My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories(66)

“How about some tunes?” he asked.

“Sure,” Sophie said.

He turned on the stereo. “You spin.”

Sophie looked around for an iPhone or a dock or something. Russell glimpsed her and said: “It’s voice activated. Just call out a song.”

“Ohh, magic,” Sophie said. Except then she realized that she wouldn’t have the luxury of browsing Russell’s collection to see what he had. Sophie had the musical taste of a fifty-year-old woman, in other words, her mother’s musical taste. But that was embarrassing. What did normal people like? Zora was into this indie folky music that put Sophie to sleep. Maybe Kanye. Or was that too presumptuous? Lorde? Didn’t everyone like Lorde?

“It’s not a test,” Russell said. “Just tell it your favorite song.”

“‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want,’” Sophie blurted.

She started to explain that it was the Rolling Stones but Russell was already asking the magic car to play track nine of Let It Bleed. A few seconds later, the opening chorus of choirboys singing (sounding much better than tonight’s carolers, Sophie thought) filled the car, followed by Mick Jagger’s beautifully ruined voice.

They drove, and let Mick Jagger croon them over the dark country roads. Sophie loved this song, and mouthed the words, but resisted the urge to sing out loud. One of the What the Hell Have You Done, Sophie Roth? moments had involved an ill-advised rendition of “To Sir, with Love” on the karaoke machine in the common room. “Maybe not the best choice if you’re tone-deaf,” one of the girls had said. She’d been trying to be helpful, but none of Sophie’s NYC friends—some of whom had attended the performing arts high school—had ever seen fit to make such a comment.

Sophie wasn’t sure where they were going. It was rural out here; they just seemed to be driving, but that was okay. Driving and listening to the Stones definitely qualified as the best date she’d had here so far. (Not that this was a date. Was this a date?)

After about twenty minutes, Russell pulled off the highway. In the middle of an otherwise empty stretch of road, all lit up like a beacon, was a diner. Not just a diner, but an old-school, aluminum-sided diner. It looked like a giant Airstream trailer.

“What is this place?” Sophie asked as they crunched over the gravel parking lot. It was so completely unexpected, like being handed a beautifully wrapped gift for no special reason.

“This,” Russell said, “is the best pie in the state.”

“But where did it come from?” Sophie heard the question. It was the diner equivalent of What are you doing here? But the only diner-type places she’d seen around campus had been chains: Applebee’s and Fridays and the like.

“Oz,” Russell said.

That seemed exactly right. Oz, like it had been blown in on a twister, or like it was in Technicolor after everything these past few months had been in black and white. Maybe when people asked Sophie where she was from—in that overly solicitous but also mildly suspicious tone that suggested that wherever it was, they were glad they weren’t from there—she should stop saying Brooklyn (so big city) and start saying Oz.

Oz was packed. They found the last remaining booth. A waitress in jeans and a T-shirt with a Saint Bernard in an elf hat on it plopped a couple of menus on the table. “Merry Kiss-My-Ass,” she crooned in a smoke-scarred voice.

“Right back at you, Lorraine,” Russell said. “What’s good tonight?”

“Why you always ask me that?”

“I like the way you talk pie.”

“Oh, stop it.”

“Also, I have a guest.”

Lorraine glanced at Sophie. “So you do.” She cleared her throat. “We got some specials: banana cream. Reese’s peanut butter pie, sweet potato. Plus, the cherry’s good. Fruit’s frozen but the cherries were grown only two miles from here.”

Russell looked to Sophie. “Well?”

“Do you have apple?” she asked.

Lorraine looked at Russell. “Really?”

“Hey, I didn’t know.”

“Didn’t know what?” Sophie asked but nobody answered her.

“Two apples then,” Lorraine said. “You want ’em à la mode or with cheese?”

Sophie winced. Pie with cheese. Why not add some gravy while you’re at it?

Russell registered the look. “You ever had apple pie with cheese?”

Sophie shook her head.

“But you know it’s no good?”

“Yep,” Sophie said.

“Without ever having tried it?”

“Well, I’ve never had apple pie with toenail clippings either, but I’m pretty sure where I stand on that.”

Russell smiled. Lorraine tapped her pencil against the pad.

“We’ll take one of each,” he told Lorraine. He turned to Sophie. “You might be tempted.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Sophie said.

“I always go for the long shot.”

He was teasing her, Sophie could tell, but she wasn’t entirely sure he was teasing her about pie.

“That all?” Lorraine asked.

“Almost,” Russell said. He looked right at Sophie, as if they were in cahoots. “Coffee. Right?”