What Happens to Goodbye(17)

I dropped my backpack on the floor of the office, not wating to disturb them, then headed out into the restaurant proper. It was empty except for Opal, who was standing by the front door, surrounded by a stack of cardboard boxes. The UPS man, who was parked outside, was in the process of wheeling in even more.
“Are you sure there hasn’t been some kind of mistake?” she asked him as he put another one by the hostess stand. “This is a lot more than I was expecting.”
He glanced at a clipboard that was balanced on the top box. “Thirty out of thirty cartons,” he said, then handed it to her. “All here and accounted for.”
Opal signed the sheet and gave it back to him. She was in a cotton long-sleeved shirt printed with cowboys and horses, a black miniskirt, and bright red boots that came up past her knees. I hadn’t figured out yet if her look was punk or retro. Maybe petro.
“You know,” she said to the UPS guy, “it’s pathetic what a person has to do to secure ample parking in this town. Pathetic .”
“Can’t fight city hall,” he replied, ripping off a sheet and handing it to her. “Hey, you got any more of those fried pickles lying around? Those I got here the other day were wicked good.”
Opal sighed. “Et tu, Jonathan?” she said sadly. “I thought you loved our rolls!”
He shrugged. “They were good, for sure. But those pickles? Crispy and crunchy, and, you know, pickly? Damn! They’re just beyond.”
“Beyond,” Opal repeated, her voice flat. “Fine. Go back and ask Leo to throw a few in for you.”
“Thanks, doll.”
He walked past me, nodding, and I nodded back. Opal put her hands on her hips, surveying the boxes, then added over her shoulder, “And tell him to send someone out here to help me carry these upstairs, would you?”
“Will do,” the delivery guy said, pushing into the kitchen, the door swinging out, then back again behind him. I watched as Opal bent down over one of the cartons, examining it, then pushed herself back to her feet, rubbing her back.
“I’ll help you, if you want,” I said.
She spun around, startled, her face relaxing—a bit—when she saw me. “Oh, thank you. The last thing I need is for Gus to come out here and start asking a bunch of questions. He’s already out to get me as it is.”
I waited a beat, for her to realize what she’d just said. One. Two. Then—
“Oh, God.” Her face reddened. “I didn’t mean that how it sounded. I just—”
“It’s okay,” I told her, walking over and picking up one of the smaller cartons. “Your boxes of secrets are safe with me.”
“I wish they were boxes of secrets,” she said with a sigh. “That would be infinitely less humiliating.”
“Then what are they?”
She took a breath, then said, “Plastic buildings, trees, and infrastructure.”
I looked down at the box. MODEL COMMUNITY VENTURES, read the return address.
“It’s a long story,” Opal continued, hoisting a box onto her hip. I followed her into the side dining room. “But the condensed version is that I sold my soul to the head of the town council.”
“Really.”
“I’m not proud.” She went down a small hallway, past the bathrooms, then bumped open a doorway with her hip, revealing a narrow set of stairs. As we started up them, she said, “They were about to shut down the parking lot beside us, which would have been totally devastating, business-wise. I knew they were looking for someone to take on the project of assembling this model of the town for the centennial this summer, and that nobody wanted to do it. So I volunteered. On one condition.”
“Parking?”
“You got it.”
We reached the top of the stairs, entering a long room lined with tall, smudged glass windows. There were a few tables stacked along one wall, some empty garbage cans, and, inexplicably, two lawn chairs right in the middle, an upended milk crate between them. On it was a pack of cigarettes, an empty beer bottle, and a fire extinguisher.
“Wow,” I said, setting down my box. “What is this place?”
“Mostly storage now,” she replied. “But as you can tell, the staff have been known to use it on occasion.”
“To set fires?”

“Ideally, no.” She walked over, picking up the fire extinguisher and examining it. “God! I have been looking everywhere for this. The kitchen guys are such kleptos, I swear.”
I walked over to one of the big windows, peering out. There was a narrow balcony, made of wrought iron, over which I had a perfect view of the street below. “This is nice,” I said. “Too bad you can’t seat people up here.”
“We used to,” she said, picking up the beer bottle and tossing it in a nearby trash can, followed by the cigarettes. “Way back in the day.”
“Really,” I said. “How long have you been here?”
“I started in high school. It was my first real job.” She picked up the milk crate, moving it to the opposite wall, then folded the chairs, one by one. “Eventually, I left for college, but even then I came back and waited tables in the summers. Once I graduated, I planned to get a full-time job with my double degree in dance and art history, but it didn’t exactly work out.” She looked at me, then rolled her eyes. “I know, I know. Who would have guessed it, right?”
I smiled, looking back out the window again. “At least you did what you liked.”
“That has always been my defense, even when I was flat broke,” she said, wiping off the milk crate with one hand. “Anyway, I was back here and unemployed when the Melmans decided they needed someone else to take over the day-today for them. So I agreed, but only on a temporary basis. And somehow, I’m still here.”