Buster Midnight's Cafe (22 page)

Ours was the best marriage that anybody ever had. Buster was the kindest man in the world. He never raised a hand to me or spoke a harsh word. Even working together all day, Buster and I never had a fight. Our marriage lasted a long time, almost thirty years, and you couldn’t have found two happier people. I surely was a lucky woman. To think I spent all those years looking for a man as good as Pink, and when I found him, he turned out to be old Buster.

May Anna still wrote and sent presents at Christmas. She called Moon on his birthday and sent us telegrams every time she was nominated for the Academy Award. Sometimes when she drank too much, she even called us at the restaurant. But we never saw her. You don’t have a lot of days off when you work as a movie star, and I guess that’s why she never made it back to Butte. Whippy Bird says would you be so kind as to stop talking like a damn fool, Effa Commander. You know as well as I do that May Anna always thought we blamed her for letting Buster down. Even though we all tried hard, things never were the same after the trial—or after I married Buster either.

Then we got the phone call one Friday night.

Friday was our hardest night at the cafe, and sometimes I wasn’t sure I’d make it to Sunday morning. On Friday we had all that spaghetti and ravioli to fix as side dishes for the weekend as well as the steaks people ordered that night. Sometimes they changed their mind and wanted them rare instead of medium even after they’d eaten half. We never argued with the customers even though the moochers cost us plenty. After working all week, folks wanted to relax over their dinners even though they could see there were people waiting for their table. We had to keep those folks from throwing up their hands and walking out.

Whippy Bird always came down on Friday night to help me and Jimmy Soo in the kitchen. She said since me and Buster and Toney were there, she’d be lonely taking her time off at home. The truth was, you could always count on Whippy Bird. Even Moon came in on Friday night and worked as a busboy.

I already told you me and Buster never had a fight. But we never even had a fight with Toney and Whippy Bird either. We all owned that cafe together, and we all worked hard to make it a success. If there was a job to do, why we just did it, whether it was waiting tables or carrying out the trash. That restaurant was as important to me and Whippy Bird and Toney as it was to Buster even though our names weren’t on it. People knew that. Lots of them called the cafe Buster and Toney’s. And some even called it the McKnights’, which meant the four of us plus Moon, even though he kept the name O’Reilly. Sometimes Moon winked at me and called it Aunt Effa Commander’s Cafe.

After two years, the restaurant was a real success, but that Friday night was even more of a madhouse than usual. One of the ovens wouldn’t go over 300 degrees, and I was having a hell of a time getting the orders out. Whippy Bird knocked over a bottle of bourbon, and people tracked it across the carpet before she had a chance to clean it up. Buster was chipping ice off the sidewalk in front because two customers had slipped and fallen down.

“You got a phone call,” one of the waitresses told me.

“Tell them we don’t take reservations,” I said. Sometimes people thought if they called me or Buster, they’d get special service.

“It’s not a reservation. It’s long distance.”

“I don’t have time. It’s some damn supplier who wants an order. They always think you’ll drop everything for a long-distance telephone call.” I was more concerned about the restaurant than any phone call. “You better get a new hanky. That one’s got spaghetti sauce on it.” The waitresses wore big flowered handkerchiefs spread out across their chests. “Don’t chew gum.”

“His name’s Eddie Baum.”

“Who? I don’t know any Eddie Baum.”

The waitress went to the phone again and came back. “He’s Marion Street’s agent. He says it’s urgent. I wish she’d call herself. Think of what my kids would say if I told them I talked to a movie star.”

I was too worried about the oven to give it much thought. I just wiped my hands on my apron and went to the phone, the one in the closet we called an office. “Yeah?” I said.

“You don’t remember me, Effa Commander—” he said, but I cut him off.

“I remember you. You were the one who designed May Anna’s dress for Buster’s trial.”

There was a long pause. “Sorry. I didn’t know then you had the hots for Buster.”

“You don’t know much about anything as far as I’m concerned. What the hell do you want? I got a restaurant to run.”

“Marion is sick. Real sick,” he said.

I forgot about the fifty people in the dining room ready to die of hunger. His words cut through me. He wouldn’t have called unless something was wrong. All I could think of was Mrs. Kovaks all curled up on her living room floor.

“What’s wrong? What is it?” I bit the inside of my mouth to keep from crying.

“Cancer.”

“Cancer? Cancer of what?”

“Cancer all over.”

I leaned my head against the wall. “Her mother died of cancer. Is she … you know …” I couldn’t bring myself to ask.

“Yes.”

“Oh, my God.” I slid down the wall so I was sitting on the floor. “God damn.”

“She wants you to come. She’s got things to say. I checked the train schedules. You can get out first thing tomorrow morning. The ticket will be waiting for you. With the weather, we can’t depend on a plane. The train’s the best way. You leave in the morning.”

“I’m not sure me and Whippy Bird can get away that fast. Saturday night’s as bad as Friday. We have to find somebody to take over.”

“Your friend doesn’t have to come. Marion just asked for you.”

“Then you didn’t hear her right. Me and Whippy Bird are both May Anna’s best friend.”

“Of course,” he said. “I’ll have two tickets waiting. You’ll come tomorrow, won’t you? I don’t know how much time …” He had to stop for a minute to collect himself. “We weren’t sure she’d make it through last night.”

“Then why didn’t you call us before?”

“Marion didn’t want anyone to know. Then today, she asked to see you. She said she wanted to die in peace.”

“We’ll be there. Only don’t leave any tickets. Me and Whippy Bird will pay for ourselves.”

When I hung up, I sat like that for a long time until Whippy Bird came to find me. “What’s going on?” she asked.

“It’s May Anna. She’s going to die of cancer. Maybe tonight.” Whippy Bird started to cry. I thought about May Anna dying all alone in her white house, without even her best friends near her, and I cried, too. We cried until Whippy Bird said there were now one hundred hungry people in the other room ready to hang us from a light post if they didn’t get their dinners.

“They can wait one more minute. I have to tell Buster.”

“You can’t tell him in the bar,” Whippy Bird said. “I’ll go get him.”

I explained to Buster as gently as I could. “Poor May Anna,” he said when I was finished. “She was afraid of that. I wish I could …” He shrugged. He didn’t have to finish. I knew what he meant. He was still Little Buster McKnight looking out for May Anna.

“She wants to see me and Whippy Bird. That Eddie fellow who called. He wants us to leave in the morning.”

“Then do it. She’s your best friend, after all. Toney and I, we’ll take care of things.” The next morning when I got on the train, Buster didn’t tell me to say hello to May Anna for him. He just gave me a big hug as strong as a Buster Midnight punch that made me feel my bones would snap. Then he kissed me and told me he loved me. “Come back soon, babe.”

Toney got the tickets, and when we climbed on board the train, we found he’d bought us a private compartment. “It doesn’t seem right about May Anna getting sick,” Whippy Bird said when we were settled in our roomette.

“You mean May Anna dying,” I corrected her. “It’s not fair either. Pink and Chick, they were in the war. You can accept men getting killed in a war. But it’s hard to accept other people you know dying, especially this young. May Anna isn’t even forty.”

“Not hardly more than thirty if you read what the studio puts out,” Whippy Bird said.

“How old was her mother when she died?”

Whippy Bird thought it over. “Maybe not much older. You think of our mothers being older than God, but they weren’t. May Anna’s mother was even younger than they were.”

“Now I know how Ma must have felt when Mrs. Kovaks died.”

“Do you think May Anna was happy?” Now Whippy Bird was talking about her like she was already dead.

“Not like us. We had two good men apiece. May Anna never had anybody.”

“She could have had Buster.” Now you might think Whippy Bird should keep her mouth shut, but we always said what we thought to each other. Besides, I’d been thinking that, too.

“She could have. Maybe she should have. But I’m not sure she would have been happy.”

“I know Buster wouldn’t have been, not as happy as he is now anyway,” said Whippy Bird. That was nice of her, but I always thought that, too.

“May Anna wouldn’t have been happy with the pope,” I said.

“The only man May Anna ever truly wanted was Jackfish Cook.” We were sorry Eddie came with Thomas to meet us at the train because we wanted to talk to Thomas alone. “I was afraid he wouldn’t recognize you,” Eddie explained. He had on one of those argyle sweaters and white slip-on shoes that made him look too flashy for somebody taking us to see a dying woman.

“He always did before,” I told him.

“Look, I know you don’t like me much, but I appreciate you girls coming out.”

“We didn’t come to see you,” Whippy Bird told him.

“He’s probably busy figuring out what dress to bury May Anna in,” I whispered loud enough for Eddie to hear.

“How is she?” Whippy Bird asked Thomas.

He looked over his shoulder. “I don’t know. She hangs on, but it’s not good. She’ll feel better with you here though. I said before somebody ought to call you. She looks bad.”

“That’s off the record,” Eddie said. “There are some reporters around who’ll want to talk to you. You can say she was dressed all in white, and she was beautiful to the end.”

“You shut up. She’s not dead yet,” Whippy Bird told him.

I was right behind her: “We came out here to see our best friend, not to protect any Hollywood legend.”

“I’m just saying Marion worked hard to become a star. She wants her fans to remember her that way.”

“Do you think we don’t know that?” I asked him, but he just shrugged.

We rode the rest of the way to May Anna’s house without talking. As Thomas opened the door he whispered, “She’s been asking for you all day, Effa Commander. She wants to talk to you about Mr. Midnight.”

“Looks like she’s not running away from him this time,” said Whippy Bird, thinking about how May Anna left Butte without saying good-bye to Buster.

“I think she wants to know Buster forgives her, but hell, what’s to forgive?” I asked. “He knew May Anna did the best she could. Buster doesn’t have any hard feelings about the trial. Buster understands her better than anybody. Maybe better than us.”

“I always hoped Miss Street would marry him,” the chauffeur said. Then he remembered Buster was married to me. “But he couldn’t have done any better than you.”

“Why, thank you for the compliment,” I told him. “And if we have the time, I’ll take you out for another Barney Google.”

As it turned out, we never left the house, hardly even left May Anna’s bedroom. I couldn’t help thinking when we hurried up those fancy stairs to see her that things were a lot different from the first time we were there. I thought back to when me and Whippy Bird came down the stairs that time in the black dresses to May Anna’s party where we got her the role in that awful
Debutantes at War.
I also remembered the other time I was there, for Buster’s trial. Now I knew we were in that house for the last time.

May Anna was skinny like she was when she was a girl. With no makeup, her face was blotchy, making me think of that day on the raft when it was smeared with old tomatoes. Instead of the blond halo the fan magazines always wrote about, her hair was back to the color of mine runoff. May Anna looked like a little kid in Butte again, not the famous Marion Street. Seeing her that way broke my heart.

The room didn’t look much like a movie queen’s bedroom either. The satin quilt was put away, and the fancy perfume bottles on her dressing table were shoved to one side to make room for enamel pans and syringes. The smell in the room that day was the smell of sickness and Lysol instead of the lily scent May Anna loved. Me and Whippy Bird tiptoed in and stood there for a minute, not sure if she was asleep. Then she opened her eyes and smiled. Not the smile with her hand in front of her mouth—there were tubes in her arm—but the funny crooked smile she gave us the first day we saw her at the Little Annie.

“Your eyes still look like glory holes,” I told her after I kissed her. “Big enough for a kid to fall into. How come I always think about you and glory holes?”

“If it hadn’t been for you, I’d be at the bottom of one right now,” May Anna whispered.

“Or China,” Whippy Bird said.

May Anna smiled again. The nurse sffushed us, but the doctor shook his head. “It can’t do her any harm to talk to them for a few minutes,” he said.

“I never went to China, did I? I always wanted to. The closest I came was
Shanghai Operative. “

That was one of May Anna’s gun moll movies.

“There were lots of places you never made it to, like back to Butte,” Whippy Bird said. “When you get well and come back to Butte, Moon O’Reilly will be the most popular boy in the entire “I think we ought to get the cafe open first then we can talk about it,” I told Buster, trying to buy time. My mind surely wasn’t working.

“I think we ought to talk about it now, babe,” he said.

So I went to sit next to him on the porch steps and put down my bowl of rose hips. It was the old yelloware bowl, the one with the brown stripe that I got for a quarter at the secondhand store on North Main. I held my hands together in my lap while I thought how to explain it. “The truth is, Buster …” I stopped for a minute wondering if it was my business to say what I needed to. Then I decided it was my business, since Buster had asked me to marry him. “The truth is, Buster, you will always love May Anna Kovaks.”

“And the truth is, Effa Commander, you will always love Pink Varscoe. But both of them are dead. There isn’t any May Anna anymore. I knew that when I went to prison. She’s Marion Street now. That’s why I told her I didn’t want to see her again. I didn’t love who she’d turned into. She wasn’t a little girl falling into glory holes and getting hit with tomatoes anymore. Me and May Anna had some good times, and so did you and Pink. But we have to go on, just like I had to stop being a fighter and go into the restaurant business.