1
LAST FRIDAY
The cherry pie at Lynn’s Diner off of Highway 287 was abysmal, and I said it much louder than intended.
The waitress turned to me. Her foundation was two shades darker than her skin tone, making her head seem like it had been popped off of a different body and twisted onto this one. “Suppose I’ll be taking this away then, huh?” She reached for the plate of pie.
I jerked it toward myself, and the fork clattered onto the counter. “I’m not finished.”
“But you said it’s awful.”
“It is.” Watery pink juice ran into the creases of the plate, and bits of anemic pastry clung to the fork. I captured a few more contact lens photos with a flick of my eyelids, then carved into the slab and pushed another bite into my mouth. The waitress watched – maybe she thought I’d change my mind.
She folded her arms over her pinstriped uniform. “Well? What’s wrong with it?”
It wasn’t sensational. It wasn’t even palatable. I stretched out the display on my phone, then propped it on the counter and hit record, not bothering to keep my voice down since she had asked. “The crust leaves a greasy film on the roof of my mouth and has the consistency of stale crackers. It’s hard to imagine these cherries as ever being anything other than the congealed, indeterminate mass they are now. Metallic and overly sweet mush that makes my tongue unhappy. This tastes like broken dreams. Two stars.”
Frown lines cut into the waitress’ cakey makeup. “You a food critic?”
“Something like that. You probably saw my article about The Lounge’s delicious alphabet pie back in November.”
Everyone had seen it. The post had gone viral. My blog itself was a failure, and I’d never managed to recreate the popularity of someone resurrecting a bizarre 1940s recipe that involved cinnamon red hots and alphabet noodles. There was still enough traffic to that post to generate a bit of income, but anything I wrote about this cherry pie wasn’t going to help me pay my rent next week.
The waitress cocked her manicured eyebrow. “You wrote that, huh?”
“Yes. And I hate to say this, but I was expecting much better from this place.” I supposed that’s what I got for taking the word of a couple of random truckers. What a waste.
Dishes clattered into a busser’s tub, and I flinched and nearly knocked over my phone. There were only a couple of other diners in a booth by the window, the conversation so sparse that I hadn’t needed to use my earplugs, but the shriek of ceramic on ceramic made me stuff my hand in my pocket and squeeze the rubber plugs, ensuring they were there in case it happened again.
“We aren’t really known for our pie, hon. It’s not homemade. The regulars come for our burgers. Want one?” This time, when the waitress reached for my plate, I didn’t stop her. I wondered if it was a prerequisite when applying
for a serving job that you called people hon.
“No, thank you. You know, I don’t know what brand that is” – I pointed at the pie – “but Southern Tree makes a great one. Flaky crust with tart, whole cherries and the slightest hint of almond. Just egg wash the top and dust it with sugar and you’d have a six- or seven-star pie. You could be known for burgers and pie.”
She pulled in a measured breath the way everyone did when I started giving my opinion too much. “I’ll pass your suggestion on to Lynn.”
“Are you insulted? It wasn’t my intention. I’m judging the pie’s character alone. And it’s about as respectable as Muddy Gap’s last mayor.”
It was supposed to be a joke, but the waitress’ scowl deepened. The neon scrollwork behind her head gave her hair a hellish pink outline. “Do us all a favor and don’t come back, huh?”
“You didn’t actually like the last mayor, did you?”
“No one liked the last mayor.”
“Then why–”
She turned away with my plate, disappearing into the back of the kitchen.
Sighing, I dug out some ones and tucked them under my coffee cup. I scrawled on the back of a napkin that finding the right shade of foundation was a simple matter of testing it on one’s inner wrist, and some blending sponges would make the application look better at the jawline.
The vinyl stool groaned as I slid off with my backpack, and I wedged on my felt boater. Hesitating, I turned back and crumpled up the napkin note. Someone needed to tell the waitress, but she’d already taken personal offense to my observations once. Pointing out her makeup skills wasn’t going to make her evening better.
I hit record on the phone, absently squeezing the display into a stick. “Despite the secret ingredient of the pie being disappointment, the coffee was fresh and the diner’s atmosphere pleasant.” Framed prints hung above empty butter
yellow booths; all of them depicting barns in various seasonal settings. They looked like they may have been pulled from a wall calendar. I blinked a few photos and received no error messages in return. These little places didn’t employ privacy fields the way bigger restaurants did. “The decor is dust-free and follows a themed, if somewhat uninspired, setting. I’m told Lynn’s is well-known for their burgers, so if you find yourself in the area, give them a try and let me know what you think.”
If I used an earbud and eye commands to dictate instead of a phone, it would likely garner me less irritated glares. I only needed to whisper for an earbud to hear my voice. But it also picked up me chewing, which had sounded so obscene on the playback that I hadn’t attempted it again. And despite contact technology coming a long way in the past decade, many of the features still caused eye strain and headaches. A phone would have to do, unless I wanted to walk around with a notepad full of chicken scratch like some old-timey journalist.
A brusque wind hit me as I pushed through the door, whipping long strands of hair across my face. I pressed my hat firmly onto my head and hunched into my coat. Gravel squeaked beneath my cowboy boots. The first stars glinted above in the clear dark. My little Ford sat lonely in the parking lot, bathed in the jaundiced glow of an arc sodium light.
Maybe writing up a post about this place was unwise. It wouldn’t make the diner look good, and even though there were blogs that thrived on roasting restaurants with bad food, I had never wanted to be one of those. I gave an honest opinion, that was all. But my honest opinions weren’t paying the bills.
I slid into the truck and pushed the starter, my nose pressed against the scratchy wool lapels of my coat. It was late April and the snow seemed to finally be gone, but that chilly wind never let up. Once the cab grew marginally more toasty, I turned onto the highway, heading back for Muddy Gap.
Writing for online magazines used to be my bread and butter. I was a regular contributor to several popular sites, and when that wasn’t quite enough, I’d
supplement it with freelance gigs. But the opportunities were coming more and more infrequently. It was hard to say whether they were scarce or the magazines no longer liked my writing enough to hand me new projects. In an attempt to put a little more padding in my bank account, I’d subscribed to a service that would ship items to me from different companies to review. The money was more dependable, but it wasn’t enough to survive on. I’d been asked to select a gender upon signing up so they could tailor products to me, but their site was woefully behind the times and didn’t have an option for non-binary. They also seemed to conflate gender with sex. This sometimes caused issues with what I was asked to try. Vitamin supplements, lipsticks, cologne samples, and hair removal cream were all fine. But when I didn’t possess the specific anatomy or functions needed to use something, I had to pay postage to send it back. I could have told someone in customer service the issue, but their only contact information was a phone number.
I tried unboxings. The appeal of watching someone else open a package and pull the shrink wrap off of a white noise machine was beyond me, but it was popular and seemed easy enough.
I hadn’t anticipated that I would freeze up as badly on a video as I did on the phone. I became so frustrated and flustered that I lay on the floor, the phone still recording, with the unopened package and an X-Acto knife sitting on the table.
Trying to get a nine-to-five job had done nothing but reinforce that I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a people person.
My landlady, Mrs Mumford, had no sympathy for my money problems, and I’d already borrowed too much from Cousin Billie last month to make ends meet.
Zagging static suddenly exploded from the radio, and I jerked the wheel in surprise. The truck swerved past the edge line and onto the rumble strip, the combined noise becoming an awful crunch that filled the cab. I slammed on the brakes, heart hammering, then punched the audio button off. I’d never had it selected for radio – who listened to the radio?
The hard-edged thumps of tires over the rumble strip still echoed in my ears. I pulled in a slow breath, trying to let sanitizing silence back in. There were
times I’d had pie so good I thought I could die happy, but after that cherry abomination back at the diner, crashing and expiring in a ditch was not how I wanted things to end.
Something caught my eye beyond the windshield. A bright light rolled across the sky like a loose pearl on velvet. It veered off course so quickly it took me a moment to find it again. I mashed the hazards and hopped out of the truck. The wind threatened to carry away my hat.
Muddy Gap was still quite a few miles away, only a faint light huddled against the horizon gave any indication that it was ahead. The object drifted over town, then grew in size, flaring into an aggressive brilliance. Sour green bled from the central point, fingers of color chasing away the dark. An explosion?
I blinked half a dozen photos, a white half-moon from the flare still ghosting in my vision. The chartreuse iris of sky grew magenta at the edges, then shrank as the night swallowed it.
Goosebumps erupted on my skin, and I wrenched my jacket around me, unsure if I was cold or just disturbed. That was not a plane. Bringing up a search engine in my contacts, I looked for probable causes but only found unhelpful suggestions of meteorites, space junk, or the wink of a satellite as it rotated. Considering how quickly the thing had changed directions, that wasn’t possible. Ball lightning and earthquake plasma discharge sounded interesting, but if there was an earthquake, I probably would have felt it.
I slid back into the truck and pulled onto the road. There was always the classic go-to of “alien spacecraft”. My inner child squealed at the prospect. So many hours on the school bus, nose buried in a book, squinting at grainy photos of mysterious saucer shapes.
But if aliens had stopped over Muddy Gap, surely they were lost.
Trees and ranches flew by on both sides of the highway. I slowed, coming around the curve that took me into town. I still wasn’t used to the new gateway sign arching over Main Street. Muddy Gap, Wyoming was cut out of a copper oval, framed by silhouettes of mountains and horses, looking like a freshly minted penny against the rustic backdrop of false-front saloons and feed stores. The squat brick of
Gem’s Market looked less Old West than the buildings welcoming people to town, though I wasn’t sure there was anything more Wyoming than taxidermy in the produce aisle.
It was tempting to stop at the tiny restaurant across from Gem’s and ask if anyone had seen the UFO, but I wasn’t well-received there after comparing their peppermint chiffon to a tin of chalky breath mints.
Darkness shrouded the parking lot in front of my complex, none of the lights on. I parked and picked my way past silhouetted bushes, stumbling twice on parking chocks. Trevor, my new downstairs neighbor, stood outside his open door, smoking. “Hey Professor Pie.”
I stopped as he exhaled his lungful of cancer, a halo of smoke curling around his head. He had one of those generic white frat-boy faces that I couldn’t pick out of a lineup if I tried, but at least I knew his name. “My name is Denver. I introduced myself to you last week. We had an argument about skim milk.” Skim was nothing but white water, but Trevor had disagreed.
“I remember.”
“Okay, well…” What point was I trying to make exactly? The nickname didn’t bother me in principle, but my name was unique enough that it should have been easy to recall. “Did you see that flash in the sky?”
He looked up like it might still be there. “No. I’m watching the game, but I’m only half-invested. What was it?”
“I don’t know.” I peered beyond his open curtains at the whisper-thin screen mounted on the wall. A tiny NO SIGNAL announcement drifted across a blue background. “Your signal is out.”
He turned. “Huh.”
I was close enough to my own apartment for wi-fi to have kicked on, but an urgent exclamation point sat over the icon. I glanced at the NO SERVICE indicator on my phone, then I coiled a lock of hair around my finger and tugged on it. Would ball lightning knock out TV and phone signals? Or a radio signal? Maybe there were none and the truck had always played static.
“What radio stations do
we get here?”
“Who listens to the radio?” Trevor stubbed out his cigarette and walked back inside.
I stared at the dying embers in his ashtray, then climbed the stairs and fought against my obstinate front door lock. The overwhelming scent of Vanilla Escape bombarded me as I entered. The little air freshener was only supposed to perfume the bathroom, but even at the lowest setting, it permeated the entire apartment. The issue would definitely be going in my product review.
Fractal light played across the wall from the fish tank. I pulled off my jacket and hat and peered through the glass. Neon tetras and zebra danios darted by. One of the African dwarf frogs sat with its head buried in a plastic plant, legs in the air.
“Goofybutt.”
Dropping onto the bed, I sent all the photos from my contact lenses to my laptop, then opened the folder. I tried clicking the first one and an error box appeared. FILE SYSTEM ERROR 0x2309729525.
That was new. I clicked on the next one and was met with the same error.
“Damn.” I hadn’t expected the pictures to be great, as the contact camera didn’t work well at night and at long distances, but even with internet and phone signals out, the images should have at least come up.
I tried opening all of the files, then paused. Where were the photos from the diner? The pie and the calendar prints of barns in the fall?
Cycling back, I hovered over the time stamps. The last six were taken at eight fourteen, when I’d been driving home. Then seven forty-three, when I’d been looking at the wall prints. Seven thirty-five. Seven twenty, when the waitress had set my plate on the counter.
I tried to imagine the pie with its sickly crust and watery filling instead of the little error box.
A heavy, ominous
dread sank into my stomach, though I wasn’t quite certain why. I slid out my phone and hit play on the recording, expecting to hear: The cherry pie at Lynn’s Diner off of Highway 287 is abysmal.
A lattice of crackles and hisses blasted from the speaker, and I turned down the volume. The progress bar slid from one end to the other, seconds rolling over.
One minute and three seconds of nothing but static.
Certainly not a handmade affair, the blob of red sandwiched between a limp, insipid crust looked more like a special effect from a horror movie than anything that should be on a diner’s plate.
I rubbed my gritty eyes. Without my dictation, I couldn’t remember any of the details of what the pie tasted like, other than bad. And maybe that line was unnecessarily cruel. I had trouble determining things like that, but previous experience told me that often when I thought I was being honest, I was, in reality, being mean.
I sipped the dregs of my chamomile tea and picked a soggy bit of leaf from the side of the cup.
Trying again, I wrote: Focused on the pride of their diner – hamburgers that their regulars can’t get enough of – it’s clear that pie is an afterthought. An accoutrement poorly chosen and not in high enough demand for a suitable replacement to be purchased. This pastry is better off in the back of the freezer where it came from than on anyone’s plate. Order a burger instead.
I thudded my head against the desk. I could gush at length about the buttery, melt-in-your-mouth phyllo on the chocolate silk at Goat’s Inn, or the creamy texture and bright notes of clove in the deep dish pumpkin from Elm’s Bakery. After the internet came back, I figured I should get my thoughts down in a post before they evaporated, but it was too late. It was 1am, I couldn’t remember shit, and the only thing on my mind was the notion that a UFO had exploded over Muddy Gap and corrupted all my pictures and voice notes.
Maybe I should delete the blog and end this exercise in futility. No more Professor Pie. Hoping to go viral again, to have people notice me and care about my
opinions, was foolish. What went viral and boosted someone’s popularity was unpredictable, and it was clear the revenue from my dutiful reviews of diner and bakery fare wasn’t sustainable.
But voicing my thoughts during my daily life always ended in trouble. In the past, when I’d shopped for groceries in person, the manager hadn’t cared that she could be ordering Rose Bush brand ice cream instead of that crap they had in the cooler. And when I mentioned my concern about Mrs White’s beer-purchasing habits, the cashier only became irritated.
I needed the blog. At least there I could have opinions without people getting upset.
After reading over my brief review, I added that I had no photos to share and explained why. Putting down my experience and questions about the event in the sky was useless to tack on, but I wanted to tell someone.
The more I wrote, the more that part of me – the kid who had been so absorbed with aliens and the paranormal – started to push its way to the front. I’d checked out the same books from the library over and over, to the point that the librarian not-so-subtly tried to guide my attention to something else every time our class arrived. The classic saucer shapes were fun, but the photos always looked like something I could easily fake at home with the toss of a Frisbee. Cigars were weird and light formations kind of boring, but the black triangles had given me chills.
My first experience with something possibly extraterrestrial had been so far away that I couldn’t tell the craft’s shape, which was too bad. But if I’d been in town, I would have missed it entirely. At least the trip to the diner was worth it in that respect.
I hit publish on the post, then closed down the laptop and crawled beneath the covers. Cocooned in warmth, it was easy to relax, but my mind wouldn’t turn off. Could magnetic discharge have wiped my photos and notes and disrupted TV and radio signals?
Maybe it wasn’t an alien craft, but a secret government jet on its way to Groom Lake.
Or maybe those teens who liked to hang out at the park had shot off illegal out-of-state fireworks. ...
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