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“Mind if I join you?” she asked, already climbing into the seat next to me.
“Please, I could use the company,” I said. “Looks like a pretty hard place to make friends.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Everyone keeps looking at me like I’m a walking corpse, or something.”
She laughed. “It’s because you’re a stranger. We’re unusually suspicious.”
“Is that why everyone asks so many questions?”
“Precisely.” She winked at me, then during to the waitress. “Hey, Susan, how’s your mother?”
Susan smacked her gum and shrugged. “A little too alive for my liking.” Ashlyn laughed. “Don’t tell her I said that,” Susan added with a wink.
“My lips are sealed.”
I watched them go back and forth a bit, the whole ordeal reminding me a lot of the times when Ridder Technology was still a tiny company with only a handful of people working side by side, day in and day out. Things had been a lot more personal back then, a lot closer to the heart, like we were a small family that cared about each other and where the company was going and how its success would benefit us all, as a group. I remembered how I had known every single person toiling away by my side, their families, their problems, their happy moments. There were barbecue invites, beer parties when we landed a client, and sleepless nights when one of the guys’ wife was giving birth.
Now I couldn’t even remember the name of the security guard I drove past on my way in and out of the building every day. I had forgotten how warm the whole thing had once felt, in comparison to the cold steel and mirrored glass building that now represented my entire fortune. I couldn’t even remember the last time I had met with the new hires and told them success stories of Ridder Technology, as used to be customary.
The whole thing had expanded way too fast, and beyond my control. I guess I should have been just glad that I was able to keep it all together. Thank God for Dennis.
“So, how are you gonna poison my new friend, here,” Ashlyn said, cutting through my thoughts.
“He ordered the burger,” Susan said. “Same for you?”
Ashlyn looked at me and squinted, grinning. “Let me guess, Chuck recommended the burger?”
I laughed. “He said it was the best in town.”
“Well, he wasn’t wrong,” Ashlyn replied. “One for me, too, then, Susan. With fries.”
Susan yelled the order through the window just like last time, then walked out from behind the bar to tend to one of the other guests. I took a sip from my coffee, pulled out a cigarette. I held it nervously between my fingers without lighting it. It was my way of going cold turkey.
“Nasty habit,” Ashlyn said.
I looked at her, then at the cigarette, and then shrugged. “I kinda like it.”
“What’s there to like?” she asked. “Smells horrible, tastes even worse. You ever kiss a smoker? Like sticking your lips to an ashtray. Nasty, nasty, nasty.”
Was she saying that she’d never kiss me if I smoked? Well, now there was an incentive if I ever needed one.
She kept ranting. “Not to mention it dulls your taste buds completely. How are you going to enjoy the best burger in town after you’ve had one of those?”
“You can’t smoke in here,” Susan said, returning with an empty coffee pot. “State health code. Take it outside or put it away.”
“I’ll put it away,” I said with a smile as they both gave me the eye. “I’ll have it for dessert.”
“Those things will kill you,” Ashlyn added, shaking her head. “I hope you’re not stinking up the room with those dang things. The flowers don’t really do much with poison in the air.”
“Your flowers are just fine, okay?” I laughed. “They smell amazing, you have my word.”
“So you say,” she said. “You just keep puffing those and I’ll forget to replace the flowers tomorrow.”
I smiled and took another sip of my coffee, already smelling the sweet aroma of fried onion rings coming from the kitchen. “So, you do this every day?”
Ashlyn reached over the bar, grabbed her own cup and filled it from the fresh pot Susan had set on the warmer on the counter. “What? The flowers?”
