A Little Smackeral of Something

Why WriMo if no one will ever ReaMo?

Here is the first installment of The Restaurante, a National Novel Writing Month novel by Traci Hilton. It's the first public airing, so to speak. Content unedited though typos and general errors have been given a little attention. Enjoy.

Mario and Shannon had been friends a long time now. Most everyone they knew figured they were already lovers. But that wasn’t Mario’s style. And Shannon wasn’t interested in love.

In their town Mario was considered an expert. He was a successful business man. He had been a young entrepreneur. He went away to college and yet he returned to Clovis to open his restaurant. It was not many native sons who returned home after their taste of the city. And while Mario was not in the least a real native son in Clovis, Oregon his charm, good looks and success made most everyone forget that small detail.

He offered his insights into business, cooking, managing, building, and gardening to anyone who asked. And despite the failed marriage of his youth and his failure to win Shannon, he offered relationship advice to anyone who asked. And his advice on all these things was good. Advisors are many, but good advice paired with willing labor is rare. And for that Mario was a very popular man. Shannon hated to lean on Mario the way the rest of the town did. She hated to do it because she loved him. Because she loved him and she didn’t want to lead him on. At least not very much.

Shannon moved into town in the late 1990’s. It was shortly after she left the military but before she started Bartending School. The school was a correspondence course. Not much to brag home about, but Shannon hoped a step towards a more fulfilling future. With her mom away, Shannon was really at loose ends when she left the military. But everyone in town loved Shannon. She was so generally well thought of that it was agreed if she decided to leave the Military it was the government’s loss. And AWOL must have been the only course of action, if she chose it. “After all,” the town’s proud veterans of world wars said “It’s just the Coast Guard. And that’s hardly military anyway.” They said this with cagily, with shifty eyes hoping their friends and colleagues from the Coast Guard didn’t hear them. Shannon was just too easy to love and too hard to blame.

When Mario first heard that the big eyed ingénue of an ex-coastguardsman had sent away the last of her last paycheck for a correspondence course in bartending and drink mixing he was dumbfounded. She seemed to be the last person on Earth to fall for an old time scam like that. Without deciding to, he took her wholeheartedly into his life and his business.

He told Shannon what he needed was someone to wait tables and learn the business from him. He told her. “I need you now. Business is very good right now. Take this apron and learn from me the business of a restaurant.” And he took her under his wing and onto his staff at Mario’s Restaurante the same way he had added Bernie as a janitor and Yvonne in the kitchen. The Restaurante didn’t need them. But they needed Mario’s and they needed Mario.

Shannon couldn’t be called a dreamer. Her feet were firmly on the ground. But everyone who lived in Clovis for any length of time had some kind of other dream for themselves. Mario’s dream was of Shannon. Bernie’s dream was of a 20 acre place he could farm on the weekends. Yvonne just wanted her kids to want her to move to the city, nearer them and the grandkids.

These days Shannon had any number of ideas. She wasn’t in a hurry to pick one, but she mulled them over constantly. She could go to the next town over and buy the Bar. Tony told her he was tired of the business, wanted to sell. He just couldn’t keep up with the old place anymore. Or she could go back to the city. She had the GI Bill. Funny this thing, small town gossip. When Shannon didn’t tell everyone all about her years in the Coast Guard because, quite simply, it was mind numbingly dull, they all gladly assumed the worst. Shannon could do anything with that money. She could study languages and become a professor. Or she could study math and go into finance. She liked art and the idea of art education. Even art education in a place like Clovis fascinated her. Anything.

After her first month waiting tables and mixing drinks for Mario she started to talk a little about the things she might like to do. And Mario would offer back his sage and sought after advice. She started to look forward eagerly, for the conversations and the guidance, and the opportunity to be unabashedly self-centered.

After the second month Mario found his advice started to lean more and more towards things that would keep those big eyes and small hands in Clovis. Near him. And as you could imagine it didn’t take Shannon long to see that either. It is very flattering when someone falls in love with you, when that someone is the proverbial smoldering Latino lover it is more than flattering. It is down right polarizing. And so Shannon was still in Clovis. But she had never fallen in love with Mario, at least not that he could tell. She had been his part-time bartender and sole waitress for ten years. He had loved her dearly for five of those.

After work she spent many evenings at Mario’s home above the Restaurante eating amazing tamales.

“Shannon, mi Madre taught me how to make these and I will not teach you. I taught my wife. But she ran away from me and she took my recipe and my mother’s trust in me. I can’t teach you my recipe because all you talk about is what you will do when you leave.”

“I suppose I’m stuck here forever since I can’t get these fine tamales anywhere else. Wait a second, unless of course I find your wife and get the recipe from her.” Our Shannon, her eyes sparked. She loved his food and his friendship and didn’t hesitate to hurt him when he stepped over that uncomfortable line. “Anyway Mario. I can’t leave today; I have to go to work tomorrow. You worry about your tamales some other time, maybe when that boss gives me a vacation.” And then she wiped her fingers off one by one on a napkin that had migrated upstairs from the Restaurante linen closet.

She picked up her purse and put a kiss on top of his head, “And far be if for me to get between a mamma and her boy.”

She walked out the back and down the stairs to her car. Mario could feel the kiss on top of his head. Why did she do that to him? After all this time she made him crazy—almost like she was doing it on purpose.

Shannon drove the five minutes across town to her quiet street by the grade school. She kissed him on top of his head almost every night because she didn’t want him to fall in love with anyone else. And she hated the way his bristly, course hair felt which helped keep her from falling in love with him.

Shannon had one of the cutest houses in town. A 1902 original. One of the founder’s four room summer cottages “in the country.” It was a mere three miles to the south of the original Main Street, but the early days in town had been heady with optimist. It had a white picket fence and a steep roof. Like a misplaced cape cod, it had a center door nicely framed by two windows. A few years back Shannon had made a little investment in her home and exchanged her windows, the aluminum travesties of the 60’s for a nice pair or vinyl windows. She went with the charming nine pain style that matched the originals.

It was the kind of thing she did. Keep things nice. Put her money to good use. Her lawn was tidy but there were no family heirloom plants in the flower garden. No deceased pets out back under flowering trees. Just the careful upkeep you give a place when you are fond of it and want to sell for a profit some day.

It was, of course, quite a contrast to Mario’s apartment above Mario’s. His home had those lingering scents of frijoles and enchilada sauce. It had the décor—the flotsam and jetsam--of a man’s home after the wife left in a hurry. The carpets were still mauve and the sofa was still the rosy floral pattern. Though he hadn’t changed anything, time had passed. His bookshelves had gathered dust and screwdrivers and receipts. The coffee table had earned an impressive collection of water rings. And though she never asked, Shannon was sure the thing in the corner next to the TV was part of some car’s insides. It was an apartment full of man clutter but very good food and very good company. Mario was her best friend.

Shannon’s journey to Clovis had been well thought out. It was the culmination of a lonely but not uneventful growing up. Her early life had been a fine example of the norm of American tragedy. Just enough sadness to send you to therapy but not enough to set you apart from your peers. You may recognize the story. She was an only child and her parents divorced when she was seven. Her father drove truck for a Californian fruit company and was gone five days a week. Her mother was tired of being alone and decided to try again. To find a husband—and a father—who would be a real partner in her life. She didn’t find one.

Shannon’s father Terry was proud of his role in bringing fresh fruit year round to the children of America. He was proud of being a Teamster. He was proud of his smart and beautiful wife and his charming, talented daughter. He was truly disappointed that he had to divorce, but quickly found that it didn’t much change his way of life.

The friendly divorce terms allowed him two weekends a month with his daughter and as much participation in her life as he could fit in. So, as before the divorce, he came home to Seattle on the weekends. Two of those weekends Shannon would stay over with him in his apartment and the other two weekends he would go to whatever recitals and games and activities that were scheduled. He was quite pleased to find himself just as good a father after the divorce as he had been before.

Then he remarried. A lovely woman called Jenny in Los Angeles who had two small daughters. Terry had gained some seniority by this time, with his fruit company, and arranged for a route with two weekends in Seattle and two weekends in Los Angeles. And so Jenny and Jenny’s girls had less of Terry than Dion had had. But they were pleased as he made good money and was kind to them when he came home. He was pleased to find himself just as good a stepfather as he was a father. So Terry continued as always, a happy man well satisfied with his life, doing what good he could find.

Shannon loved him like you love a distant uncle, or Santa Claus. And she loved him a little bit the way you love a father. Or, like you love the father from your favorite classic story book. A fictional character you were proud of and wished you could have living in your home.

At her graduation from basic training, when she was 18, Terry, Jenny, the girls Alex and Sammy, now in junior high, and Dion all attended the ceremony. Afterward they celebrated at a pizza parlor. Shannon was glad to meet Jenny and Alex and Sammy. They had seemed as though they would be very nice and it turns out they were.

Dion had not found a new husband. But she had found religion and so was “at peace” and able to celebrate with her husband’s new family. The girls, Alex and Sammy, were giddy with excitement because they on vacation with their stepfather, a man they also saw as a friendly Santa Claus, almost too good to be true and mostly living in their imaginations.