Page 31 of Nothing Ever Happens Here

“Absolutely,” I say.

“It comes with pecan or blueberry pie?”

“The three-thousand-calorie country breakfast with a strawberry pancake slam comes with pie as a side?” I ask. She just stands there waiting for my answer, tapping her foot with her pen in hand.

“Pecan,” I say, then look to Billy.

“I’ll have the same.” He smiles, closing his menu and handing it to her. We both glance at the phone sitting in the middle of the table. I nervously peel open a bunch of Splendas and pour them into my coffee. I flick the empty paper squares around the table mindlessly,the way we used to do as teenagers when we took over the corner booth of a Perkins late at night and only had enough pocket change for pots of coffee to earn our right to hang out there to escape our parents and the cold nights.

“That guy found it in a motel room near Rivers Crossing.”

“What? Wait. It’s been… When did he find it? That doesn’t add up,” Billy asks.

“Couple weeks, he says.”

“Why was his phone there? How could it have not been noticed for over a year, almost a year and a half?” he asks.

“It makes no sense,” I say. “I mean, did someone plant it there in a motel drawer? Why? If someone killed him, they wouldn’t leave his phone behind. If he’s running, he doesn’t leave his phone behind. I mean, what the actual fuck?”

“What if he stayed there and whatever happened, he didn’t mean to leave it behind? You said it was in a drawer. I mean, what if it was stuck in the back and really did get missed all this time, turned off, wedged behind a motel Bible or something?” he says, and I think about it a minute.

“Well,Love IslandTow Truck Guy said it was in a drawer, and assuming he’s not lying, then, I don’t know. Maybe. But what the hell was Leo doing there between drinks with the guys that night and disappearing? Was he there doing some dirty business with a scuzzy loan shark, or what we’re all thinking—having an affair, because why not throwthatinto the mix of all the unthinkable things this man I thought I knew was actually capable of?”

Billy is quiet, but gives me a sympathetic look. The food comes, and the waitress, who has plates balanced all the way up both arms like a circus performer, somehow makes room for them all on our table. As I stare at enough food to feed a family of eight, I want to start sobbing into my pancake slam. It’s so stupid and out of place to think about this right now, but every year for Thanksgiving we used to drive to Grand Forks,me and Leo and Rowan, and we’d always stop at Applejack’s Diner for Rowan’s favorite French silk pie, and the place had the same dusty curtains and old records on the walls, just like this place. Leo would stuff himself with bananas Foster and sausage biscuits so he didn’t have to eat my aunt Minnie’s turkey hotdish or fruit Jell-O mold. He could probably eat all of this. Even the pecan pie. Or he’d save some and feed it to her dog, Harold, when she wasn’t looking.

I try not to cry. I look at Billy, of all the people in the world, sitting across from me in this moment, and it’s so surreal. I am getting accustomed to surreal, I suppose, but this life I find myself in—this complete one-eighty is so crippling some days it doesn’t feel real at all. I question what I’m even doing here, why I don’t just let Leo go if he wants to be gone so badly. Billy watches me stare down at the greasy plate with a blank look on my face.

“Are you gonna…see what’s in it?” he asks, nodding to Leo’s phone.

“Well, it’s almost dead and needs a charger, and I could probably use a drink first,” I say, and then he asks the waitress for some take-out containers and pays the bill, and before I know it we are both drinking bourbon on the rocks at Scooter’s across the highway.

I picked up an iPhone charger at a Wally’s Gas ’N’ Go because for some reason Billy has an old Samsung, and I didn’t bring one. So now the phone is charging on the floor under the bar and I am in no rush to look at it because right now there is a flicker of hope that something important could surface, but when I look, if nothing is there, I don’t think my heart can take anymore.

We watch a few truckers bustle in in big coats, rubbing their hands together from the cold and sharing a round wooden table in the middle of the dark, drafty dive bar. They order tap beer and talk quietly to one another. I wonder about the young woman bartending—where she must live and what life circumstance landed her this particular job in this middle-of-nowhere frozen tundra.She wears a hoodie with a hole in the elbow and leans against the end of the bar, plucking away at her phone with her press-on nails and a sort of scowl. Can’t say that I blame her. Do they still call them press-on nails? Probably not.

“I’m sorry you’re going through this,” he says, tracing the rim of his lowball glass with his finger. I offer a tight smile and nod, then I look down at my drink and take a sip. What is there to even say anymore?

“You have a really great support system in a place like Rivers Crossing at least. Everyone seems to be rallying behind you,” he says, and a small, sharp laugh escapes my lips, making his eyebrows rise.

“No, sorry. I do.”

“What?” he says with a tilted head, a genuine question.

“No, I just—I think most people enjoy gossiping about it. I mean…I see it. I hear the stories. You knew him…once upon a time. What do you think happened?” I ask, and I see some color drain from his face. I don’t usually ask people point-blank “what do you think happened?”

“Uhhh. I mean, I don’t really know him anymore. After college, I went in with him on that first pizza place for a summer until I met Nora on a trip to Milwaukee, and the rest is history… I think the last time I talked to him was a few years ago, when he was trying to buy the Trout from my parents.”

“Yeah,” I laugh. “I told him Lou would laugh in his face at that offer which is exactly what happened.”

“I guess I shoulda stayed in the pizza business, considering how you two made out on it in the end,” he says, and has no idea how I really made out in the end. I’m sure most people think we built a little empire on all of his business investments. I mean, we did, of course, but they don’t know how it ended. I don’t tell Billy that Leo probably only wanted the Trout because it was an established, rock-solid business in town, and he’d fucked up everything else by then.

“Sorry to hear about Nora” is all I say instead.

“Thanks,” he says, and picks at a bowl of pretzels on the bar. I don’t ask what happened. I heard about her running off with an anesthesiologist. I mean, if that’s true, but it’s probably a variation of that—an affair of some sort. I’ve come to learn the rumors in Rivers Crossing are usually rooted in some reality and then liberties are taken. I should know.

“You like being back?” I ask.

“Hmm,” he says, looking at the ceiling and thinking a moment. “I haven’t really figured that out yet.”

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