Yak Page 2

  “Everything!”

  Yvonne just grinned. “Why’s it so important to you? You got the hots for her or something?”

  That took me aback, but my automatic denial reflex kicked in. “No, of course not. But it’s just so weird, you know? She seems like she’d be an okay person, but nobody even says a word to her unless they absolutely have to. She just does her job, then disappears until the next shift. I don’t even know what her real name is.”

  “Aislin Fergus, but no one ever calls her anything but Yak.”

  “Yeah, why is that, anyway? Why ‘Yak’?”

  Yvonne shrugged as she added sugar to her cup. “Marlon says it’s because she never says a word unless you drag it out of her. Apparently she’s the same way even when he cuts her hair, and you know Marlon could get Marcel Marceau to talk if he was sitting in his chair. He says that the former owner’s wife started calling her Yak out of exasperation, and it just sort of stuck.”

  It was a good start. I knew if anyone would have answers to all my questions about the enigmatic Yak, it would be Yvonne—or more accurately, Marlon. “So what else you got?”

  “Well, she’s twenty-seven, moved here four years ago and has been working at the Jester’s Court ever since.”

  “And?”

  “And she lives in the old Decker house on Seventh Avenue, doesn’t drive, and doesn’t seem to have any pets.”

  “That’s it? What about family or friends? Did she move here from the city? What did she do before she got here? You know, any of that kind of stuff.”

  Yvonne traced her finger around in some spilled sugar and wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  “Hey, Von? What’s up?”

  She looked up at me and I was shocked by the concern on her face. “Maybe you’d better just let this go. If everyone else thinks it best to leave Yak alone at work, they’ve probably got a reason for it, right? You should too.”

  I stared at her in astonishment. This wasn’t like Yvonne at all. Usually she couldn’t wait to dish on the latest gossip. “Von?”

  “It doesn’t... Marlon did hear some other stuff, but...just stay out of her way, okay, Leni? Just leave it alone.”

  In eighteen years of friendship, Yvonne had never clammed up on me like this. Over the rest of lunch I made a couple of half-hearted stabs to get her to tell me what Marlon had told her, but she refused to say anything more. Finally I gave up, but if anything, the little that I did find out only piqued my curiosity.

  * * *

  It wasn’t until almost two weeks later that I learned something more. Jules had worked his last shift and the new guy would be starting when we returned to work after our days off. Everyone except Yak met up at the King Louis for a few drinks to say good-bye to Jules.

  Jules was on his fourth or fifth beer and I was still nursing my second, when I heard something that made my ears perk up.

  “Guess you’ll be glad to get away, eh, Jules? No worrying about hexed knives at the new place, right?”

  Sharon, who probably weighed no more than a hundred pounds soaking wet, apparently did not hold her liquor well. She was leaning on Jules’ arm, eyeing him blearily.

  He shushed her harshly, looking around to see if anyone had heard.

  I kept my head down, inspecting the bottom of my glass as if my life depended on it.

  “Sharon! We don’t talk about that stuff, remember? We all swore to it.”

  Jules probably thought he was whispering, but sitting across from Sharon, I heard him clear as a bell. I guess the rest of the staff did too, because everyone got pretty quiet.

  Sharon pressed her hand to her mouth, her eyes wide with drunken remorse as she shook her head from side to side.

  The party broke up pretty soon after that. I’d brought my mother’s van, so I offered rides to anyone that needed one. Elliot and Jules had their own cars, but Sharon, Ella, and Darla Mae caught a ride with me. Getting everyone’s addresses, I arranged to drop Ella and Darla Mae off first, even though I had to pretend I got lost to avoid dropping Sharon off before the others.

  Finally, I had Sharon alone in the van, so I made a proposal. “Hey, it’s early yet, and we don’t have to work tonight. You wanna go get something to eat? I’m buying.”

  I felt bad about manipulating Sharon, but I was pretty sure she wouldn’t be in any hurry to get home. We’d only worked together for four weeks, and in that short time I’d seen her come to work with a black eye, a bruised cheekbone, and a splint on two fingers. And she sure didn’t seem accident prone at work.

  My conscience made me ask, “Your husband won’t mind, will he?”

  Sharon shook her head. “No. He’s gone hunting with his brothers this week, so I’m alone.” She seemed to consider my offer for a moment. “Okay, but not the Jester’s Court. I see enough of that place when I’m working.”

  “Pizza, then?”

  “Sure.”

  When we got to the Pizza Palace, I ordered her another beer to go with our #5, thin crust, all dressed. She didn’t object, and when we were halfway through our meal, I finally raised the subject in which I was most interested. “So, what was it you were talking to Jules about—hexed knives or something?”

  Sharon instantly got a deer-in-the-headlights look on her face. “I’m not supposed to talk about that stuff.”

  “I work there too, now, y’know. Maybe it’s something I should be watching out for—to protect myself, right?”

  That seemed to strike a chord with her, so I just sat back and listened as the words started to pour out of her.

  “Jules didn’t mean anything, you know. So he had one bad night—he’s a good guy. She had no call to sic that...that...whatever it is on him!”

  I nodded sympathetically, completely lost, but hopeful that Sharon’s words would eventually make sense.

  “I’m going to miss him.” Sharon stared forlornly at her now empty plate. “He was such a nice man, and he lasted much longer than any of the others.”

  “He did?”

  She nodded. “It’s just not right. She’s the one who should be fired, not Jules.”

  “Jules was fired?”

  “No, of course not. I just meant she should have to go, since it’s her fault.”

  I hazarded a guess, “Yak?”—and was surprised to see Sharon cross herself.

  “He’s afraid of her, you know.”

  “Jules?”

  Sharon shook her head. “No, Elliot. He was there too, that night when Susie came in. He saw it all happen, same’s the rest of us. He’s afraid of her, afraid of what might happen if he crosses her. I swear if it wasn’t so hard to get a job in this town, we’d all have quit that damned place.”

  I leaned forward, sensing that I was very close to getting the answers I craved. “What happened that night, Sharon? What did Yak do?”

  Sharon’s eyes darted around the nearly empty room and her voice shook. “I want to go home now, Leni.”

  I almost groaned out loud. I’d been so close. But Sharon was clearly scared, and I couldn’t bring myself to press her any further. I paid the bill, glad that I had some money in my pocket again, and took her home.

  * * *

  Now I’m not the most subtle person in the world. If you ask Yvonne or Herman or Aunt Helene or...well, pretty much anyone who’s known me for longer than five minutes, they’ll tell you I’m the bull in the china shop, the Jack Russell in the chicken coop, the queer at the Baptist convention. No finesse, no tiptoeing about, just full speed ahead and damn the consequences.

  After a month of containing my curiosity and getting nowhere with my crafty inquiries, I decided to take the bull by the horns on my next shift. I stayed at the normal lunch break table long enough for Elliot to introduce the new cook, Ed, to everyone, then I quietly picked up my tray and walked over to Yak’s table.

  I could just about hear the collective gasp behind me, but Yak seemed oblivious to my approach. She always took off her hairnet during our lunch breaks, and let her straight, dark,
shoulder length hair dangle like a curtain hiding her face. Her empty soup bowl was pushed to the side and she was reading...as always.

  I sat down across from her. “Mind if I join you?”

  Yak looked up with such an expression of shock, you’d have thought I’d just done a striptease in front of her. The thing that really got my attention was her eyes. I’d never really looked Yak directly in the face, even though we’d worked in the same kitchen for over a month.

  It wasn’t so much the colour, though they were a nice shade of brown. It was that even though her mouth wasn’t saying a word, her eyes were speaking volumes. Shock, disbelief, consternation, fear... That last one really brought me up short.

  She was afraid of me? Me? Nobody had ever been afraid of me. Even my baby sister walks all over me.

  Yak lowered her head again, but I could see her fingers trembling where they held her page down. It made me feel oddly protective of her, and for an instant I second guessed myself. Maybe I should just leave her alone. It was pretty obvious that no one in this restaurant, aside maybe from the new guy, thought my being at Yak’s table was a good idea.

  But I knew my intentions were good…weren’t they? I certainly didn’t want to hurt her. I just wanted to understand what was going on—why this perfectly ordinary, if extremely quiet woman inspired such apprehension and ostracism. And if I could maybe bring her back into the fold, so to speak, where was the harm? Surely she’d be much happier if she felt free to sit with the rest of the staff, kibbitz with us through the night, go out for a beer now and then. I mean, who wouldn’t, right? It can’t be any fun being alone one hundred per cent of the time.

  “What’cha reading?” Okay, not my smoothest opening, but apparently I was working alone here.

  Wordlessly, Yak closed the cover and turned the book so I could see it. Future Science: Life Energies and the Physics of Paranormal Phenomena by White and Krippner.

  Damn, it looked like it was about six hundred pages long. Nothing like a little light entertainment.

  When I didn’t say anything, she turned the book back to herself and opened it again. I’d have been discouraged, but I saw the tiniest hint of a smile on her face and, like a drowning woman, I grabbed for that life preserver.

  “Pretty heavy reading. Are you into that kind of stuff?” Well, duh, if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t be reading it, would she?

  She raised her head and those remarkable eyes regarded me like she was trying to figure out whether I was friend or foe. Suddenly wanting very much to be the former, I gave her my most innocent smile.

  It backfired. I wouldn’t say she stared daggers at me, but if I’da been a fine piece of beef, she’d have turned me into stir-fry.

  Without a word, Yak closed her book and stood up.

  I watched her retreat into the kitchen, then reluctantly took my tray back to the other table.

  As soon as I sat down, Sharon hissed at me, “Leni! Are you crazy? Do not make her mad!”

  Before I could defend myself, Elliot chimed in. “Please don’t aggravate Yak, Leni. It’ll be much better for all of us if you just leave her alone.”

  I looked around the table at my co-workers. Except for the new guy, they were various shades of pale; my actions had obviously upset them. “Look, I was just being friendly. I didn’t mean any harm.”

  “Susie never really meant much harm either, but look what happened to her.” Elliot, Sharon, and Darla Mae nodded in unison at Ella’s emphatic words.

  Ed leaned in and casually draped an arm around Darla Mae, who was the youngest and prettiest of the waitresses.

  “Who was Su—” Before I could finish my question, I heard a massive clang from the kitchen and everyone froze. A trucker who had been chowing down on chili and cornbread jumped to his feet, but before anyone could move, a voice came from the kitchen.

  “It’s okay. I just dropped a pot. Nothing’s damaged.”

  It was clear that no one believed Yak, including me. It would’ve taken a pot the size of Great Slave Lake to make that kind of sound. But no one was willing to get up and go see what had happened either.

  I sat there for another few minutes as the staff talked nervously about anything but Yak and that noise. Ed and Darla Mae drifted off first, then I got tired of the half-accusatory glances coming my way and went out for my smoke break.

  When I got outside, I saw Ed sitting on the hood of a restored muscle car—a red Cobra, I think. Darla Mae was standing between his legs, giggling at something he was saying to her as he ran his hand along her hip.

  I rolled my eyes and turned my back to the flirtatious couple. As I lit my cigarette, I noticed Yak watching me through the kitchen window, but as soon as she realized that I’d seen her, she moved away.

  * * *

  Maybe it was knowing that I had affected Yak in some way, or maybe it was because I’m just a stubborn Taurean, but the next night when it was time for our break, I didn’t even hesitate. I marched right over to Yak’s table, sat down with my tray, and began to eat.

  She didn’t look up from her book, but she didn’t tell me to get lost, either, so we sat there in silence eating our meals together. When she was done, she got up and left the table. I went out for my smoke, then back to work.

  Night after night, this went on. My co-workers eventually ceased to complain about my joining Yak, though I still caught them shooting me uneasy glances from time to time. I felt like telling them that Yak wasn’t contagious, that all I’d gotten from eating with her was a long list of thick books with incomprehensible titles.

  Their ostracism of Yak didn’t extend to me. I still got along well with them, but I got a sense that they were waiting for the other shoe to drop. Damned if I could figure out what that shoe was, though. The only thing that happened was that each night Yak would read just a little longer before she left the table and returned to the kitchen.

  Die-hard optimist that I am, I took that as a good sign, so I started to talk while I ate. Don’t worry. I kept my mouth closed while I chewed. My mom raised me with manners, after all, but each evening I’d figure out a topic of conversation before I came on shift. I’d scan the Net or the newspaper for “man bites dog” kind of stories—you know, the ones that make you laugh because they’re absurd, yet true.

  I could tell that Yak listened. I’d learned early on what a speedy reader she was, and when she didn’t turn a page every thirty seconds, it was because I had her attention. The night that I actually got her to chuckle at one of my anecdotes—well, I doubt that an Olympic gold medalist standing on the podium felt one tenth as proud as I did in that moment.

  It was like that chuckle opened something inside Yak. She started to look up when I joined her, and though getting two words from her was still like getting water from a stone, her eyes definitely welcomed me.

  I don’t know that you’d exactly have called us friends at that point, at least not the way Yvonne and I were. Von and I could talk for twelve hours straight and never run out of things to say. Yak and me—well, I used my vocal chords, she used her eyes, and we communicated. It may not have been conventional, but it worked for us.

  Until the trouble started.

  * * *

  I’ve got to backtrack a little here, because the trouble didn’t start until about six weeks after the night Ed joined our little staff. I really didn’t like Ed from the beginning. It was clear he considered himself a player, and he had the kind of greasy good looks that would serve his aims in his twenties, make him repugnant in his thirties, and pathetic in his forties. You just knew he was the kind of man who would go to his grave convinced that he’d been God’s gift to women, despite decades of solid evidence to the contrary.

  He had quickly figured out that I’d never be susceptible to his dubious charms, and he lost no opportunity to jerk my chain, though he was smart enough to do it in such a fashion that there was nothing I could pin him on. The one time Elliot overheard one of Ed’s snide comments and called him on it, Ed protested t
hat he’d just been joking, and he apologized with faux sincerity if I’d taken his kidding seriously.

  He was a loathsome creature, but I took him for the piss-ant he was and ignored him as best I could.

  Darla Mae was a whole other matter. Ed had hit on her from day one, and it was plain to see how hard she fell for him. Darla Mae was a nice girl, naïve as hell at nineteen-going-on-twelve, if you know what I mean. I doubt she’d dated much, and I’d lay odds she was likely as virgin as I was.

  Looking at Darla Mae, it was easy to foretell her future. She’d marry some schmuck like Ed, probably because she’d gotten knocked up, and her wedding day would be the highlight of her life. It would all be pretty much downhill after that: a pack of screaming kids, a squalid house with a littered lawn more dirt than grass, her pretty hair dyed a coarse blonde, her out-of-date clothes too tight around her thickened waist, and a layabout husband who spent more time on unemployment than working. Yes, Darla Mae’s destiny was laid out for her before she was even born, but she was a sweet kid and I hated to see her fall into Ed’s clutches.

  One night I needed more Venetian crème for the Boston crème doughnuts I was making, so I went back into the cooler. I caught them in flag...in flagra...doing the dance of the two-humped camel on boxes of pre-formed hamburgers. And let me tell you, the sight of Ed’s skinny white ass bobbing in the cold air is not something I’ll ever be able to get out of my mind.

  Angered, I told them in no uncertain terms to get the hell out of my freezer and go find themselves a room if they wanted to pull that shit. Darla Mae rushed by me with her face flaming red as she re-buttoned her dress, and Ed sneered as he zipped his fly and sauntered out.

  I heard him mutter “fucking dyke” as he passed me. I chose to ignore him and the whole incident, for Darla Mae’s sake, not his. I didn’t want her losing her job just because she’d lost her head over that sorry sonuvabitch.

  Later I would realize that had been a big mistake. I should’ve nailed him right then and there. If Elliot had fired Ed’s loser ass that night, none of the other stuff would’ve ever happened.