Chapter 8 - The Diner of Defeat
By two o’clock that afternoon,
the sky over Queens was gloomy and oppressive,
casting a harsh gray light through the greasy windows of a small,
dilapidated twenty-four-hour diner near the highway.
Sitting in a vinyl booth in the back corner of the restaurant were Teresa and Arthur Hayes,
looking completely broken.
Teresa was wearing the same tea-stained cardigan from the day before,
her hair unwashed,
unbrushed,
and wild,
while Arthur sat across from her,
staring blankly into a cheap cup of black coffee that had long since gone cold.
Their four large suitcases were stacked messily against the table,
blocking the narrow aisle.
The diner door chimed,
and David walked inside,
dragging his feet like a condemned man walking to the gallows.
He slid into the booth beside his father,
dropping his head into his hands with a heavy,
miserable sigh.
Teresa looked up,
her eyes red-rimmed and filled with a mixture of rage and desperate hope.
“Well?”
Teresa demanded,
her voice raspy from crying all night.
“Did you fix it with your boss?”
“Did you get the money from the firm?”
David slowly raised his head,
his face hollow,
his eyes sunken,
and his lips dry.
“I got fired,
Mom,”
David said,
his tone completely flat.
“They took my office,
they took my accounts,
they took my bonuses,
and they threatened to put me in prison if I don't sign over every remaining asset I have.”
Arthur slammed his heavy fist onto the Formica table,
causing the coffee cups to rattle loudly.
“You useless fool!”
Arthur roared,
his voice attracting the attention of the bored waitress behind the counter.
“You ruined everything!”
“We had a comfortable life,
we were going to live in a mansion for four years,
and now we are sitting in a grease trap with eighty dollars in cash between us!”
“Don’t you yell at me!”
David shouted back,
his composure finally snapping like a brittle twig.
“I did all of this for us!”
“I was trying to get enough money so we would never have to depend on Eleanor or her arrogant family again!”
“You didn’t do this for us,
you did this for that cheap girl from your office!”
Teresa shrieked,
reaching across the table to slap David’s arm violently.
“You bought her diamonds while your father and I were thrown onto the street like trash!”
“She took the ring back!”
David screamed,
rubbing his sore arm.
“It wasn’t even real,
okay!”
“I didn’t have enough cash on the card to buy the real one,
so I bought a synthetic replica to buy time!”
“Everyone lied to me,
everyone betrayed me!”
Teresa stared at her son in utter disbelief,
her jaw dropping open.
“A fake ring?”
she whispered,
shaking her head in sheer horror.
“You destroyed our entire family’s future for a fake diamond ring?”
“Shut up,
both of you!”
Arthur yelled,
grabbing his head with both hands as if it were about to explode.
“We need to figure out where we are sleeping tonight!”
“The motel down the street wants one hundred and twenty dollars a night,
and we don’t even have enough for two days!”
Teresa leaned across the table,
her eyes narrowing as a sinister,
desperate thought took hold of her mind.
“David,”
she whispered,
her tone suddenly shifting from rage to cold,
calculating desperation.
“You have to go back to her.”
David blinked,
looking at his mother as if she had lost her mind.
“Go back to who?”
“To Eleanor!”
Teresa urged,
grabbing David’s hands tightly.
“You have to go to the house,
get down on your knees,
cry,
beg,
and tell her you made a terrible mistake!”
“Tell her the girl manipulated you!”
“Tell her you were having a mental breakdown from work stress!”
“Eleanor loved you,
David!”
“She spent five years buying you expensive clothes,
paying for your holidays,
and letting you live in her family home!”
“If you beg enough,
if you make yourself look pathetic enough,
she will take you back!”
“She won’t,”
David said quietly,
remembering the ice-cold expression in Eleanor’s eyes outside The Plaza Hotel.
“She isn't the same woman,
Mom.”
“She will!”
Teresa insisted,
her grip tightening until her knuckles turned white.
“She is a woman,
David!”
“Women are soft,
women are emotional,
and women forgive!”
“You go there tonight,
you stand outside that gate,
and you don’t leave until she opens the door!”
David looked down at his trembling hands,
feeling the sheer weight of his poverty pressing against his chest.
He had no money,
no job,
no credit,
no friends in Manhattan who would take him in,
and no other options left on earth.
“Fine,”
David whispered,
May you like
a tiny flicker of foolish hope reigniting in his desperate mind.
“I’ll go to the house tonight.”
