The diner’s full of hogs today.
Hog men, that’s what I call ’em. Men with their gazes creeping up my thighs and across my chest. Men with their smarmy grins, their slimy, leering eyes. Men in suits who’re clearly passing through on the way to the city. They think they’re better than the rest of these boys, but they’re not. There’re men in dusty overalls with lobster-red sunburns. Farmhands and field workers whose skin doesn’t sizzle, just gets leathered by the sun. Men in biker gear with wild beards, smelling of diesel oil, trying hard to look mean. Some of the hogs are shaven and well groomed. Some have greasy ponytails that look days unwashed. Some are bald or just balding.
Don’t matter one way or another. They’re all hog men to me.
Hot dogs and hamburgers sizzle on the kitchen grill in the back, and the whole place reeks of grease and burning meat. It’s way too hot in here with the AC broken. Boss Man said he’d fix it, but he’s useless as anything, so I expect it won’t get sorted out until the end of the month, at least.
I wipe my sweaty lip on my sleeve, my palms on my apron. I smile, write down another order, serve them cherry pie and root beer floats and cheeseburgers, ignoring the leers and stares and wolf whistles from the hog men as best I can, counting down the nanoseconds until my break.
Any minute now. Judy is the only other waitress on duty who’s not hiding out back smoking. She can handle the hog men. She’s in her late fifties, with charcoal gray hair she rinses with purple shampoo that gives it this nice lavender shade. She’s never been married, as far as I know. No kids. Nothing to save for. No one to answer to, except her boyfriend.
Judy snaps her gum and rolls her eyes and tells the hogs to shut the hell up and order already, don’t be wasting her whole damn day, and they laugh and holler and eat it up like the pie they love so fucking much. Then she goes in the back near the kitchen to pop the pills she likes. She thinks I don’t see her taking them, but I do. I don’t blame her for it, either. There are times when I want to go in the back and ask her to slip me one.
I love Judy. She’s probably the only reason I haven’t quit all year. That and my half-brained plans of saving up for a year abroad. She’s the reason I have a car, too. She sold it to me for two hundred bucks, and while it’s more or less an old clunker, and it can’t go below a quarter tank of gas before it starts to wheeze like an old man with emphysema and shut itself down … hell, it’s still mine.
Sometimes I wish I had the guts to steal the keys to one of the hogs’ big monster trucks and ride off into the sunset, flipping off this dying town as I go. But for now—and maybe forever—Blue Bottle is where I’m stuck.
Anything else is only a pipe dream.
One of the hogs beckons me over. I consider pretending like I didn’t see, but Boss Man is in a sour mood today, and he’s been all eyes on deck. So, I take out a pen from my apron and approach.
The hog man is maybe forty, maybe my daddy’s age if he were still alive today. He looks me up and down, grunts. I imagine the wheels turning in his head, rusty squeaky wheels in desperate need of some WD-40. “Can I ask you something?” he asks gruffly.
You just did, asshole. That’s what I really want to say. But instead I force my mouth to make the closest thing it can get to a smile and ask in my Real Nice Girl voice: “What can I get for you?”
Now who’s asking questions?
His lips twitch into a grin, and for a second I feel like he’s gonna give me the answer he secretly wants to give. He runs his fat pink tongue across his lip instead and goes: “What’s your favorite thing on the menu, Trix?”
Trix. His eyes are on my nametag now. I brace myself. Most of the hogs make a joke of it, ask me if “Trix are really for kids” or if I have any “tricks” up my sleeve. Some shit like that. But this guy doesn’t say any of that. He leans forward on his elbows and studies me closely.
What’s your favorite thing on the menu?
I shrug and give him my best tight-lipped grin in return, like a nervous dog with its teeth pulled back. “I don’t know. I don’t really eat the food here.”
If Boss Man heard me saying that, he’d have me drawn and quartered. But damn, the food here really is terrible.
The hog man quirks an eyebrow and licks at the side of his mouth, slowly, his eyes never leaving mine. I can read in his gray gaze what he wants to say: I’d love to taste you. The chatter of the diner lowers to a dull buzz. It’s only us here now, in this space, alone, and he wants to suck the life out of me. I can taste it. I feel my heart quickening, little black dots blinking in front of my vision. It’s getting harder to breathe. He stares at me, dumbfounded, as I choke back an oncoming sob and then gasp as a hand from behind suddenly slaps my shoulder.
It’s just Judy, looking all concerned. “Hey, kiddo, why don’t you take your break now, huh? You look a little bushed.”
Judy always seems to be in the right place at the right time. She has a sense about things, just kind of knows when something’s about to go down. It’s probably why last night right before my shift ended, she gave me the knife. It’s double-edged. Sharp as a hornet’s sting. She put it in a little protector case for me and slipped it into my hands while I was out smoking, irritable and hot from a long night of hog men leering and Boss Man yelling.
“Keep this for me, will ya?” she asked, stepping away moments later. I could still smell her cedar perfume.
I’d held big knives before, sure, but never outside a kitchen. Never hung on to one before.
Now Judy is standing in front of me looking all Mama Bear concerned, the wrinkles around her thin gray eyebrows creasing as she frowns. The hog man is saying something, probably frustrated at being interrupted in the middle of his order, but I can’t hear him. His voice is static now. Judy tucks a lock of hair behind my ear and pinches my cheek.
“Go,” she whispers, giving me a wink. “I got this.”
I nod and hurry outside into the late spring air, still dizzy from the attack. My mama always called them the “jitterbugs,” but I suspect it’s something more sinister. Men like him make them come on.
Men like him are men I need to steer clear of.
Every few weeks or so, Judy shows up at the diner with another eggplant bruise blooming across her skin. I’ve seen them on her arms, her legs, her collarbone. She once came in with a black eye badly hidden behind drugstore powder. There are bite marks sometimes, too.
I know her boyfriend beats her. She doesn’t talk about it. She blames the bruises on anemia and low vitamin C if anyone dare make a comment. Most people don’t seem to care or notice. But I know it’s him. I also know she and Boss Man were having an affair. I caught them out behind the dumpster more than once, sucking face like horny teenagers. Her boyfriend knows it, too. I don’t know how I know he knows, but I know he does. He swaggers into the diner sometimes, his big blue eyes never leaving Judy, a roguish smile on his face and venom in his voice. She always gives him leftovers. She speaks to him all sweet and syrupy, like he’s a little baby in need of looking after. He looks at her like he wants to bite her. A rattlesnake. Hungry and waiting.
Why does a woman like Judy put up with a man like that? It makes me sick to have thoughts like this, but I can’t help it. I wonder it all the time. What does Judy get out of it? Why doesn’t she just up and leave?
These questions spin around and around in my mind until I feel nauseated.
Outside the back of the diner the air is so clear that I can breathe again.
Naturally, first thing I do is suck down a Marlboro Light. Blame my daddy for passing on those addiction-prone genes. My cell phone buzzes in my pocket, and pretty soon, Boss Man is barking at me to get that damn cancer stick out of my mouth and get back to the front line. Customers are waiting! The hogs are hungry!
Copyright © 2021 by Julia Lynn Rubin
Excerpt from Primal Animals copyright © 2022 by Julia Lynn Rubin
