Photo by DESIGNECOLOGIST on Unsplash
“Hey there, Shakespeare. What can I get you tonight?” Ruth smiled at Isabel across the counter of the rundown doughnut shop. Isabel smiled shyly back. She always felt like an intruder entering Pop’s until she heard Ruth’s voice.
“One with chocolate icing and a French cruller? Oh, and a coffee, please.”
“You got it.” Ruth was already pouring coffee into a small brown mug. “What ya studying tonight?”
“Richard III.” Isabel slung her backpack from over her shoulder to the counter to get her wallet. Ruth was her favorite server at Pop’s, and she had figured out the gist of Ruth’s schedule so she could go when Ruth was working. Although the two were familiar with one another, Isabel only knew Ruth’s name from her name tag. She was pretty sure Ruth didn’t know her actual name.
Ruth’s hair was always piled on top of her head, a perfectly hair-sprayed mound of dyed blond with tiny curls situated just so against her temple. Isabel guessed she was in her sixties, but it was hard to tell because Ruth was a deep brown no matter the time of year, her skin wrinkled from years of tanning. But Isabel’s favorite thing about Ruth was that every day, Ruth tore out the New York Times crossword puzzle and tucked it in the book she was reading. During lulls, she’d either crossword or read.
“That’ll be $3.07.” Ruth hit the keys on the register with her long lavender nails.
Isabel dug in her wallet for seven cents. She handed over the coins with a five, and too embarrassed to say “keep the change,” she smiled at Ruth, turned, and headed for a booth.
“Thanks, hon,” Ruth said. She retrieved two dollars from the register and stuck it in the long pocket at the base of her apron. “Sweet girl,” Ruth said to one of the men at the counter, leaning over in his direction. The man adjusted his ballcap with his thumb and forefinger and resumed the tale he’d been telling when Isabel had interrupted to order.
“So anyway, I’m heading down to the lake with the fancy new tackle Suzy bought me, and Bob doesn’t know I’m coming to find him,” Isabel heard him say before she tuned out to focus on setting her stuff down.
Isabel nibbled a small bite off the cruller and poured two creams in the dreadful coffee to make it bearable. She pulled a paperback edition of Richard III out of her backpack, found her place in the play, and set the book face down on the table. The conversation from the stools at the counter drifted back into her consciousness.
“What did you tell, Bob, then?” a preppy white dude in khaki pants and a bright green windbreaker asked the man in the ballcap.
“Well, I’m getting there, man, if you’d let me finish.” The third guy on a stool, a grizzled old black man with gray sideburns and in a Vietnam Vet cap, let out a hearty laugh of recognition. Interrupting the man telling the story was a sport for the other two, Isabel had noticed in the months she’d been hanging out at Pop’s at night to study. They got a kick out of how much it irritated the man. Isabel suspected they were all three recovering alcoholics, and the stools and the counter at the doughnut shop felt like the bars of their glory days. She admired them for getting their shit together.
“Let the man talk,” Ruth said. “He’ll never finish the damn story if you keep interrupting.” All four of them erupted in laughter at her interjection.
Isabel’s English teacher at the high school, Mr. Parson, had promised her class repeatedly that the more Renaissance English they read, the easier it would become to read. No one had believed him, Isabel least of all, but the more movie versions of the plays he showed them, the more he pointed out the dirty jokes and plays on words in class, and the more she read, the easier it really did become to understand. Isabel studiously read the footnotes at the bottom of each page to make sure she was getting all of the allusions and obsolete usages. It bothered her to miss things. She was rife with curiosity and a stickler for detail.
It was Isabel’s curiosity, not just her fondness for Ruth, that brought her to Pop’s on a regular basis. Isabel was weary of the suburb where her family lived. The careful landscaping, three car garages, matching houses, and the people who lived in them struck Isabel as sterile and fake. She loved her family, adored her friends, but she could not understand their lack of curiosity about life outside the suburban bubble. As soon as Isabel had her driver’s license in hand and keys to her mom’s old Corolla, she had shot to the grittier parts of town to look around . . . and discovered Pop’s.
Isabel’s mother would probably not be happy to know her whereabouts right now, Isabel realized, recalling a recent conversation over breakfast.
“What time did you get in last night, Bella?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Around midnight,” Isabel had said.
“Were you at Zoe’s?”
“Nah, Mom. I discovered this new spot to study. It’s a doughnut shop.”
“A doughnut shop? Is it Dunkin Donuts on Pine Hills?”
“No, you probably don’t know this one. It’s downtown.”
“Downtown? Where downtown? Is it safe?” her mom had asked.
“Sure, it’s safe. It’s just a bunch of old people sitting around drinking coffee there, Mom. It’s a lot safer than places Gavin goes.”
“Your brother can take care of himself.” It irritated Isabel that her parents gave her brother license to do as he pleased whereas they imposed earlier curfews on her and more rules and more interrogation in general. It was an ongoing sticking point between Isabel and especially her mom, who remained adamantly righteous about her opinion that “It was different.”
“I know, it’s different for him, right?”
“Exactly.”
“What’s the address of this doughnut shop?”
“I have no idea! I didn’t memorize the address, Mom. Sheesh.”
“What part of town is it in?”
“It’s a few blocks off of Jefferson as you drive into the city,” Isabel had said.
“Well, if you’re going to be going there regularly, your father and I may need to go check it out.”
“Please don’t, Mom. Just – just trust me for once?”
“We’ll see, dear.”
Isabel was grateful that her parents hadn’t checked out Pop’s yet. She was pretty sure she hadn’t even told her mom what it was called. Perhaps because Isabel came home every night without gunshot wounds, her mom figured it must be safe.
Isabel flipped back to the scene in the play that Mr. Parson had warned the class about before they started reading. He had called it a “deliciously devious” conversation. Richard, responsible for the murder of her husband, woos Lady Anne over her husband’s corpse. Isabel returned to the scene to savor the conversation between the characters one more time. She glanced out the window. The neon DO in POP’S DONUTS flickered, and Isabel wondered who Pop was. She’d asked Ruth once when they were alone in the shop late one night, and Ruth had said, “Don’t know, but he signs my checks.” The shop had been around so long under so many owners, the story was lost in the ether.
The spelling of “donut” on the sign irritated Isabel, although she hadn’t ever admitted that to Ruth. Isabel was trying to train herself to be more critical. She’d spent most of her suburban youth wide-eyed, gullible, wondering what Jesus would do in her shoes, a true innocent, and she wanted to end that phase of her life. She mentally congratulated herself for the critical thought as it occurred to her and went back to the play.
“Who wants a warmup? Shakespeare?” Ruth hollered, holding the pot of coffee up in the direction of the booths. Isabel picked up her mug and walked to the counter to save Ruth the trip. “Thanks, hon,” Ruth said, expertly filling the cup. As Isabel plopped back down in the booth, Ruth made her way down the row of ex-alcoholics with the pot: “There you go, hon. And for you.”
Outside, a great roar of engines could be heard in the near distance rumbling down the two-way street in their direction. A growling dragon of motorcycles rounded the bend at the top of the hill as the patrons turned their heads to watch the beast through the windows. The seven motorcycles pulled into the parking lot of Pop’s, and one by one the bikes shut down until a crisp ring of silence settled. Silence fell, too, at the counter. Ruth broke the stillness when she grabbed a rag, turned her back, and began polishing the coffeepot. Isabel suspected Ruth was preparing herself.
The bell hanging above the door rang as the men in black leather entered, and a wave of brisk air blew in the door with them.
“Hello, gentlemen,” Ruth turned around to say, but Isabel noticed that Ruth seemed to be eyeing one of the bikers in particular as she said it. He was the last one through the door, broad shouldered with a red flannel shirt on under his leather vest, a bushy beard and a skullcap bandana on his head. His eyes didn’t belong in that face, on that body, Isabel thought, as she watched them look kindly, almost sheepishly at Ruth.
“Hey, Ruth,” the guy in front said. “We haven’t seen you at the Chestnut lately.”
“You here to interrogate me?” Ruth asked. The red flannel guy looked at his feet and shifted his weight.
“Nah, of course not. We’re here for doughnuts. What’s fresh?” the front man said.
“They’re all fresh.”
“All right. Give us two dozen assorted, then.”
“Sure.” Ruth snapped open a brown paper bag, grabbed a piece of paper, and began shoving doughnuts in. Isabel thought she seemed angry. The three men at the counter nursed their coffees in silence, staring deeply into the black liquid as if they were reading tea leaves for the secret answers to life’s big questions. While Ruth’s back was turned, Isabel saw the front man motion with a sideways fling of his head to red flannel to get on up here. Red flannel edged his way up toward the front of the group.
When Ruth turned around, she had four bags of doughnuts in her hands which she passed across the counter to the front man. She glanced at red flannel, which he seemed to take as permission to speak.
“Ruth—”
“Don’t even. I don’t want to hear it,” Ruth said in a stern voice.
“But—”
“Ah-ah! Nope,” Ruth said. “Not a word.” Red flannel spun and headed out the door, shoving at it hard to open it.
Front man settled up the bill. “You know, you should really hear him out,” he said.
“Why don’t you mind your business?” Ruth looked him straight in the eyes.
“Have it your way,” front man said, then swung his finger in the air to round up the rest of them, and they filed out with their bags of doughnuts. The rumble started up again and the dragon snaked its way back out onto the street.
As soon as the roar dimmed in the distance, Ruth took her apron off, flung it on the counter, and marched her way to the parking lot. Instinctively, Isabel went after her. Ruth lit a cigarette.
“If he thinks he can come up in here when I’m working . . .” Ruth said and took a drag. “I mean, with a group of friends and in front of customers . . .” Another drag. “What is that man thinking?”
Isabel wondered what had happened between them, but knew it wasn’t her place to ask. She was proud of Ruth for not falling for his bullshit like Lady Anne had, though. That much she could tell. Isabel felt useless standing there next to Ruth watching her smoke, but she could sense that Ruth appreciated the supportive gesture. It gave her a way not to talk to the night air.
Up above them on a high pole, the DO in POP’S DONUTS flickered again, but out here you could hear the electricity buzzing, something shorting out in the sign. The electric buzz grew louder and then the lights of the two letters fizzled out completely. Isabel was thrilled that the sign no longer sported the dumb spelling of donuts. Ruth glanced up and said, “One more thing to fix,” but Isabel knew as well as Ruth did that those lights were out for good.
Amanda J. Bradley has published fiction in Apricity Magazine; Griffel; The Account: A Journal of Poetry, Prose, and Thought; and Paterson Literary Review. She has three poetry collections with NYQ Books: Queen Kong, Oz at Night, and Hints and Allegations and has published poems widely in literary magazines such as Pif Magazine, Trailer Park Quarterly, Chiron Review, Lips, Rattle, Pedestal, The New York Quarterly, Pirene’s Fountain, and Gargoyle. Amanda is a graduate of the MFA program at The New School, and she holds a PhD in English and American Literature from Washington University in St. Louis. She lives in Indianapolis, and her website can be found at www.amandajbradley.com.