Burnt

Baron pulled the door to the diner, basked in the cool blast of the air conditioning for a moment before trudging over to a stool at the counter. He unslung his worn black pack, set it on the seat to his right, then popped off his dirty black ballcap and tossed it on the bartop.

Then he waited.

Had anyone heard the door? It didn’t have one of those bells, but it did clatter when it closed, the metal frame scraping on the metal baseplate. He could smell grease and onions and … pie? His stomach growled. He looked around for other people, but the place was empty.

A woman with one of those big round old lady perms the color of dead grass appeared from what he assumed was the kitchen. She wore a blue button-up shirt covered by a dirty apron, probably the same two she’d worn for the last 40 years. She snatched up a blue-and-white rag from next to the cash console, started wiping down the counter. She reached his hat and stopped.

Baron smiled, hoped the expression looked amiable.

She stared at the hat. He cleared his throat. No response.

He said, “Hello?”

She blinked, but didn’t otherwise respond.

The hell, he thought, then sighed. He focused on being there, the physicality of it. He imagined how he looked, how he smelled, what the stool looked like with him sitting on it.

She leaped back, then threw the rag at him. He caught it. Hand to chest, she said, “Jesus H. Christ on a chariot-driven crutch! Where in God’s name did you come from? You scared the seven hells out of me.”

Concentrate. Concentrate. He ran it like a mantra in his head, set it spinning and turned the volume down. “Sorry, ma’am. But I’ve been sitting here a couple of minutes.” He tried the smile again.

“A couple of minutes?”

He nodded. She narrowed her eyes at him. “You didn’t see me with the, the thing, did ya?”

“No ma’am.” Because he hadn’t.

“Right. You hungry? You need a menu?”

He shook his head. “Burger, if you have one. Fries. Maybe some of that pie, and an ice water.”

She wrote none of it down, said, “Mmmhmm. Give me a few,” then turned and vanished back past the metal swinging door from whence she’d come.

He turned on his stool, mantra looping in his head, and looked out through the dirty windows toward the parking lot, which was really an uneven swath of gravel between the diner and the highway. Behind him, he heard the sizzle of meat and clanking of pans. It smelled amazing. He spun back around.

He unzipped the bag, fished out the spellbook he’d acquired earlier in the week. He traced the scratches and grooves on the battered leather cover, then opened it. He hadn’t had a chance to study it yet, so the pages looked covered in scribbles and scrawl. Even so, his brain worked the glyphs as he turned the brittle pages. His mind began to slip, slide aside, and the text unknotted.

The clatter of the door pulled him back.

“At least we don’t have to go through the pretense of asking if you have the book.”

He spun to the voice, looked the guys over (there were two). The taller of the pair smiled at him with crooked yellow teeth, the motion crinkling his eyes and wrinkling his forehead, momentarily giving him a monobrow. Or maybe not momentarily. The shorter man slipped in and let the door close behind him, easing it with his palms. He wore a too-big-for-him Carhart jacket, canvas worn shiny in places, and tapped a willow switch on his dirty jeans in an uneven cadence.

Baron fought to not roll his eyes, sighed. He brought his left out from beneath the book. He held a small green plastic squirt gun with a bright yellow trigger. He pointed at the duo. Switch stopped tapping and Monobrow stopped smiling.

Baron said, “You can go back, tell them you didn’t find me. They’ll know on account of you looking just like you do now. Or … ” He set the book on the counter, reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a green Zippo with a shark’s mouth painted on it fighter-plane style. He did this slow. He flicked the top open with that distinct metal whisking sound and laid his thumb on the flint wheel.

Switch had seen enough. He stepped sideways. The branch flashed toward Baron, popping like a whip, though it never came within a foot of his person. Pain flared across his cheek, followed by warmth.

He’d known it was coming. He’d just wanted to see how it worked, how it moved the ether, how the particles and artifice played together. He couldn’t recreate it if he didn’t know how it worked.

Baron aimed the squirt gun, shot both of them. They startled, then looked themselves over. Nothing happened, so they laughed. Baron laughed, too, as he looked over his handiwork. One squirt each was probably enough.

The big guy had tears, he was laughing so hard. “The hell’d you shoot us with? Goddamn squirt gun.”

Baron smiled. “I shot you with the same stuff that’s in this,” he said, flicking the lighter closed, then open again. He rolled the wheel with his thumb and their smiles vanished. The tall one rubbed his hands on the wet spots, trying to dry it.

He stood up, stepped toward them. They backed out the door, onto the gravel. Switch pushed the door closed, creating a barrier. Like that would help.

Baron said, “Burn,” and they ignited. He watched them hop and dance and scurry for a moment. Switch had enough sense to stop, drop and roll. The tall guy screamed and patted himself before grabbing handfuls of gravel and rubbing it into his chest.

Baron closed the lighter, the flames died. They glared at him through the window, so he made a “shoo” motion with his hand. “Run along, boys.” He watched them turn and walk toward the road, then out of sight before he went back to his stool.

The waitress appeared from the kitchen, arms loaded with two plates and a mason jar of ice and water. Baron’s stomach growled. He had thought the word “concentrate” 463 times since she’d vanished the first time.

“Sorry about that. Had to cut up the potatoes for the fries,” she said, depositing the dishes in front of him. She finished, step back and looked at the spread, then reached under the counter and grabbed a napkin-wrapped bundle of silverware. “There you go. You need anything else?”

“You have a working phone?”

“Hon, I haven’t seen one of those in six months.”

He nodded. “Just the burger then.”

“Well, holler if you need anything.” She smiled, trundled off to the kitchen.

Baron grabbed a fry and bit the end off. It burnt his tongue and he opened his mouth over and over again like a fish on a beach. It tasted amazing, all salt and grease. He spun the book around with his right hand, grabbed the burger with his left, and started stuffing his face and flipping pages. Figured he had half an hour, tops, before the goonsquad returned, but the burger was going to make it less of a long day.