Part 8
Clara didn't leave Teresa in the abandoned laundry.
She couldn't. She helped the old woman up, supporting most of her weight as they crept back down the splintered stairs and out through the gap in the plywood. The night air was freezing, but Clara’s skin felt hot with a strange, clean anger she’d never felt before.
She took Teresa to her apartment, guiding her up the three flights of stairs, past the doors that smelled of cabbage, and settled her into the single armchair by the radiator.
She made Teresa a cup of tea, using the last bag she had, and watched as the old woman’s hands finally stopped shaking against the porcelain.
"You stay here," Clara said, pulling her coat back on.
"Clara, no," Teresa said, reaching out with a weak hand. "Lou is dangerous. He’s not a big man like his father was, but he’s small-minded. Small-minded men are the ones who hit you from behind when you aren't looking."
"He’s been hitting me from behind for four years," Clara said, her voice steady. "Every time he took eighty dollars out of my envelope. Every time he reminded me how lucky I was to have a job. I’m going back to lock up. I have the keys."
She walked back to the diner under a sky that had cleared to a cold, black vault filled with distant, icy stars.
The diner was dark when she arrived. The red neon sign was off, but the interior lights were set to their low night-setting—two fluorescent tubes over the back grill that cast a pale, green light across the room.
Clara let herself in through the heavy glass front door, the chime muffled by her hand.
She didn't turn on the main lights. She stood in the center of the room, looking at the booths, the counter, the stools.
Where the quiet ones look.
That’s what her grandmother had said.
Who were the quiet ones? Clara thought about what her grandmother had told her three years before she died: The people nobody looks at are usually the ones who've seen the most.
The regulars. The men who sat at the counter for hours with a single cup of coffee, staring down at the wood or up at the wall. The people who took up as little space as possible.
Clara walked over to the back corner booth—the radiator booth. This was where the woman had sat. This was where her grandmother used to put the people who looked like they were running out of options, because the radiator kept them warm and the high backs of the vinyl seats hid them from the window.
She slid into the booth again. She looked at the wall paneling.
If you sat in this booth, your eyes didn't look out the window; the angle was wrong. You looked straight ahead, at the side of the heavy stainless-steel refrigerator unit that housed the pie case.
Or, if you looked down, you looked at the base of the counter.
Clara slid out of the booth and got down on her hands and knees on the cold linoleum. She pulled out her phone and shined the light against the lower kick-plate of the counter, the area right below where the customer's feet would rest if they were sitting on the stools.
The kick-plate was made of heavy, black rubber molding.
May you like
She ran her fingers along the top edge of the rubber. Most of it was caked with decades of floor wax and grease, but right beneath the third stool—the one Mr. Henderson always sat on—the rubber felt loose.
Clara pulled the ice pick out of her coat pocket.
