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“You’re working too hard, Marge,” he says, patting the space next to him. “Join us. Take a load off.”
“I don’t think the boss would like that very much,” she says.
“Is he here?”
“No.”
“Then you’re the boss.”
Charlie’s attention is split between the cop car outside and thewaitress tittering behind the counter. Her head moves back and forth, like she’s at a tennis match, trying to take it all in.
The cop getting out of his patrol car.
Then Marge dropping her rag on the counter.
Then the cop ambling toward the front door, in no hurry at all.
Then Marge coming to their table, taking a seat next to Josh, and saying, “I suppose it won’t hurt to get off my feet for a second.”
By the time the cop enters the diner, Charlie’s hit with a third distraction.
The steak knife.
It’s no longer on the table.
Josh holds it again, gripping it the way a movie thug wields a switchblade, the tip vaguely aimed in Marge’s direction.
Charlie’s gaze hopscotches around the diner, going from the knife to Marge to the cop now standing at the counter. He’s tall and lanky and young. Face like a choirboy.
“Evening, Tom,” Marge says. “Didn’t think you’d be coming in tonight. I thought you hit the pizza place on Tuesdays.”
At first, Charlie wonders if the cop can see the steak knife in Josh’s hand and how in the past few seconds it seems to have moved a little closer in Marge’s direction. It’s not until she follows the cop’s gaze from the counter to their table that she realizes everything below Josh’s shoulders is blocked by the back of the booth.
“I’m here on business,” Officer Tom says, looking not at Marge but to Josh seated beside her. “We got a call about a possibly dangerous situation.”
“Here?” Marge says, incredulous. “Nothing happening here. Slow night as usual.”
“We’re just passing through, Officer,” Josh adds.
Officer Tom turns to Charlie. “Is that true, miss?”
“Me?”
Charlie turns her head in a way that lets her see both the cop and, in the edge of her vision, the knife in Josh’s hand, which seemsto have gotten even closer to Marge. Then again, it might just be Charlie’s imagination. It’s steered her wrong before.
“Yes,” she says. “That’s the truth.”
Charlie eyes the holster on Officer Tom’s hip and the police-issued pistol strapped inside of it. She wonders how much experience a cop so young has had. If he’s ever had to face a man with a knife. Or defuse a hostage situation. Or shoot someone in the line of duty.
She gives the scene another all-encompassing glance, skipping from Officer Tom’s gun to Josh’s knife to Marge and then back to the cop, trying to gauge the distance between all of them.
She wonders if she should yell to Officer Tom that Josh is a killer.
She wonders if he’d be able to draw his weapon before Josh jammed the steak knife into Marge’s stomach.
She wonders if Officer Tom would then open fire on Josh.
Charlie pictures the immediate aftermath. Her cowering in the booth, her hands over her ears as Josh lies dead on the table and Marge bleeds on the floor and smoke still trickles from the barrel of Officer Tom’s gun.