The Lunch Lady at the Engagement Dinner

Before the question

The first hour was easy, the way those things are easy when everybody is trying.

We talked about the wedding, which was going to be in June at Allison’s church in Urbandale. We talked about the weather, and about Linda’s sister in Arizona who sends pictures of her lemon tree every January to be cruel.

The waiter brought bread in a basket with a cloth over it. I took one roll and broke it, and I could not help it. I looked at the crumb.

Twenty-six years of rolls will do that to you. Ours at school are a scratch recipe, two hundred and forty dozen a week in the fall, and I can tell you the proof time on a cold morning to the minute. The steakhouse roll was good. Ours is better. I did not say so.

Nick was sitting beside me. Every time the conversation turned near work, I felt him tighten, the way a dog does on a leash before he sees the cat.

Tom asked Dave first. Men usually start with the men, and I did not hold it against him.

“Dave, Nick tells me you’re a mechanic.”

“I fix trucks,” Dave said. “Diesels, mostly. Farm stuff. Some of the grain haulers.”

Tom nodded slowly. “Who do you run with? Independent?”

“Thirty years at Kraus Implement. Then they sold out to the big dealer, and I went on my own. I’ve got a shop behind the house.”

“Hard work,” Tom said, and he meant it as praise, and Dave took it as praise. They talked for a minute about the price of a DEF sensor, which I will not repeat because I was not listening.

Then Linda asked Allison about her shifts. Then the steaks came, and they were enormous, and Dave’s eyebrows went up when he saw his, and I had to look away from him so I would not laugh.