Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O’Nan Page B

to save them from doing something stupid.
    Turning in to the hall, he comes across a scarf left on top of the coatrack—black, knitted and soft, with a tag from Nordstrom’s (not a bad gift, he thinks). Probably belongs to someone from the retirement party. In back they have a box that serves as a lost & found. Manny parades the scarf by Roz and Jacquie before adding it to the two Totes umbrellas and the sweat-stained Yankee cap and dirty plastic rattle, even though tomorrow they’ll probably chuck the whole thing.
    Above the box his tie hangs over the rod, still damp but close enough to dry that he takes it to the bathroom and holds it under the blower for a couple of cycles, then puts it on hot, fixing the length in the mirror. In the massive handicapped stall he flips it over his shoulder before he sits, then waits, staring at the black-and-white tiles between his feet, the rare red one tossed in as an accent. He’s linking them together like a word search, his thighs going numb, when the bathroom door thumps and then squeaks open, letting in a gush of Celine Dion.
    “Hey boss,” Roz calls.
    “Yeah?”
    “Get off the pot. We got customers.”
    Pulling the cheap toilet paper gently so it won’t rip, his first thought is a daydream so stale he automatically fast-forwards through it. The car creeping across the lot is full of robbers or terrorists taking advantage of the bad weather to lay siege to the place. They take everyone else hostage while Manny hides in the men’s room, ultimately sneaking out and saving the Lobster by his guts and wits like Bruce Willis in Die Hard .
    In reality, the customers are a frail old couple who have no business being out in this weather. The woman totters up the walk, the husband leading to one side like an orderly, both hands clamped around her arm to steady her, and still she lurches and wobbles as if she’ll topple over. Manny goes out in the cold and holds the door for them, and has to restrain himself from doing more. He thinks they’re just leaning into the wind, but as they pass he sees they’re both hunched, the woman slope-shouldered, the man actually hunchbacked, his shoulders up around his ears.
    Inside, the man helps the woman off with her coat and nearly pulls her over backwards. Manny sticks close, ready to catch them—a different kind of hero.
    “You folks traveling?” he asks, slipping two dinner menus from the holder on the side of the host stand as if it’s natural for the restaurant to be completely deserted.
    “I guess you could call it that,” the man says loudly, as if still in the storm. “We were s’posed to be home by now.”
    “It’s bad out,” Manny agrees, and leads them into the dining room, giving them a window booth with a view of their car, a new Lincoln. As he leans in to set their menus down, he catches a piercing loop of feedback like the wow of a distant late-night radio station and realizes it’s coming from the man’s hearing aid. In the lamplight, the man’s hands are swollen, a black and gold Masonic ring cutting into one finger. The woman puts her whole face into the menu, tilting one eye close to the print. On her wrists she has grape-colored bruises and blotchy, paper-thin skin like his abuelita that last year, and reflexively Manny wonders what the man will do when she’s gone.
    “What’s the soup?” the man asks.
    Manny adjusts his own volume. “New England clam chowder and Bayou seafood gumbo.”
    “I mean the soup of the day.”
    “We don’t have a specialty soup today, I’m afraid.”
    “Huh,” the man says, as if he’s been cheated.
    “What?” the woman says.
    “There’s no soup of the day.”
    “Well that’s a pity, isn’t it?”
    Manny assures them a server will be out with some hot Cheddar Bay biscuits for them in just a minute.
    Technically it’s Roz’s section, but they flipped a coin and Jacquie lost.
    “I figure she’d want to take one last one for old time’s sake. Plus she can use the