Charlaine Harris - Day Shift

Fiji grabs Bobo’s arm. “You said dining room?”

“Yeah,” Bobo says, surprised by her agitation. “Oh. I get it. The Reeds.”

“I don’t know how Home Cookin keeps open, anyway. Really. Think about it. How?” Manfred spreads his open hands as he asks them.

But Bobo and Fiji ignore Manfred’s question. They are just glad to have a good cook like Madonna in Midnight.

“If they don’t open the dining room…” Bobo says.

“It’ll be a good thing.” Fiji ends his thought. “Home Cookin will be busy, Gas N Go will be busy, and maybe even Joe and Chuy will sell more antiques and do more nails.”

“Huh,” Manfred says. “That would be all right.” Though he really feels he doesn’t want anything to change in Midnight, he makes himself admit that a touch of prosperity would be good for the town. His own business is done by telephone and Internet and does not depend on foot traffic.

Manfred’s cell phone rings, and he whips it out of his pocket. He doesn’t have to look at the caller ID to know it’s Joe, whom he’s watched walking back to Chuy.

“We need to have a meeting tonight,” Joe says without preamble. “Maybe Fiji can go ask the Rev, and Bobo can tell Lemuel. Is Olivia in town?”

“I don’t think so. What time?”

“Here at the shop, whenever it’s really dark.” There’s a muffled sound while Joe asks Chuy a question. “Seven o’clock good?”

“Fine, I’ll tell them.”

“See you then.”

Manfred ends the conversation and passes along the message.

“I’ll tell the Rev, but you can’t ever predict what he’ll do,” Fiji says with a shrug.

“I’ll put a note downstairs for Lemuel,” Bobo says. “He’ll see it the minute he gets up. Maybe Olivia will be back by then.”

That night, when the work crews have gone and the tall woman, too, the inhabitants of Midnight assemble in the Antique Gallery and Nail Salon. Occasionally, they can hear Rasta yapping upstairs in the very nice apartment Joe and Chuy share. “I thought he might wake up Grady,” Chuy explains. “He’ll calm down in a second.”

Sure enough, Rasta falls silent after everyone has filtered in. The salon area is the front right corner of the store, and the antiques, dusted and arranged attractively, take up the rest. Joe has assembled some folding chairs and an old love seat around a refreshments table. He and Chuy have made lemonade and tea, and there are a couple of bottles of wine. They’ve put out a cheese and cracker tray. Fiji has brought a bowl of toasted, salted pecans. Manfred tries one to be polite, then finds it hard to resist grabbing a handful.

When they all have drinks and food, they choose seats.

Madonna and Teacher settle on the love seat, with baby Grady drowsing on Madonna’s chest. Madonna is regal and a little scary, and she’s never been especially friendly. Her husband, Teacher, who is running Gas N Go until another buyer is in place, is the town handyman. Teacher is good at everything. Since he’s been working at the convenience store full-time, projects are going undone in the town, and everyone is ready for a return to the status quo, including Teacher. Grady has started pulling up and will begin walking, and Madonna’s already worried about cooking at the restaurant with him staggering around.

Joe stands in front of the motley assortment of chairs on which they’ve perched and begins, “Here’s what I know.”

They all fall silent and look attentive.

“The woman in charge is Eva Culhane. She’s not the owner. She’s his or her agent. I don’t know who the real owner is, she was real closemouthed about that. Here’s what she told me. The hotel is going to reopen as a hotel. But the eight small rooms on the bottom floor will be made into four suites with their own bathrooms, and four rooms on the upper floor will get the same treatment. These will be residence rooms.”

There is an intake of breath because so many people have questions.

“Wait,” Joe says. “Wait!”

There’s a little laughter, but they are all too curious or anxious to be very amused.

“The residence rooms will be for people who are in the area for a long-term job, like working for three months at Magic Portal. Or people who are waiting to get into an eldercare situation. As an aside, Eva Culhane told me that there’s a waiting list for all the eldercare places in a sixty-mile radius. The remaining rooms will be conventional hotel rooms. In the family quarters, there’ll be two people living there as staff. A cook will provide breakfast for residents and whoever stays at the hotel. Lunch and dinner will be cooked for permanent residents only, is what I got out of it.”

Madonna’s shoulders relax visibly. She gets a few diners from Magic Portal, which is an Internet company, every month. (Thanks to Magic Portal, Midnight has great Internet.) And ranchers come into Midnight every now and then for a meal. But she’s in the room with her regulars, right now. More customers would be welcome. Elderly people like traditional food, which is what Madonna cooks.

“What kind of staff?” Fiji asks.

“There’ll be two people in residence,” Joe repeats.

“Will one of them be a nurse or some kind of medical person?” Bobo asks. “Sounds like they might need that. And they’ll have to hire a maid, I would think. That’s a lot of rooms to clean for one person, plus dishes, plus food prep.”

“Good questions. We’ll have to find out.” Joe looks a little chagrined he didn’t think of all this.

“Did Ms. Culhane give you a timetable?” Fiji asks.

“She said they hope to be open within six months.”

There’s a moment of silence.

“They must have a shitload of money,” Teacher Reed says, and Bobo nods. “That’s a quick turnaround.”

Olivia, who’d driven in an hour earlier, speaks for the first time. She is sitting with Lemuel the vampire, her lover, and she looks exhausted. They are all ignoring the fact that Olivia’s shoulder is obviously bandaged under her shirt. “We have to find out who owns the company doing the restoration,” she says.

“Manfred, can you dig that up?” Joe asks.

Manfred is the most computer savvy of all the Midnight residents, but he’s no hacker. He just knows his way around the Internet. “I can try,” he says. Joe hands him a brochure, one that Eva Culhane had given him. It has a corporation name on it, MultiTier Living. Olivia extends her hand silently, and Manfred hands it to her. She looks at the brochure intently before she hands it back.

When everyone has said everything they have to say (some more than once), Lemuel supports Olivia with his arm as they leave Joe and Chuy’s store/salon. The remaining Midnight residents go their separate ways: Teacher, Madonna, and the sleeping Grady cross the street to walk past Home Cookin Restaurant and behind it to their double-wide, the Rev splitting off from them to go right to his bleak little cottage. He has not spoken during the whole meeting, but he has eaten cheese and crackers and the toasted pecans.

The people who live east of the Davy highway (Bobo, Manfred, Fiji) walk together, Fiji carrying a plastic container with the remaining pecans. Fiji hands the container to Bobo. “You and Manfred split those,” she says. “I’ve got some more at home.” She looks both ways before she crosses Witch Light Road. The golden tabby cat, Mr. Snuggly, is waiting for her, and Bobo and Manfred watch the woman and the cat go in the front door. Bobo says, “Hold out your hands.” Manfred pulls a real cloth handkerchief from his pocket and holds it ready to catch half the salted pecans. Gathering up the corners, he nods his thanks, and Bobo splits away to go into the side door of the pawnshop, which leads to the stairs going up to his apartment.