The vinyl booth at the Maple Leaf Diner had a split right down the middle of the seat cushion that bit the back of my thigh every time I shifted my weight. Arthur did not seem to notice, mostly because he was too busy checking his watch every ninety seconds like the rest of the world was running on his schedule. He had driven his polished town car all the way up from the city just to talk about zoning permits, or tax write-offs, or whatever it was that kept men with slick hair awake at night.
I just wanted my bowl of split pea soup and twenty minutes of quiet before I had to head back out to the tractor shed.
Arthur laid his leather folio on the chipped formica table with a sharp slap that made the salt shaker rattle. He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a thick wad of bills held together by a brass clip, and peeled off a crisp hundred-dollar bill right onto the laminate. He looked at me with that little half-smile he always used when he thought he was holding all the cards. “I bet I can eat this entire steak before you even finish your soup,” he said. The way he said it made my teeth ache. It was not even about the food. It was about him needing to prove he could chew faster, work faster, and live faster than anyone who still had dirt under his fingernails.
I looked down at my ceramic bowl. The soup was hot enough to burn the roof of my mouth if I rushed it, so I took a very small, slow spoonful of the green broth and blew on it. “Go ahead,” I told him. I did not raise my voice. I never raised my voice around Arthur because he took volume as an invitation to shout louder. He gave a short, sharp laugh, flagged down the young waitress with a wave of his gold-banded wrist, and ordered the twelve-ounce ribeye rare, with everything stacked on top.
Within four minutes, a sizzling cast-iron platter hit the table with a cloud of steam that smelled heavily of garlic butter and charred fat. Arthur did not even wait for his silverware to settle properly before he went to work. He hacked off great red chunks of meat and crammed them into his mouth, his jaw working like a threshing machine that had lost its governor.
He did not chew so much as he inhaled, his eyes watering slightly from the horseradish he had slathered across the center of the plate. He kept stealing glances at me to make sure I was watching his performance, as if I had nothing better to do than marvel at a grown man choking down half a cow in total silence.
I kept eating my soup one spoonful at a time. It was thick with bits of ham bone, and the peas had that nice, earthy taste that only comes from three hours on a slow burner. I did not look at Arthur once while he was tearing into the ribeye. I just watched the little yellow grease spots floating on the surface of the green broth. By the time I was halfway through my bowl, Arthur had already cleared two-thirds of the meat, his face flushed red around the collar of his stiff white shirt.
He swallowed hard, his throat bobbing like a cork in a heavy swell, and dropped his fork with a sharp clatter against the empty iron. He leaned back in the vinyl booth, puffed out his chest, and tapped his fingers against the table. “See?” he said, his voice thick with grease and triumph. “Years of discipline. You cannot buy that kind of focus in a country store, Amos.”
I did not say anything. I just finished my last spoonful of soup, wiped my mouth with a paper napkin that smelled slightly of chlorine, and looked over his shoulder. The waitress was wiping down the counter near the pie case with a gray rag. I raised two fingers, and she nodded, heading back toward the kitchen through the swinging louvered doors before Arthur even realized what was happening.
The kitchen door flapped twice, and she came out carrying a second cast-iron platter, this one loaded with an even thicker ribeye, surrounded by a mountain of golden French fries that were still glistening with oil. She set it right in front of Arthur, and the heavy smell of hot tallow rolled over the table. Arthur stared at the new plate as if she had just dropped a live raccoon in his lap. His mouth opened just a fraction, the smug look on his face sliding sideways into something that looked distinctly like confusion.
“Ma’am, I did not order another one,” Arthur said, his voice dropping an octave as he looked up at the girl with his eyebrows knotted together. “There has been a mistake.”
“No mistake,” I told him, sliding the heavy iron skillet across the formica until it bumped against his water glass. “Eat up.”
Arthur let out a dry, nervous laugh that sounded like gravel rattling in a tin can. He looked down at the fresh steak, then back at me, his eyes darting around the small diner as if he expected someone to jump out from behind the cigarette machine and yell that it was all a joke. “I already proved I can eat one,” he said, and his voice had a thin, jagged edge to it now. “Why did you order another?”
I picked up my water glass, took a slow sip, and let the ice cubes clink against the rim. I did not rush. I let the silence stretch out until the hum of the old Coca-Cola cooler in the corner sounded loud enough to fill the whole room. I looked right across the table into his eyes, right at the little pulse hammering away in the side of his temple.
“Because while you were racing your steak,” I said, leaning my forearms on the table and keeping my voice low and level, “I finished yours too.”
Arthur went completely still. He did not blink. His hand hovered an inch above the fresh steak as if he had just realized the plate was hot, though the iron had not even reached him yet. He looked from my empty soup bowl to the smear of grease on his own discarded plate, and then down at the second massive cut of beef sitting right under his nose. The realization didn’t hit him all at once. It leaked in through the cracks of his pride, slow and cold, until his shoulders dropped about three inches and the color drained right out from under his tan.
“You didn’t,” he whispered. It was the only thing he said, and he didn’t say it loud enough for the waitress to hear over the radio playing out by the register.
I didn’t answer him. I just pulled the hundred-dollar bill out from under his leather folio, slipped it into my shirt pocket, and reached for my truck keys. I stood up, left three single dollar bills on the table for the soup and the second steak, and walked out the front door into the bright afternoon sun without looking back once. The screen door gave a high, thin squeak as it swung shut behind me, cutting off whatever it was he was about to say next.
