Granny's Killers
Granny’s timing couldn’t have been worse. The old hag walked into the lobby just when I had started feeling good about myself again. Despite the fact that I was fifteen years older than the manager, and I had an Associates Degree from Blair Community College, I was waiting tables. Yet again. I struck out when I interviewed at some of the machine shops around town. Those Human Resources bitches all wanted to know why I’d left a great job, running state of the art industrial machinery at the VanderHoff plant in Roosterville for 12 years, without so much as a lead on a new gig. I didn’t fool one of them when I looked them in the eye and lied.
It was the middle of the lunch rush at Gravy’s. There I was- scooping ice into glasses, listening to the dining room’s buzz of conversation and laughter over the hiss and splash of the soda fountain, when I realized I hadn’t even had the urge that day. I hated the job, but the upside was that it kept me busy. Too busy, and too tired, to go out looking for trouble. And then Granny walked in. As soon as I saw her lipstick and the white hair rolled into a bun, I knew she was there to bring trouble to me.
The sight of her gave me an instant headache and the pain in my bad knee flared up. I had to admit- she was good. It only took her two weeks to find me. I never told her I was working there. She must have followed me to the restaurant all the way from Roosterville. Already working her magic on the staff, she laughed and squeezed the hand of the chick at the hostess station, who I hadn’t even spoken to yet. Granny pointed at me and waved with her face lit up with a smile. I could tell it was fake, but I couldn’t tell if anyone else knew. She had the sweet old lady act down. It made me feel like I was going to vomit.
*
Granny sat in one of the booths just down from the hostess station making little gasps of excitement as she absorbed the ambience of Gravy’s. Mr. Dietz really should have a hired a professional decorator because his tribute to popular culture looked like he spent an afternoon cleaning out his basement or attic and bolted all the worthless junk he found to the walls. Board games, road signs, and giant Pez dispensers all hung in random places. It was a garage sale waiting to happen. Granny was convincing. And calculating. People heard her oohing and ahhing. She wanted everyone to notice her, so if I grabbed the bitch by her cardigan sweater and kicked all 89 pounds of her right out the front door, my boss, co-workers and the dining room full of customers would all jump to the conclusion that I was the asshole.
I wanted to trade tables with one of the waitresses, but I was new there. I didn’t know any of them well enough to ask for a favor. That would have only delayed the inevitable anyway. Granny wouldn’t leave until she got what she came for. I knew her well enough to know that.
I approached her booth, order pad in hand. My only means of defense was to treat her like any other customer.
“Ritchie!” She exaggerated the look of surprise on her face. I could understand her calling me Ritchie if I had known her since I was a boy and she had been calling me that all along, but I was 34 years old when our paths first crossed. “What are you doing working here? Moonlighting?”
For a second, I thought that maybe it wasn’t all an act, and that senility was taking hold. One of the last times I was in her living room, I told her about being fired from the factory. I wanted to blame her for that too, but that was my own damn fault. She only sold me the pills. It was my idea to eat them while I was working.
“A job’s a job.” I had to maintain my defense. “Would you like something to drink?”
She ignored the direction I was trying to steer the conversation. “Your feet must be aching.” Granny must have been in a hurry. She opened her purse. I expected to dance around the reason she was there for at least another 45 minutes. She was about 110 years old. What else did she have to do all day? Maybe I wasn’t the only customer who quit making the weekly trip to Granny’s house.
She tilted the opening of her purse toward me to reveal a brown-tint, prescription bottle full of painkillers. “Do you need a killer, honey?” Pulling out all the stops, she made the leap from Ritchie to honey.
I had long since grown immune to her artificial sentiment. But it had been months since I had seen a bottle packed full of Vicodin like that. I could feel my body temperature rise. My ears grew hot. Sweat coated my palms. My teeth clenched. I couldn’t let Granny know she was getting to me.
“No. I already told you,” I tried my damnedest to hold eye contact with her. But that quiet little vial of joy in her purse was calling my name. The sweet siren song already had me lying to myself. It’s been long enough. I could just take one again. This time I could keep it under control. It’s easy to believe lies when you’re told what you want to hear. I acted as if seeing the pills hadn’t made the impression she was hoping for. “I’m done with those.” I stood my ground. Those pills had given me enough problems to last a lifetime.
“Nonsense. This is medicine.” She had played that card so many times she sounded like she believed it.
*
Granny giggled her way through a vanilla shake and left sooner than I expected. I didn’t even see her go. As I gathered her glass and silverware, I congratulated myself for being strong enough to resist her. And the pills. Just when I started to think she hadn’t put up much of a fight, I grabbed her wadded up napkins. Underneath them was a crisp one dollar bill and the bottle of Vikes. My tip. I dropped the napkins back on top of the bottle.
The noise in my head was deafening. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run away. I wanted to crush the pills into the sidewalk out front. I wanted to swallow them dry and lay down on the floor right there in front of everyone and feel their warmth pulsate through my veins.
And more than anything, I wanted my life back. The way it used to be. I wanted my house back. I wanted my wife back. I didn’t want to have to drive from Roosterville to downtown Mill City everyday and pretend to be nice to people in hopes they’d leave me a 10 percent gratuity. I didn’t want to wear an apron and a bowtie. Or a plastic name tag. Nothing says dead end job like a name tag. The name tag isn’t for the customers. I’ve never had a patron, other than Granny, call me by name. If they do anything more than wave at me they always call me sir, or hey you. Name tags are for the manager, so he can keep straight the constant stream of employees, and if he tells you by name to clean up some kid’s puke, it creates the illusion he’s less of an asshole.
I stood there, not sure what to do with the bottle. The hostess made it easy for me. She walked up behind me with her arms full of silverware rolled in napkins, menus and four people waiting to sit down. I pushed Granny’s wadded napkins over the pill bottle and shoved it all into the pocket of my apron.
As the foursome made their way into the booth, a sense of familiarity rang out about them. Most of the people in suits that came in were there for some sort of business transaction. They would be stiff and polite and careful with their portfolios and their table manners. Gravy’s wasn’t the most impressive establishment to woo a potential client, but the choices in downtown Mill City were limited. And we beat the hell out of the greasy spoon around the corner.
These suits were different. The two men and two women laughed and joked and were obviously comfortable around each other. One of the women did a double take when she looked at me. She tilted her head and looked at my name tag, and then back at my face. Her eyes narrowed in thought.
One by one, all four of their names and their Roosterville High yearbook photos popped into my head. Just like when Granny came in, my body surged in pain. Before they recognized me, I made an excuse to get the hell away from them.
“I’ll be right back to get your drink orders,” I held up Granny’s dirty dishes to explain my immediate departure. I gave my best counterfeit smile even though I knew it never fooled anyone.
I damn near ran into the kitchen to the dishwashing station and dumped the dishes into the bus tub with a crash. The glass might have broken, but I didn’t care. The employee bathroom in the back of the kitchen made my skin crawl. Every customer in the place would run screaming and never eat there again if they saw the fuzzy grime climbing the walls. But I knew I’d have privacy in there.
The hollow door slammed into the wall. The room was so tiny I had to hover over the toilet to close the door behind me. I turned the lock, not knowing why I bothered. It’s not as if anyone is ever in a hurry to follow someone running into a bathroom.
The weight of the vial of killers rested against my leg. I had no idea how I stayed sober for the last two weeks. I couldn’t hide from my worries there, in the bathroom with puddles of dried urine on the floor, forever. I had to go out, face my old high school classmates, and take their lunch order. I felt like an idiot. Every poor decision I’d made in the last twenty-some years ran through my head. I didn’t need their effortless success, dripping from their bodies like a comforting sweat, validating that I was a loser. We would inevitably exchange pleasantries and memories, have the catch-up conversation, and pretend life today was super. If I was lucky, they would speak as if the food service industry was a wise career choice. I would tell them how happy it makes me to serve people. And as a bonus, when it was slow I enjoyed refilling the ketchup bottles. I needed a pill to numb the pain. I needed a pill to believe my own lies.
I pulled out Granny’s killers. Those pills had given me enough problems to last a lifetime. The childproof cap fell to the floor and I shook five or six tablets into my hand and dumped the rest of the bottle into the bowl. Each little splash of water from the pills caused me physical pain. The killers still in my hand would help me face the embarrassment and the feeling of inadequacy waiting in the booth. Those pills had given me enough problems to last a lifetime. I stood there in front of the toilet and lied to myself, I would take them just this once, then never again. I even threw in, and this time I mean it.
Time seemed to stand still. I held my hand out, palm up. I gradually tilted my hand. The tablets clung to the curve of my palm until my tilt reached a steep enough angle. One by one, each of the pills fell. Tiny divers dropping into a pool.
Those pills had given me enough problems to last a lifetime.
It wasn’t the idea of facing my classmates. Not really. I hadn’t given two shits about any of them for twenty years. And in an hour, they’d be gone for another twenty. The long way around to why their presence bothered me was because, it wasn’t their approval I was after. It was my own. I wanted to get my shit back together. Finally. Once and for all.
With my fingertips on the toilet’s moldy handle, I tried to both muster the strength to push it down to flush the killers away, and to fight the urge to reach into the water and save Granny’s killers before they began to dissolve.
It was the middle of the lunch rush at Gravy’s. There I was- scooping ice into glasses, listening to the dining room’s buzz of conversation and laughter over the hiss and splash of the soda fountain, when I realized I hadn’t even had the urge that day. I hated the job, but the upside was that it kept me busy. Too busy, and too tired, to go out looking for trouble. And then Granny walked in. As soon as I saw her lipstick and the white hair rolled into a bun, I knew she was there to bring trouble to me.
The sight of her gave me an instant headache and the pain in my bad knee flared up. I had to admit- she was good. It only took her two weeks to find me. I never told her I was working there. She must have followed me to the restaurant all the way from Roosterville. Already working her magic on the staff, she laughed and squeezed the hand of the chick at the hostess station, who I hadn’t even spoken to yet. Granny pointed at me and waved with her face lit up with a smile. I could tell it was fake, but I couldn’t tell if anyone else knew. She had the sweet old lady act down. It made me feel like I was going to vomit.
*
Granny sat in one of the booths just down from the hostess station making little gasps of excitement as she absorbed the ambience of Gravy’s. Mr. Dietz really should have a hired a professional decorator because his tribute to popular culture looked like he spent an afternoon cleaning out his basement or attic and bolted all the worthless junk he found to the walls. Board games, road signs, and giant Pez dispensers all hung in random places. It was a garage sale waiting to happen. Granny was convincing. And calculating. People heard her oohing and ahhing. She wanted everyone to notice her, so if I grabbed the bitch by her cardigan sweater and kicked all 89 pounds of her right out the front door, my boss, co-workers and the dining room full of customers would all jump to the conclusion that I was the asshole.
I wanted to trade tables with one of the waitresses, but I was new there. I didn’t know any of them well enough to ask for a favor. That would have only delayed the inevitable anyway. Granny wouldn’t leave until she got what she came for. I knew her well enough to know that.
I approached her booth, order pad in hand. My only means of defense was to treat her like any other customer.
“Ritchie!” She exaggerated the look of surprise on her face. I could understand her calling me Ritchie if I had known her since I was a boy and she had been calling me that all along, but I was 34 years old when our paths first crossed. “What are you doing working here? Moonlighting?”
For a second, I thought that maybe it wasn’t all an act, and that senility was taking hold. One of the last times I was in her living room, I told her about being fired from the factory. I wanted to blame her for that too, but that was my own damn fault. She only sold me the pills. It was my idea to eat them while I was working.
“A job’s a job.” I had to maintain my defense. “Would you like something to drink?”
She ignored the direction I was trying to steer the conversation. “Your feet must be aching.” Granny must have been in a hurry. She opened her purse. I expected to dance around the reason she was there for at least another 45 minutes. She was about 110 years old. What else did she have to do all day? Maybe I wasn’t the only customer who quit making the weekly trip to Granny’s house.
She tilted the opening of her purse toward me to reveal a brown-tint, prescription bottle full of painkillers. “Do you need a killer, honey?” Pulling out all the stops, she made the leap from Ritchie to honey.
I had long since grown immune to her artificial sentiment. But it had been months since I had seen a bottle packed full of Vicodin like that. I could feel my body temperature rise. My ears grew hot. Sweat coated my palms. My teeth clenched. I couldn’t let Granny know she was getting to me.
“No. I already told you,” I tried my damnedest to hold eye contact with her. But that quiet little vial of joy in her purse was calling my name. The sweet siren song already had me lying to myself. It’s been long enough. I could just take one again. This time I could keep it under control. It’s easy to believe lies when you’re told what you want to hear. I acted as if seeing the pills hadn’t made the impression she was hoping for. “I’m done with those.” I stood my ground. Those pills had given me enough problems to last a lifetime.
“Nonsense. This is medicine.” She had played that card so many times she sounded like she believed it.
*
Granny giggled her way through a vanilla shake and left sooner than I expected. I didn’t even see her go. As I gathered her glass and silverware, I congratulated myself for being strong enough to resist her. And the pills. Just when I started to think she hadn’t put up much of a fight, I grabbed her wadded up napkins. Underneath them was a crisp one dollar bill and the bottle of Vikes. My tip. I dropped the napkins back on top of the bottle.
The noise in my head was deafening. I wanted to scream. I wanted to run away. I wanted to crush the pills into the sidewalk out front. I wanted to swallow them dry and lay down on the floor right there in front of everyone and feel their warmth pulsate through my veins.
And more than anything, I wanted my life back. The way it used to be. I wanted my house back. I wanted my wife back. I didn’t want to have to drive from Roosterville to downtown Mill City everyday and pretend to be nice to people in hopes they’d leave me a 10 percent gratuity. I didn’t want to wear an apron and a bowtie. Or a plastic name tag. Nothing says dead end job like a name tag. The name tag isn’t for the customers. I’ve never had a patron, other than Granny, call me by name. If they do anything more than wave at me they always call me sir, or hey you. Name tags are for the manager, so he can keep straight the constant stream of employees, and if he tells you by name to clean up some kid’s puke, it creates the illusion he’s less of an asshole.
I stood there, not sure what to do with the bottle. The hostess made it easy for me. She walked up behind me with her arms full of silverware rolled in napkins, menus and four people waiting to sit down. I pushed Granny’s wadded napkins over the pill bottle and shoved it all into the pocket of my apron.
As the foursome made their way into the booth, a sense of familiarity rang out about them. Most of the people in suits that came in were there for some sort of business transaction. They would be stiff and polite and careful with their portfolios and their table manners. Gravy’s wasn’t the most impressive establishment to woo a potential client, but the choices in downtown Mill City were limited. And we beat the hell out of the greasy spoon around the corner.
These suits were different. The two men and two women laughed and joked and were obviously comfortable around each other. One of the women did a double take when she looked at me. She tilted her head and looked at my name tag, and then back at my face. Her eyes narrowed in thought.
One by one, all four of their names and their Roosterville High yearbook photos popped into my head. Just like when Granny came in, my body surged in pain. Before they recognized me, I made an excuse to get the hell away from them.
“I’ll be right back to get your drink orders,” I held up Granny’s dirty dishes to explain my immediate departure. I gave my best counterfeit smile even though I knew it never fooled anyone.
I damn near ran into the kitchen to the dishwashing station and dumped the dishes into the bus tub with a crash. The glass might have broken, but I didn’t care. The employee bathroom in the back of the kitchen made my skin crawl. Every customer in the place would run screaming and never eat there again if they saw the fuzzy grime climbing the walls. But I knew I’d have privacy in there.
The hollow door slammed into the wall. The room was so tiny I had to hover over the toilet to close the door behind me. I turned the lock, not knowing why I bothered. It’s not as if anyone is ever in a hurry to follow someone running into a bathroom.
The weight of the vial of killers rested against my leg. I had no idea how I stayed sober for the last two weeks. I couldn’t hide from my worries there, in the bathroom with puddles of dried urine on the floor, forever. I had to go out, face my old high school classmates, and take their lunch order. I felt like an idiot. Every poor decision I’d made in the last twenty-some years ran through my head. I didn’t need their effortless success, dripping from their bodies like a comforting sweat, validating that I was a loser. We would inevitably exchange pleasantries and memories, have the catch-up conversation, and pretend life today was super. If I was lucky, they would speak as if the food service industry was a wise career choice. I would tell them how happy it makes me to serve people. And as a bonus, when it was slow I enjoyed refilling the ketchup bottles. I needed a pill to numb the pain. I needed a pill to believe my own lies.
I pulled out Granny’s killers. Those pills had given me enough problems to last a lifetime. The childproof cap fell to the floor and I shook five or six tablets into my hand and dumped the rest of the bottle into the bowl. Each little splash of water from the pills caused me physical pain. The killers still in my hand would help me face the embarrassment and the feeling of inadequacy waiting in the booth. Those pills had given me enough problems to last a lifetime. I stood there in front of the toilet and lied to myself, I would take them just this once, then never again. I even threw in, and this time I mean it.
Time seemed to stand still. I held my hand out, palm up. I gradually tilted my hand. The tablets clung to the curve of my palm until my tilt reached a steep enough angle. One by one, each of the pills fell. Tiny divers dropping into a pool.
Those pills had given me enough problems to last a lifetime.
It wasn’t the idea of facing my classmates. Not really. I hadn’t given two shits about any of them for twenty years. And in an hour, they’d be gone for another twenty. The long way around to why their presence bothered me was because, it wasn’t their approval I was after. It was my own. I wanted to get my shit back together. Finally. Once and for all.
With my fingertips on the toilet’s moldy handle, I tried to both muster the strength to push it down to flush the killers away, and to fight the urge to reach into the water and save Granny’s killers before they began to dissolve.