Love Always by Ann Beattie

mugs on the top of the bar and let her look for about six seconds, and then he put his bandanna around her eyes and damned if she didn’t hit every mug dead center.”
    The waitress walked away from the booth, smiling again. In a few seconds, she came back from the kitchen with their eggs. “Nothing for you?” she said to Hildon, as she put a mug of steaming coffee down in front of Lucy.
    “No thanks,” he said.
    Crystal Gayle was singing. The food was heavy. He ate faster, because it didn’t taste good.
    “It this the only lunch we’re having?” Lucy said, deciding to be the one to start the game.
    “Are we going back to your house?” he said.
    “If you want to drive that far.”
    “What are my options?” he said.
    “What’s this?” she said. “ ‘Mother, May I?’ ”
    He put his legs on each side of hers and pressed hers together. She smiled. With her knees, she pushed his apart. Finally he stopped resisting and let her part his legs. She rubbed her foot in his crotch. She had taken off her shoes. He resisted the temptation to break eye contact with her.
    “Coffee?” the waitress said, passing by. He looked at the steam. It was fascinating: a cloud of white steam. It was something to look at.
    “No thanks,” Lucy said. She looked at Hildon. “Do we want the check?” she said.
    “Are you sure you don’t want anything else?” he said. She had eaten half her eggs. The toast was untouched. She had cut three bites of ham. “No thanks,” she said.
    “I think I’ll have a piece of pie,” Hildon said. “What kind of pie do you have?”
    “Apple cherry blueberry,” the waitress said.
    Lucy’s foot stopped moving. She brushed her hair back, looking at him.
    “Blueberry, please,” he said.
    The waitress walked away. A woman with a crying child came in and sat at the counter. “Because I said so,” the woman said to the child. “And you’d better quiet down and like it.” The men from the booth behind theirs were at the cash register, rolling toothpicks out of a dispenser and paying their bill. Johnny Cash was singing. In all the time he had come here, Hildon had never heard the songs he selected. Even with the rules of chance operating, he should have heard Charley Pride at least once.
    The waitress put down his piece of pie and refilled Lucy’s coffee mug without asking. Lucy’s face was expressionless, but she was looking straight at him. “Some pie?” he said, turning the fork toward her.
    “No thanks,” she said. “I don’t think it looks good.”
    He cut a piece of pie and ate it. “It’s very good,” he said.
    “And you want me to just wait while you eat it.”
    “ ‘Mother, May I?’ ” he said.
    He took another bite of pie. It was doughy and too sweet. He smiled as he swallowed. “I forgot to tell you. There’s a party at the Hadley-Cooper’s this weekend,” he said. “I’m quite taken with Antoinette. How about coming along so she’ll be jealous?”
    She nodded. She got up and went to the bathroom. A dancing elephant, pirouetting like a ballerina, was painted on the varnished wooden door. He didn’t eat any more pie while she was gone. When she came back, she was smiling. She looked very pretty. Her hair was combed, and she had put on pink lipstick. She continued to smile. She folded her hands. She watched the woman, whispering in the child’s ear, as he tried to swirl his stool back and forth. She looked beyond Hildon, to the old man who had just come in and who sat in the booth behind them. He puckered his lips and blew a breeze across the table. She closed her eyes slightly and smiled.
    “Going off to the bathroom and snorting coke’s not fair,” he said.
    “Cheating is perfectly fair in any game.”
    She thought about it. She unzipped her purse, reached in and took out a tiny glass vial with a coke spoon attached to it. The chain sparkled for a second, before he could clasp his hand over hers, so no one would see. Her hand was cold. She turned her