The dregs of love

$erena the Waitress makes a new life for herself

by Sally Cragin

Illustration by Michelle Barbera

Happy's Coffee and Qwik-Stop (30 kinds of doughnuts, 20 kinds of lottery tickets, one kind of coffee) is a landmark in Tritown. Located at the bottom of Main Street, just before the road to the highway, the snug storefront is passed by nearly everyone in the course of a day. Most Tritownies are lured inside, for Happy has something for everyone. Homemade doughnuts, 50 cent coffee (25 cents a cup on Thursdays), and most legal vices serviced. Happy keeps thinking he'll spring for neon one of these days, but for now, the signs reading SCRATCH and STATE MINIMUM CIGS are hand-stenciled on cardboard.

This unprepossessing business is featured occasionally in the big city newspapers, as Happy has sold more winning lottery tickets than anyone else in the Commonwealth. Trouble is, there have been just a few wins over a thousand dollars, and most of the prizes hover in the hundred-dollar range. Still, there are plenty of those crossing the Formica counter every year. The local tradition has it that if you win more than a hundred dollars, you bring in a good-luck trinket for the Qwik-Stop. As the years have passed, a motley collection of plastic four-leaf clovers, "trick dice" with only 3s and 4s, and horseshoes has been nailed to the walls. (For a time, a collection of colored rabbits'-feet dangled like Christmas tree lights from the doughnut trays until Happy's daughter $erena turned vegetarian and removed them.)

But even if you don't play the lottery, you won't go wrong with a creme horn and a cup of Happy's "house blend," a coffee darker than 10-year-old crankcase oil and just as iridescent. $erena the Waitress keeps thinking they should add a selection of herbal teas, or at least decaf, but can't quite be bothered. These days, her energy is at an ebb, as her long-standing relationship with local mechanic Hasky Tarbox (of Tarbox Automotive -- "Collisions? A Specialty") has, once again, run out of gas.

Now, $erena is one of the more colorful characters you're likely to meet in Tritown. (She changed the "S" in her first name years ago, when the Qwik-Stop had its first "thousandaire" winner. Her hopes have always been high.) $erena is a lively, bouncy young woman who likes decorating the Qwik-Stop depending on the season. You'll usually find her in high-top boys basketball sneakers in gold lamé or violet tartan with her waitress uniform. And she's always experimenting with her hair. One week last summer, she started frosting, ended up bleaching, and finally settled for a ruby henna rinse. The customers who came in on sequential days thought they needed their eyes checked, but Happy stopped commenting on her personal appearance years ago. Like fat men named Bones, or bald men named Curly, Happy's name is his paradox, and he's essentially a dour, silent presence. He might leave the kitchen, if someone wins a hundred bucks on a scratch ticket, but he'd prefer to stay close to his AM radio, where he hears all of his opinions aired repeatedly and agitatedly.

Still, he's quietly delighted that Hasky Tarbox, whom he calls "a lazy good-for-nothing" in front of $erena, and far worse in the privacy of his own thoughts, hasn't been mooching at the counter lately. Ever since Hasky blew the money, which he and $erena had pooled for a wedding, on a big-screen TV (the lure of female snowboarders had proved too great), the two lovebirds hadn't spoken.

In actuality, $erena keeps tabs on Hasky from Delia Ellis Bell the Partial Yankee (there was a questionable great-great- grandmother), who visits Hollis, a Tarbox neighbor, who has made it a point to tell Hasky that he hadn't seen $erena even when Hollis had. Love in Tritown may not be simple, but it is often simple-minded. And, as the Olympics wind to a close, $erena is about to take the biggest step of her life.

"I'm goin' to Providence," she tells Delia one day. "I got accepted at the Deloverly School of Esthetics."

Delia is sitting at the tiny counter, after having ordered a Bavarian creme horn and a coffee.

"Really!" she says.

"Yep," $erena replies. "Been thinkin' about it for a while." She holds out her hand, admiring her nails -- a different varnish for each cuticle and gold charms lacquered on the pinkies. "I love hair and nails and skin care," she admits. "The program is pretty intense, but you get a lot of hours toward your cosmetology license."

Delia nods and begins to feel self-conscious about her own split ends. Winter weather and furnace heat are death to the skin and hair. She tucks a strand behind her ear, and static causes the hair to stick to her hand.

"You could do somethin' about that if you wanted," $erena tells her cheerfully.

LATER, DELIA visits Hollis the Mountain Man in his cabin by Mt. Magoonamitichusimaug (an amalgam of French, English, and Algonquin that roughly translates to: "My idiot friend who lives by the bog -- he likes it").

She's jangled because of the combination of creme horn and coffee refills and staggers to one of Hollis's ladderback chairs.

"So $erena's serious about moving to Providence, right?" asks Hollis. He holds a worn leather work boot in his hand, and is squirting shoe-goo into the cracks.

Delia sits with her forehead cradled in her palms and gently rubs her temples. "Totally," she replies. "She's totally over Hasky Tarbox and has already made the first tuition payment. She says she can't wait."

"Can't say I blame her," says Hollis. "Hasky's kind of like the two-dollar prize, on the five-dollar ticket, if you know what I mean."

"If that," she replies. "Anyway, there's some aunt she'll live with down there, and she's going to get her cosmetologician, or whatever, license and come back to Tritown and make everyone beautiful. Of course, she'll have to take the bus, since Hasky never fixed the manifold on her Volvo."

"Hah!" grunts Hollis, turning the boot in his hands.

"Damn," he says. "This stuff isn't taking."

Delia removes her hands from her forehead and looks at his project. "Hollis, those boots date back 10 years. You really think you can fix them?"

"Well," he begins. "That reminds me of a story. See, just before you got here, who do I see heading down the mountain like Ichabod Crane with a pumpkin head on his shoulders, and an enormous bunch of roses in the front seat of a familiar-looking blue Volvo, but -- "

"Hasky Tarbox to the rescue!" laughs Delia. "So he finally fixed her car! I wonder if he got those roses at a cut price because it's after Valentine's Day . . . "

Hollis squeezes the shoe-goo tube and discards it. "Probably," he muses. "Typical of Hasky -- he treats $erena like an old boot for years, and just when he thinks things have gone too far, he wants a quickie repair job."

Delia gets herself a glass of water at the sink. Hollis's Artesian well is the best free beverage in Tritown, but the pipes moan like restless souls in cold weather.

She feels more clear-headed after a pint of frigid spring water and turns to Hollis. "A quickie repair job is just putting off the inevitable," she says. "Isn't that one of your sayings?"

But Hollis pays no attention. He tries on his boot and says, "Perfect!" The sole flaps like a pair of maracas as he stumps around the cabin floor. "It may look like new, but it's sure not the same."

Read Walter Crockett's column next week.

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