South Street Read Online Free PDF Page A

to have me a piece a somethin’ else.”
    The waitress looked at him uneasily.
    “What kind a pie do you got?” Rayburn said.
    “Onliest kind we ever got is cherry an’ apple, an’ we’re outa cherry.”
    Rayburn gave her an amused look. She flushed. “Apple pie an’ some coffee,” Rayburn said.
    “Black?” asked the waitress, writing it on her pad before he had a chance to answer.
    “No,” Rayburn snarled, “I wants it light. An’ sweet.” He glared at her, but she wasn’t looking at him. Wordlessly, she crossed out “blk” and wrote in “C&S.”
    “We’re closin’ in ten minutes,” she said.
    “Yeah,” Rayburn said sourly, “so I heard.” She looked at him, shrugged her shoulders, and went to get the pie, stuffing the order pad into her apron pocket.
    Rayburn watched her waddle away, thinking how bad she looked. Part of it was the uniform, but she was fat and greasy-looking anyway. Rayburn hated her. She came waddling back and slapped an almost-clean plate with a painfully thin sliver of pie on it in front of him. She laid a paper napkin beside the plate, held it down with a spoon and a fork that had obviously been used for someone’s eggs. “You want that coffee black?”
    “What the hell didja write it down for?”
    The waitress frowned and started digging through her pocket for the order pad. Rayburn waited until her fingers closed over it and then said, “I wants cream an’ sugar.” The waitress let the pad fall back into her pocket and gave Rayburn a look of pure hatred.
    “Look,” she said, “I didn’t ast to work on Saturday night.”
    “I wasn’t the one made you,” Rayburn said indifferently.
    “Can’t you hurry up with that pie? We’re closin’—”
    “I can’t hurry nothin’ till I gets ma coffee.”
    “Oh,” she said nervously, “yeah.” She turned to the urn and drew him a cup, poured in cream, set the cracked china in front of him with a tall sugar dispenser. Rayburn finished cleaning the fork with his napkin. The girl looked at him. “You, ah, gonna want more coffee? If you’re not, I can start cleaning the urn.”
    “Go ahead,” Rayburn said. She flashed him a yellow-toothed smile and opened the spigot, letting the muddy-brown liquid dribble into the drain.
    “You got the last piece a pie,” she said, looking over her shoulder.
    “Tastes like it,” Rayburn said. “You work here in the daytime?”
    “I got a boyfriend,” the girl said. “He’s probably waiting outside.”
    “What the hell do I care?” Rayburn said. “I just asted if you worked here in the daytime.”
    “No,” she said, “just at night on the weekends.”
    “Night on the weekends,” Rayburn repeated. “Figures.” He finished up the last of the pie, picked up the coffee cup, blew over the edge.
    “My boyfriend, he plays football and wrestles. He knows judo and karate, too. They threw him outa school for beatin’ somebody up real bad oncet.”
    “How come he don’t wait for you inside? Ain’t he house-broke?”
    The girl looked at him. Rayburn smiled and leaned back. She turned her face away, blushing. “You about finished?”
    “’Bout,” Rayburn said. “I’m tryin’ to decide if maybe I better not stick around to see your boyfriend.” The girl kept her head turned away. Rayburn drank the rest of his coffee. It was cold now, and it tasted like dishwater. He drank it down defiantly, not bothering to make a face when he got to the dregs. He wiped his lips with the paper napkin. “How ’bout the check?”
    She stood as far away from him as she could, on the far side of the counter, back pressed tightly against the coffee urn, and kept one eye on him as she laboriously added the bill, found the tax on a printed table scotch-taped to the back of the order pad, wrote down the total, circled it. “Thirty-seven cents,” she said. Rayburn pulled out two quarters, held them out in the palm of his hand. She waited for a moment, then realized that he was not going