Chapter 2: With Rude Wit

November 2, 2018

Lenny Diehl sat at a booth in the Two Whales Diner, stealing glances at the locale in between bouts of nursing his cup of coffee. He was supposed to meet his contact here at ten, which screwed him royally, as his job at the Leonard International freight depot required he get up at four.

He shared the diner with but one soul: a waitress whose nametag helpfully informed him was Vivian.

Vivian, a woman in her late twenties, sauntered up to Lenny's booth, wiping a stray lock of red hair out of a baggy green eye. She came to a stop and pushed a hip out, too unimpressed to be annoyed.

"We're closing," Vivian said. "On your bike, I gotta lock up."

Lenny didn't deal with dismissiveness well, and dismissive women baffled him somehow further. "Um… I'm sorry, but I'm supposed to meet someone here…"

Vivian rolled her eyes. "Shit… Well, I'm leaving."

"Just like that? Aren't you supposed to…"

"I know who you're here for," Vivian said. "She'll lock up."

And with that, Lenny watched Vivian take Lenny's coffee cup and disappear into a back room behind the counter. As the clock struck ten, Vivian came back out again, a long blue coat covering her uniform. She left a set of keys on the counter and exited the diner, oblivious to Lenny's gaze. As soon as the door closed, he heard the waitress talk to someone just outside.

"Don't fuckin' smoke in there."

"Yeah, yeah," said a female voice.

"And tell Joyce I deserve a raise."

"Tell her yourself."

The door to the Two Whales opened and a tall someone went directly to the counter, picking up the keys Vivian left, and snatching a coffee cup from the rack near the "Welcome to Arcadia Bay" postcard display.

This someone was tall, taller than Lenny was, a good five nine. He would have assumed this someone was a male someone, until they turned around and he saw the smoothness of her face. She wore baggy jeans over brown boots. An old olive green Army fatigue jacket (no doubt bought at a thrift store, or an Army/Navy surplus joint) was draped on her skinny frame over a black t-shirt with a circled letter in Japanese over the word "CHIKARA," whatever the hell that meant. She wore a black beanie, from under which tendrils of strawberry blonde hair fought a partially successful battle to emerge. Wire-frame glasses punctuated a pair of vivid blue eyes.

"You Chloe Price?" Lenny asked.

"I am," Chloe said as she sat in the booth across from Lenny and put the coffee cup down in front of her. She produced a partially flattened pack of Parliament Lights from her jacket, along with a cheap orange lighter.

"Didn't Vivian tell you not to smoke in here?"

"Vivian tells me lots of things," Chloe said, after she exhaled a jet of gray smoke in the air over the both of them. She flicked a few particles of excess ash into the coffee cup. "I might just start listening to her one day, if she's a good little girl who says her prayers. Now… you have a problem."

"Yeah."

"You told Pete abut this problem."

"Uh-huh."

"And Pete told me. Now I want you to tell me."

"But if Pete told you…"

"Pete's Pete. You're you. Tell me."

Lenny squared himself in the booth, gaining physical momentum for a verbal act.

"It was, uh… it was a poker game."

Chloe smiled, as though she's heard similar tales before. "A poker game."

"Yeah."

"When?"

"Um… Saturday."

"You bet something you didn't want to bet, didn't you?"

"Um… Yeah."

"Which was?"

"It was, uh…" Lenny said, trying to physically dissolve into himself from the embarrassment. "It was a watch."

"Must be a special watch, if you can't buy another. If you need me to get it back for you."

"It was my dad's watch."

Chloe raised her eyebrows in the kind of mild surprise that accompanies learning of a politician doing something particularly nasty; a manner of a surprise at the surprise. "You bet your father's watch?"

"Yeah," Lenny said. "I thought my hand was hot. I had a Full House. How was I supposed to know he had four Jacks?"

"Your father still with us?" Chloe asked.

"No," Lenny said. "He passed from leukemia a year ago."

"Jesus," Chloe said. "This tells me a lot about you."

It didn't occur to Lenny to get upset at that. It told him a lot about himself, too.

"Now this watch," Chloe said, flicking more ash into the coffee cup. "Can you put a dollar amount on it?"

"Well," Lenny said, "it wasn't really an expensive watch, it's more a…"

Chloe rolled her eyes. "What I mean is, how much are you gonna pay me to get it back for you?"

"Oh," Lenny said. He hadn't gotten this far in his plan to get the watch back. "I got two hundred in savings."

"Then two hundred's what I get."

"Any chance I can get it down to one-fifty?"

"No. Who has it?"

"Um… Guy named Dalton Folger. He works at the depot with me."

Chloe nodded. "I'll find him. Have it for you tomorrow. I want the money in cash. No check."

"Look," Lenny said. "Um… I don't mean to offend you…"

"'He said before offending me.'"

That threw Lenny off, but only for a bit. "This guy Dalton. He's real big. Real scary. I just don't see how a girl like you is gonna get it back from him."

Chloe took a drag from her smoke and smiled. Lenny had seen that smile before on the faces of numerous girlfriends immediately after he'd said something monstrously stupid.

"I had an ex-girlfriend," Chloe said. "She told me that everyone has a gift in life. My gift was that I could get to know people without becoming friends with them. See, with most people, it's an all-or-nothing proposition, but not with me. The longer I live, the more I see how right she was."

"Yeah?" asked Lenny. "What was her gift?"

"Photography," Chloe said. "Dalton most likely wants something. I can most likely get it for him. You get your watch, I get the money and another customer on top of it. The web gets tighter and the world keeps spinning."

Chloe extinguished her cigarette in the coffee cup, folded her hands in front of her, and looked at Lenny dispassionately.

"You'll have your watch tomorrow. Get your money ready. Now go. I gotta lock up."