Rhonda had certainly tried. But the fifteen-year break between lessons in being politically correct hadn’t helped much. Before she left Providence to pursue her singing dreams, she’d only just managed to get him to stop calling their gay male customers “do funnies.” And it honestly felt like he’d pressed pause on any more evolution whatsoever before Rhonda came back with her tail between her legs and a bunch of crumbled dreams in her wake a few months ago.
She might have corrected her father harshly if this particular man of Chinese descent wasn’t here to extort money from him. That was another thing that hadn’t changed in the fifteen years she’d been gone.
Wayne still showed up like clockwork on the last Saturday of the month to pick up his envelope stuffed with “protection” money.
“How did you even get in here?” Rhonda asked as she handed him the envelope. “The door is locked.”
Wayne glanced at the locked door he’d somehow gotten in through. Then he flicked his eyes to the computer where the voice was now instructing Rhonda to say, “I love and approve of myself.”
Rhonda slammed the laptop closed, her face heating up with embarrassment, even though Wayne was the one who’d been in the wrong for over fifteen years now.
“Ask Chinaman if he wants the usual!” her dad called from the kitchen. “The griddle’s hot and ready to go.”
Rhonda had no intention of asking after the breakfast order of her father’s no-good extortionist. But Wayne didn’t need her to convey the question.
“Yeah, Mr. Charles. The usual!” Wayne called back. He tucked the envelope in the inside pocket of his suit and folded his hands in front of him.
Rhonda eyed him suspiciously as she went to unlock the door. It was still another five minutes until the start of business hours. But since they were apparently serving food already, she might as well open up the place to customers. The kind who paid them, not the other way around.
The monthly extortion situation hadn’t changed over the years, but Wayne had, she noticed as she observed him from behind.
Back when she’d been a young girl, just starting out in life, he’d seemed so much older. A menacing man she didn’t dare to look in the eye.
He was still menacing. Also, way more grizzled. He’d grown a beard, and both it and his hair were more gray than black. But now that she was forty, she realized he wasn’t that much older than her.
Judging by his features and the way he was easily able to push himself up on one of the high diner chairs, he was probably in his 50s. Just a tasteful dye job away from looking like he was in his 40s.
But there was no need. Grizzle looks good on him, she admitted to herself as she went back around the counter and poured herself a cup of coffee. And his body was still lean and lethal.
He was on the short side, just a few inches taller than her. Four tops. But that body of his was heavier than it appeared. A sudden memory of what happened when she tried to stand up to him when she was in her early 20’s came crashing back, dark and unbidden.
How he’d slammed her into a wall behind the diner and called her “a little girl” in his thickly accented English before issuing a warning about getting involved in “men’s business.”
He had scared her half to death back then too. But for much different reasons. She shivered, remembering the slide of his then smooth cheek against her face as he whispered threats into her ear.
The feel of him, the press of his unexpectedly heavy body into hers…it had done something to her. Below. Something even more surprising than his sudden show of force.
Wayne’s face was no longer smooth. What would his beard feel like? She unconsciously brought a hand up to her cheek and rubbed, remembering how he had looked at her that night. His gaze had been so intense as he held her pinned to that brick wall.
And then he had…
“Me too.”
Wayne’s voice jarred her out of the memory.
She blinked and looked over at him.
“I’ll take coffee, too,” he said, mistaking the reason she looked so disoriented and confused.
Oh, coffee…because she was a waitress. Yes, of course.
She was older now, but she still had trouble meeting his eye as she set an empty cup down in front of him. Which was silly when you think about it.
A guy like Wayne wasn’t checking for her in the slightest. She was no longer a twenty-year-old with big perky breasts and a bright smile. And in her experience, men without wedding rings in their 50s weren’t looking for women close to their age. Wayne probably had some twenty-year-old girl stashed away at his place that giggled a lot and called him “daddy” when he gave her gifts.
And even if he didn’t, he was still an extortionist, Chinese mafia scum. No better than the Italians who had come prior to him before they got taken out in the big statewide crackdown.
He probably didn’t remember what happened behind the diner; it was so long ago. She poured him his coffee and told herself that she needed to forget it too. It had been one night. A few moments. No need to rehash it, just because she had returned to Rhode Island.
“You’re back.”
Those two words brought her head up again. Wayne was eyeing her with something that looked a lot like curiosity.
But before she could answer, three guys came through the door. They were all wearing fine suits like they were going to church or the office on a Saturday. But Rhonda didn’t think that was the case. They were young and speaking in Chinese. And one of them was huge, with a visible snake tattoo winding up his neck.
Mafia, she suspected, especially after she glanced at Wayne and saw that he’d gone very, very still.
“Friends of yours?” she asked him.
“No,” Wayne answered tersely.
The young Chinese guys sat down and immediately fell into what looked like a very tense conversation.
Well, two of them were talking. The one sitting closest to the window was speaking in sign language. Weird, Rhonda thought as she bustled around the counter with three cups and her fresh pot of coffee. A young maybe-criminal signing to communicate. That wasn’t something she’d ever seen before.
“Coffee?” Rhonda asked after coming around the counter to hand them some menus.
They nodded for coffee. But there was no need for menus. The biggest one put in an order for all three of them in completely unaccented English.
Okay, well…Rhonda hadn’t wanted to speak to Wayne any more than she had to in order to get him served and out the door. But when she came back to the counter, she dropped her voice to ask, “Do you understand what they’re saying?”
“The two guys are trying to convince the guy who can’t speak that he shouldn’t marry a girl,” Wayne answered, his voice a gruff whisper. “They’re saying he should pretend to marry her so that if the boss they’re working with wants him to tie the knot with his daughter, he can easily get freed. The big guy knows a judge in Providence who will do a fake ceremony for him no problem.”
Rhonda goggled at Wayne, who just took another bored sip of coffee. That was way, way more than she’d been expecting. “And what is the signing guy saying about all that?”
Wayne shrugged, “Don’t know. I don’t speak his language.”
Rhonda narrowed her eyes at her father’s long-time extortionist. “You sure these guys aren’t friends of yours?”