We’ll Have the House Red
by Robert Hanson
The idea was hard to wrap my mind around. “So it’s a restaurant where you know the service is bad,” I said, “and you pay them to be rude to you?” I rubbed the starched cotton on the bottom of my button-down shirt between my thumb and index finger—one of my driving habits Emily hated. My other hand gripped the steering wheel too tightly.
“Yes, John,” she said. “Try to keep up.” I looked over at her. Every few seconds the car passed under a street light, revealing her childish grin. The intervals of orange light made her look even more mischievous. My little incandescent imp—God, she’s beautiful.
“That sounds terrible,” I said. “Like a reality show I wouldn’t watch.” I stopped rubbing my fingers together and put both hands back on the steering wheel.
“I’ve married a wet blanket,” she said. “Who knows, John? Maybe we’ll see a fistfight.” She flipped down the visor and opened the mirror. Her hair was clipped up, except for one small strand that fell elegantly on the back of her neck. A lesser woman might have looked unkempt. But everything about Emily looked perfect, like it had a purpose. She pulled the clip out of her hair and softly shook her head. “And this is the kind of establishment we need to support,” she said. “How cool would it be to go to work and get paid to tell people exactly how you feel about them?”
“I guess I didn’t think about it like that,” I said. “Do you think you really need that milkshake, lady?”
“Ha! Exactly,” she said. “There’s the man I married. ‘Oh, you would like more ranch dressing, sir? Why don’t I just bring you a pitcher?’”
“Okay, Emily,” I said, “I’m excited now.”
She pulled a tube of lipstick out of her purse and began to paint her lips. The traffic signal ahead switched from green to yellow. I slowed down and stopped about thirty feet short of the intersection. It looked dark under the stoplight, but there was light here. I noticed how red her lips were. There was ordinary red lipstick. And then there was this.
“What color is that?” I asked.
“This?” she asked as she pressed her lips together. “This is ‘Molten Maraschino.’”
“You just made that up, didn’t you?”
“Yep,” she said.
“I like it.” The light turned green. She opened the glove box and rustled its contents, retrieving a bit of paper.
“What are you looking for?” I said. She was holding my insurance card.
“Nothing.” She blotted her mouth against the card. Even in the dark I could see the outline of a pair of Maraschino lips on the paper. She slung it back into the glove box and slammed the door.
A drop of water landed on the windshield, and then another. And with just those two drops as warning, a hard rain began to fall. Bob Dylan’s “Tangled Up in Blue” filled the car after Emily turned on the radio to drown the rain. The streetlights cast a glare on the pavement, broken by raindrops as they bounced off the ground. I could hardly see the lines on the road. I could hardly see the road.
“You’ve got to stop,” she said. “It’s pouring rain. And there was a poor man just standing back there.”
“And there’s probably a reason,” I said. “We wouldn’t be standing there. We’d call someone to come pick us up. That’s how scary movies start—stopping to pick up a hitchhiker on a rainy night.” I could feel her looking at me, but I didn’t make eye contact. Her eyes could plead with me more loudly and with more conviction than her words. The song ended and immediately led into another.
“Stop grinding your teeth,” Emily said. And so I did. Another driving habit she hated. The beat of “Roxanne” timed the awkwardness of the silent argument we were having. I could still feel her looking at me. There was no winning this battle.
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll stop.” I tapped the breaks a little harder than necessary—to show her that I was stopping, but I wasn’t happy about it. I lost control. The car slid across the concrete as it spun. The streetlights swirled waves of orange light across the windshield. My arms locked onto the steering wheel, and Emily screamed. There were loud sounds and then we weren’t moving anymore. I don’t remember closing my eyes, but I know that I opened them after the car had stopped moving. The car was upside down. It was like everything was pulsing in slow motion.
“Emily,” I said. My voice sounded thin and shaky. I turned my head and saw that she wasn’t in the car. “Emily,” I managed to say a little louder. I started rocking back and forth, trying to move, but I couldn’t. My leg was trapped. The realization brought a pain that traveled along my leg, like a chill, up my spine, and ended in my mouth where I clenched my teeth. “Emily!” I managed to yell this time, but there was still no response—only the sheets of rain pattering the ground beneath my head. And in the distance, barely there at all, was the sound of sirens. The car seemed to get a little darker and the rain sounded a little more distant without her next to me.
An ambulance arrived only moments after the crash. I wondered if the hitchhiker had called for someone to come help us—instead of calling for a ride. This was the emergency of the month in rural Missouri, the Golden Globes of the 9-1-1 circuits. The driver of the ambulance stepped out into the rain and walked to the back of the ambulance to open the door. I tried to call out to her, but I couldn’t. She was a thin black woman with her hair braided tightly to her scalp. Her brow was pressed forward and her jaw was squared off. If I’d seen her in the supermarket I would’ve thought she looked like a bitch—Emily could have found a better word. But out here in the rain next to a car crash, she looked sure and competent. A stocky man rolled a gurney out of the ambulance as he jumped down. Together they sprinted to the overturned car and the man kneeled beside my window.
“Sir?” he said. His voice sounded muffled—like he was on the other side of a thick wall. “Can you hear me?” I tried to answer him, but I couldn’t talk, so I nodded my head a little.
“Okay, sir,” he said, “I’m going to pull you out. We’ve got to get you away from the car.” I nodded a little more. He reached his arm over my chest and found the clip to the seatbelt around my waist.
“Emily,” I managed to say.
“What is your name?” the man asked. He backed away from me a little.
“Emily,” I said a little louder. I looked over to the empty passenger seat. The contents of Emily’s purse were scattered around the roof beside me—a compact mirror, a wallet, a cell phone, some wet mail, and, right by my head, the tube of red lipstick.
“Okay, buddy, let’s get you out of there.” He put one arm around my chest and reached again for my seatbelt. As soon as he unclipped it, I felt a sharp pain in my leg. It was a ripping, a grinding feeling within my body. I tasted metal. I followed his eyes to the bottom of my pants. The bottom cuff of my right pant leg was red, soaked with blood. My whole leg pulsed in sync with my heartbeat.
“Sherry,” the man yelled. “We’ve got two. There was a passenger. There’re two of them, Sherry.”
I felt dizzy. Orange waves of light once again swirled across my line of vision. The world seemed more distant. And then there was only darkness.
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***
“Sherry,” the stocky man said, “We’ve got two.” His voice didn’t match his body. He looked muscular, but his voice sounded muffled—like he was speaking to us from the other side of a thick wall. He held a stack of menus in the bend of his arm. “There’re two of them, Sherry.”
I looked at Emily. She looked like a child on Christmas morning. Her eyes sparkled in the yellow light. Her smile was so genuine. A thin black woman, presumably Sherry, walked over to the man and took two menus from his arm.
“Follow me,” she said. “Or not. I really don’t give a shit.” Emily put her hand on my arm and squeezed. I knew she was happy. Sherry led us to a booth that could easily seat six adults. She slung the menus down on the table. “I might be back,” she said.
Emily and I sat opposite each other on the outer edge of the gigantic table. She was still grinning. The table looked like an abandoned middle school woodshop project. It had uneven slats of wood, like it had been left out in the rain. And on top were tiles of different shapes and colors.
“She looks like a bitch,” I said.
“No,” Emily said, “She looks like she smells something bad, but can’t locate it.” She opened the menu. “I wonder what kind of food this place has.” Sherry rounded the corner holding an opaque blue glass. Whipped cream was carelessly heaped over the rim and a straw was clinging to the fluff at an angle that suggested it wasn’t added for aesthetics. She slowly walked to the table across from ours and sat it down in front of a middle-aged woman.
“Here’s your daiquiri, ma’am,” she said. “I hope it gives you diabetes. And did you decide on a drink, sir, or this whole ‘reading’ thing just not in your wheelhouse?” Sherry pointed down at the man’s menu.
“I’ll have a pint of winter lager,” he said. He looked offended by her comment. Sherry didn’t respond, she just turned around so that she was facing our table. She didn’t say anything. Instead, she lifted her eyebrows and tilted her head to the side a little—a look that was the equivalent of saying “you know the drill.”
“We’ll have the house red,” Emily said. “Should I write that down for you, or do you think you can remember?” Emily was obviously trying not to smile. Sherry was more practiced.
“We ain’t taking applications tonight.” Sherry turned and walked away from the table. I could feel my face turning red. It seemed like Emily was happiest when I was uncomfortable. Sherry rounded the corner a few minutes later holding two wine glasses and a carafe filled with merlot. She sat them down. Pouring our glasses was obviously out of the question.
“What’re you going to eat?” Sherry asked. “Or should I bring out a picture menu?” She pointed to my menu that was still folded in the center of the table.
“What do you serve?” Emily asked. Sherry looked annoyed.
“Food. This is a restaurant, you know—we’ve got burgers, steaks, and pasta,” she said.
“Okay, I’ll have the chicken alfredo,” Emily said. She closed her menu and held it out.
“And I’ll have the steak. Medium-well. Ribeye if you have it. Sirloin if you don’t,” I said. I picked up the closed menu from the center of the table and handed it to Sherry.
“Chicken pasta, and ribeye cooked medium-well,” she said. “Like you’d be smart enough to tell.”
“That rhymed,” I said. I immediately regretted it. I could see the veins on the side of Sherry’s neck getting bigger.
“I will personally add floor spices to both dishes,” she said as she turned to walk away. “And I’ll pick your side item for you, sir, since you seem to be too stupid to do it on your own.”
“This is great,” I said with apparent sarcasm. Emily ignored my comment. Instead, she reached for the carafe and poured a glass of wine. She pulled the glass to her side of the oversized table and began to fill the other glass. She pushed the wineglass toward my side of the table, but it got caught on an uneven slat of wood and tipped over. The merlot ran the length of the table and spilled off the edge. Something about the way it poured off the table didn’t look quite right. The only place it landed was on the cuff of my bottom right pant leg. There was no wine on the ground, or in my lap. But the bottom of my pants was soaked.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Now you really are a wet blanket.” She grinned.
“It’s okay,” I said. “It barely got on me.”
“I wonder what’s going on here tonight.” Emily made a circular gesture with her glass of wine. I looked around the room. How had I not noticed before? Every other table in the restaurant was filled with people in uniforms. There was a table with four policemen in the corner. There were a couple of firemen at the booth diagonal to ours. And the table directly across from us was a middle-aged woman and a man, both EMTs.
“I guess there’s some sort of convention in town,” I said.
“I guess,” she said. “Just seems strange they would pick this restaurant.”
“They’re here for you,” Sherry said. I hadn’t noticed she was standing at the edge of the table with two plates in her hand. “We’re all here for you.” She slammed the plates down. She pointed to my plate. “It looks rare, but I don’t care,” she said. “You can send it back if you want, but the cooks aren’t sober. So it’ll take a while to remake. And they’ll probably spit in it.”
“It looks fine,” I lied. Emily flashed me a smile that was equal parts sympathy and amusement. She knew how badly I hate undercooked steak. Sherry trailed off as she left the table,
“Rare, but I don’t care.” I saw her smile for the first time all night. “Look out, Ms. Maya Angelou. Here comes Sherry McGrew.”
It looked like the chef had taken a steak straight from the cooler and plated it next to an enormous pile of mashed potatoes. The blood from the steak pooled around the mound and started to wick into the center. The potatoes were tinted red.
“You can have some of my pasta,” Emily said.
“I’m fine,” I lied again. My palms were sweaty, I couldn’t breathe, and it was getting hard to focus. Sherry was leaning on a wall about ten feet from our table. She was smirking like she knew some embarrassing secret about everyone in the restaurant. Or maybe she was just refining her poetic genius. I held up my hand. She walked slowly to our table. There was no smirk now. Just that manly jaw and set brow. God, she really looks like a bitch.
“What is it now?” she asked.
“Could you take this for me?” I asked. “My eyes were bigger than my stomach.”
She held the plate to her side and made a point of looking down at my stomach before leaving the table. Emily took her time eating. Or so it seemed—my nausea never left and the room was spinning. If I had eaten any of the raw meat or pink potatoes, I am sure I would have vomited by now. Finally, Emily put her napkin on her plate. Sherry picked up Emily’s plate, took two steps, raised it above her head, and then dropped it. It made a loud sound as it shattered. I looked around the restaurant, but it seemed like no one, not even Emily, thought it was strange. In fact, the woman across the aisle began to laugh. It wasn’t the laugh of someone who had just heard a funny joke though. Or the polite laugh made to an unfunny friend over dinner. It sounded absurd. It sounded insane. As if it were a cue, one of the policemen in the corner began to laugh, too. Soon the maniacal laugh had spread to half the restaurant. Sherry still stood a couple of feet from the edge of the table with her arms folded.
“What do you have for dessert?” Emily had to raise her voice above the sea of laughter.
“We have the tears of African babies frozen into an icy treat,” Sherry said, almost yelling, “the chef’s choice of Monica Lewinsky’s wardrobe pureed and baked into a soufflé, pastries with objects from an Indonesian pawn shop baked right into the center, and, of course, we have your leg.”
“What was that last one?” Emily asked. The room went silent.
“Your leg,” Sherry said. “Well, not your leg.” She turned and faced me. Her voice was much softer now. “I’m afraid that this part of the menu refers to John’s leg.”
“That sounds delightful,” Emily said.
“I’m delighted you’re almost done,” she said. She turned and walked away. I looked over at Emily to object. I wanted to tell her not to let this crazy bitch serve her my leg for dessert. I wanted to tell her it was time to go. I opened my mouth but couldn’t make any noise. And she wouldn’t look at me. Instead she was putting on more lipstick using a compact mirror. Sherry returned a few minutes later with a saw. It looked rusted and archaic—like it came off the prop table at a civil war reenactment.
“Sir,” she said. “It’s time.” Her face looked different. Her brow was no longer pressed forward. All her features somehow looked softer. She looked gentle, even matronly. The entire restaurant was still, silent. They all stared at our table, their eyes wide, their expressions serious. Some of the people at the farthest tables stood up to get a better view. I looked back at Emily. Even if I’d been able to talk, I wouldn’t have needed to. If she could just see my eyes she would know. But, coat after coat, she kept putting on more bright red lipstick. Sherry grabbed me by the hips, wiggled me to the very edge of the booth, and knelt beside me. From across the aisle, I could hear the middle-aged woman whispering something to the man next to her. I tried to scream. Sherry put the saw against my leg. God, it was cold. I tried to lift my arms to stop her—but my muscles wouldn’t cooperate.
“Take a deep breath,” she said. I couldn’t. She pushed down and forward with the saw.
I felt a sharp pain in my leg. It was a ripping, grinding feeling within my body. I tasted metal. My whole leg pulsed in sync with my heartbeat. Emily finally looked at me. Both of our eyes were filled with tears. God, she’s beautiful. And then, once again, there was only darkness.
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About the Author
Robert Hanson is a student at Ole Miss. He studies, among less fine things, the finer things in life. He bartends full-time. He also works part-time at an alcohol and drug treatment center. Lately, he has discovered that finding the right words also requires his attention full-time.
“We’ll Have the House Red” © 2013 Robert Hanson
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