Heartbreak Cafe by Penelope J. Stokes

Author:Penelope J. Stokes [J., Penelope Stokes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

• 20 •

I knew I ought not do it. I knew.

It was an invasion of privacy, worse than spying on your neighbor with binoculars. Worse than sneaking through the bushes in the dark to peer into a bedroom window. Worse than picking up the extension and listening in.

But I couldn’t help myself.

The restaurant was closed, the door locked, the shade pulled down, the lights off. No one could see me; no one would even know I was here unless they went around back by the Dumpster where my car was parked.

I coulda left and gone home, I reckon. Taken the journal with me and read it at my kitchen table. But that seemed worse, somehow—not just voyeurism, but kidnapping, too.

So I sat there for a while with the book shut in front of me, staring at it, considering.

“You can judge a person’s character,” Mama always said, “by what they do when nobody’s looking.” I expect she’d also say that God was always looking, but since I hadn’t seen much evidence of the Almighty in the past few months, the notion of divine displeasure wasn’t exactly uppermost in my mind.

I was curious, certainly, but it was more than curiosity that drove me. It was a kind of compulsion. My hand shook and my stomach churned and I heard Mama’s warning in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself.

The journal fell open where Peach had quit writing, where her pen lay folded between the pages, about two-thirds of the way through the thick, bound book. The paper was smooth and heavy with faint narrow blue lines, the writing small and neat and even.

Hooch leaned over and gave Pansy a little kiss on the cheek. She never would have allowed it if she had been sober, he knew, but he had to take his opportunities when and where they came.

The blasted bow tie was about to choke him half to death. She smelled of homemade gin and face powder and a perfume so heavy it made his eyes water, and something else—Eau du Nursing Home, he thought. That peculiar smell you always got when a lot of old and dying people were herded together in constricted quarters.

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