Chapter 15: Soft Opening

I called Gretchen, not the police.

She was there in ten minutes in her pajama pants with a broom and a roll of contractor bags.

She looked at the window.

She looked at the brick on the counter.

She read the note and handed it back to me.

"Okay," she said. "Who do I hit?"

"Nobody."

"That's not a name, Quarles."

The cops came later, because a neighbor called them.

Two officers took photos of the brick and wrote GROOMER'S GIRL in a notebook and asked if I had any enemies.

I said I had an uncle.

They wrote that down too.

At three in the morning Gretchen and I nailed plywood over the hole with my dad's old hammer from the office closet.

The Bluebird looked blind.

I sat on the curb and stared at it.

"I was going to open in November," I said. "First of November. I had it circled."

"I know. It's on the calendar. Under January."

"I'm not waiting three more weeks for him to throw something else."

Gretchen sat down next to me.

"So we open early."

"We open Saturday."

"This Saturday? With a board for a window?"

"With a board for a window."

She was quiet for a second.

Then she took a can of red spray paint out of her bag of supplies, shook it and walked up to the plywood.

In big slanting letters she wrote EAT SOMETHING.

She stepped back and admired it.

"Your mom's got better handwriting," she said. "But I've got the bigger can."

On Monday she quit the all-night diner.

She did it by phone, from my counter, while I was scrubbing the pie case.

"Nine years," she said into it. "No, I'm not giving notice. You never gave me a raise, I'm not giving you notice. Bye."

"I'm all yours. Where's my stool?"

The inspector signed off on Thursday.

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