"I'd rather eat something. I saw that sign in front."
"Which one?"
I shrugged. "Both of them. Why?"
"The "Lunch" sign is bigger. I only hung up the smaller "Good Food" sign last week. Someone said it would increase business."
"And here I am," I said. "Am I too late for lunch."
"It's dark out Cal. Nighttime. What do you think?"
"How about the good food sign?"
"Night like this I'm amazed you saw that one. Ten to one it's snowing on the 'Tooth."
"You mean Beartooth, right?"
He nodded. "Three or four thousand feet up. It's probably about fifteen, twenty degrees colder. You came in on that Boise bus. Brenda, right?"
"Nice lady," I said.
"She's all right. She's single, you know. What do you want to eat?"
I could have sworn she'd been wearing a wedding ring. Then of course, so was I.
"Come on, Cal. Something from the lunch menu?"
"If you have one, yes."
"Don't. How about the wine list? Shall I have the sommelier bring it out?"
"I thought maybe he had the night off."
"So you know what a sommelier is and you didn't know Hearst Castle. English teacher."
He feigned disgust, but he was enjoying himself.
"I don't print up a menu," he said. "Make a choice. What do you want?"
"I don't know. What do you have?"
"I can make you some eggs, I can grill you a hamburger, I got hot dogs, I got some baked ham that's been in the fridge for a while but it ain't turned green. I got some leftover pork chops I took home from the Wielands' a few nights back. I got cereal, all kinds, hot and cold. I got spaghetti I can cook and a few jars of sauce I can open. I can make eggs, any kind. We got coffee, hot chocolate. I have beer and a half-opened bottle of red wine. Anything sound appealing?"
The wine did, mainly because I felt that drinking enough of it might make the entrées palatable, might even make Walter Trucks seem congenial. Still, partly for the company, partly to stay dry, and partly because I knew they were difficult to mess up, I worked up some artificial enthusiasm at the prospect of fried eggs. He had mentioned them twice—maybe that was his understated specialty. When Walter said he had forgotten to mention the bacon, the offer actually seemed appealing, providing the bacon, like the ham, was not yet green.
"You can sit at either table," Walter said. "One of the wait staff will be with you shortly,"
I sat at the closest table. "You'll find me here."
"You catch on fast for an Easterner. Sit down. Food will be up in a minute. Did you say coffee?"
"Wine. How did you know I was from the East?"
He pointed at my jacket "That Bean label is a giveaway."
"I could have mail-ordered it."
He shook his head. "You probably did. But I doubt the accent came in the same package. Fifty miles either side of Boston. Maybe twenty-five. I'm guessing south shore."
Actually Chatham, at the "elbow" of Cape Cod, is closer to eighty miles south and east of Boston, but I gave him some leeway and tried not to look too impressed.
"I opened a merlot this afternoon," he said. "How's that sound?"
"Sounds good."
His clothes flapped noiselessly behind him as he slipped through a doorway to—well to whatever room the food came from. To the left of that passageway were carpeted steps and an ornate balustrade leading up through a wallpapered stairwell. Some of the paper had curled a little at the edges, but I have always been taken by the idea of wallpaper. My parents (and I, when I became a homeowner) had been satisfied to slop paint on any room that began to look ratty. Wallpaper was for those living in some other universe—one into which I had suddenly been deposited.
So this was, in fact, the place where Walter Trucks lived, an old, but far from decrepit building that, a long time before, had been constructed and furnished with great attention to detail. The wainscoting, the scalloped woodwork, the swirled ceiling, the valances—everything was a throwback to the time when, as my father would say, workmanship meant something. It reminded me of the house where I grew up—a saltbox, battered season after season by nor'easters, but with an interior built and maintained by people who knew their craft, if not their wallpaper. No wonder Walter Trucks was so quick with those slippers: he was far less concerned with my feet than he was with those hardwood floors.
"You want them fried eggs over easy?"
"Yes," I said, "that would be fine."
"How about the wine? Want to give that a shot? It's a merlot. I opened it this afternoon."
"You asked me already."
"You didn't sound enthusiastic. I can give you coffee."
"I'm excited by the prospect of merlot," I said and Walter Trucks smiled.
"Now that's enthusiasm," he said. "Do you like merlots?"
"My ex often said to me I would not know a merlot from a mermaid."
"You're divorced?"
"Never married. Live with someone long enough and you've earned the right to call her your ex."
"No argument here. The bottle even has a cork in it."
"Must be good," I said, and took some napkins out of a chrome dispenser on my table—a card table really, one of two in the main dining room. Like mine the other was draped with a stiff white tablecloth and then covered with that thin plastic that's marketed these days as a "drop cloth" in home improvement stores. The material has the heft of a moth's wing, with a lot less visual appeal. But then aesthetics had probably not been a consideration when Walter decided to open a "lunch" or whatever this place was.
On a shelf nearby was a photograph, a brushed metal-framed monochromatic shot of several people and a fierce-looking Samoyed, all standing near a snowdrift. In the background was the building I had just entered, though I needed to see the place in the daylight to know for sure. The picture looked old and, even from a distance, seemed contrasty and grainy. But it was essentially unfaded, and when I looked more closely I saw traces of red in some of the clothing. Like so many winter pictures, the snow had overwhelmed it and sucked out the color: it only appeared black and white. I was pretty sure I could pick out a younger Walter Trucks looking a lot thicker in heavy winter clothing.
And there were more photographs, too, most of them leaning atop a mahogany armoire whose spherical feet and cornices had been worn away as randomly and efficiently as the wooden floors. The piece may have been an antique, but of the many topics of which I am absolutely ignorant, antiques would rank high. Still, given its familiarity and condition, I'd guess it was worth closer to a hundred dollars than ten thousand. Other photos, hardly bigger than wallet-sized in little matted frames, were scattered about the shelves of a breakfront so massive, it seemed the house would have to have been built around it.
"Me and some friends in that picture," Walter said when he came back with the wine. "I was visiting at Christmas, 1980. Right outside here, long before I bought the place."
"I thought the exterior looked familiar."
"See that tree in the background?"
I had noticed it—a decorated Christmas tree behind a multi-paned window.
"See the lights? Unusual, ain't it?"
"Looks like a regular Christmas tree."
"It's