby all of a sudden?” I’m not happy to see him.

“Hey, I need you tonight,” he says. That’s when I’m fully standing up and I see that Roy’s lit up like something else. He’s buzzing inside with something going on. He’s got a wild look that I’d never quite seen so wild.

“Roy, what you been doing?” I’m kind of frightened by him now and I’m glad the counter is blocking me from him. He comes right toward me. “Baby, I just wanted to see you, we got some business to do.”

“Roy, we got no business. You know our routine. We’re the best of friends, right? And we don’t do nothing except for the exceptions. Right?”

He’s crazy, he’s coming toward me making his way stumbling like a bull toward that little passage way between two sides of the counter that leads to those swinging doors and the kitchen.

“Roy, you gotta stop. You gotta get a hold of yourself.” Then he’s on me he’s taking me behind my waist and pushed me up against the counter and I feel the coffee machine, those spigots pushing in my back, and I’m wondering if I can get a hold of one of my shoes to hit him in the head or something. I’m pushing at him. “Roy, stop it. Get a hold of yourself now. Stop it.”

A coffee pot falls on the floor, and I think maybe I can get that and I’m screaming and wiggling like a snake caught by a bunch of mean kids and right then, Raulo opens the door.

He’s standing there, as bronze as his Maya ancestor’s I’d learned he had. Raulo’s not big, about as tall as me, but he’s tough as anyone, I’m guessing, seeing how he got to Nordeen and seeing how he stays alive here.

Roy stopped and the two of them stared hard. “Go.” That’s all Raulo says, he’s checking with me with his eyes, Yes. I want this guy to go.

And then Roy makes a lunge at Raulo, but the amazing thing is, Raulo just steps aside and let’s Roy fall. Now Roy’s banged up his head and it banged a tiny bit of sense in to him. How can this be the same man that was so sweet to me the night after I left my momma in the funeral home to never been seen again.