Page 47 of Blame it on the Bet
She fights back a snort. “No, nothing like that. You pick your pie. Janet slices it and places it on your plate. It may speak to her, it may not. There’s no guarantee you’ll get a reading,” she informs me.
“Okay, then.” I nod and flip the menu in earnest. “Need a minute?” asks a vintage look-a-like waitress.
“Not me. What about you, Bryan?”
“Bryan!” The waitress shrieks with surprised delight as soon as my name drops from Hennessy’s lips.
“Uh, yes?” I venture.
“We’ve been waiting for you,” she informs me excitedly. Suddenly I feel as if I’ve stepped into an episode of the
Twilight Zone.
“You have? Why is that?”
“Janet!” the waitress calls back toward the counter. “Janet! I’ve got Bryan here.”
In an instant, a woman with wavy, reddish brown hair pulled back in a brightly colored scarf, comes flying toward us. The long, flowing skirt she’s wearing billows around her, giving her the appearance of a floating apparition. When she reaches us, she grabs a chair from another table and sits down.
“Hennessy, you darling girl, you’ve brought me Bryan. How did you know?”
“Lucky guess?” My companion shrugs. “Janet Lahti, this is Bryan Truitt.”
Janet beams at me. “Oh, I’m so glad to meet you,” she informs me.
“And why, exactly, is that?” I ask.
“Because the pie told me you were coming.”
“It did.”
“Yes, it did.”
Okay, I’ll play with wacko pie lady. “Was it any particular pie?”
She nods enthusiastically at my question. “Yes, it was, in fact. The sweet potato pie.”
I freeze, but she doesn’t seem to notice.
“I can’t remember the last time I felt the urge to make a sweet potato pie. I mean, folks in these parts tend more toward the pumpkin. That sweet potato, though, that’s a southern taste. Are you from the South, Bryan Truitt?”
I nod dumbly and notice Hennessy peering across the table at me with renewed interest. She knows something’s going on here. So do I, I’m just not sure what that is.
“Yes, I thought so,” Janet is saying. She gets the attention of a young woman working the counter, waving for her to come to us. She does, with a plate in hand. “Thank you, Madeleine,” Janet says, taking the plate from her employee and setting it in front of me. It’s a perfect slice of sweet potato pie with a perfect dollop of fresh whipped cream on top.
“Take a bite,” she encourages.
I look at it, pick up a small fork, and scoop a section from the point, stopping to pick up some of the cream on the way to my mouth. When I taste the pie, my mind explodes with images of my youth. My parents, our property in North Carolina. The long hot summer and the cool pitchers of sweet tea. Fried chicken with mashed potatoes and my grandmother’s sweet potato pie. It all flashes through my head in the time it takes me to put the morsel in my mouth, savor its taste, and swallow. When I open my eyes again, it’s all gone, and the two women sitting with me are staring.
“Yes. That’s what I thought,” Janet murmurs. “This pie is about your past. It’s about remembering who you really are and where you come from.” She puts a warm hand on my wrist. “What you need to know is that you can only outrun your past for so long. Eventually, it’s going to catch you. You’re better off coming at it on your own terms.”
With that, the eccentric woman stands up and rushes off to the counter. Our server returns with mugs of coffee and a slice of pie that I don’t recall Hennessy ordering.
“Peach,” she explains at my apparent confusion. “It’s all I ever order. So that wasn’t a psychic moment or anything. It was just them bringing me my usual.”
I nod, still reeling from the pie lady’s comments and the unbidden images that blew through my head.
“Are you okay?” she asks me, looking more concerned. “You’re a little pale.”
