The Diner

“Well damn, looks like someone’s finally bought the old bakery shop. I wonder what it’s going to be now.” Noah stopped walking, looking across the street at the vacant storefront. The For Salesign that had been in the window for the last month now had a Solddecal plastered over it.

“Another bakery?” Cody replied to Noah’s comment.

“With our luck, probably,” Noah said in disgust. “Just what this town needs, a third bakery.” He chuckled. “If it is, they can name it Bakery Number Three, and be done with it.”

“What we really need,” Cody said adamantly, “is a decent place to eat that isn’t a tourist trap.”

Noah nodded in agreement. “But then what can you expect in a tourist town? Delmonico’s or Jean Georges?”

Cody looked at his friend, laughing. “Like you ever ate at them when you went to New York.”

“Well…no.” Noah grinned. “But I did case them out. Talk about ritzy and ex-pen-sive.”

“I just want a nice diner with decent food and no frills.”

“Dream on, boy, dream on. That doesn’t bring in the tourist bucks and you know that’s all Mayor Dunn and the city council are interested in.” Noah rubbed his fingers together. “Like the song from Cabaret, ‘Money, Money’.”

“It makes the world go around. Yeah, yeah. Right now though I’d better get moving.” Cody sighed, starting to walk again. “I definitely need money to pay the rent, which won’t happen if I don’t get to work.”

Noah called out, “See you later.” Cody casually waved over his shoulder and kept going, while Noah remained where he was. He looked across the street again and for a brief moment he thought he saw something move inside the empty shop. “The new owner?” he wondered aloud. He thought that was unlikely, as no lights were on and the front door was padlocked—as it had been since the bakery had moved out. “Ghosts.” He laughed softly and started walking. Like Cody, he had a job and he didn’t want to lose it by being late.

* * * *

From inside the vacant shop, a man watched Noah turn the corner onto a side street. He tapped his lip pensively, and nodded before going back to what he’d been doing.

* * * *

Noah and Cody had been best friends since grade school. In high school they played on the baseball team, took many of the same classes, and worked after school at Mr. Winston’s hardware store. They were as close as two friends could be, almost carbon copies of each other except in looks. Cody was blond with blue eyes and a muscular build. Noah was slender, with dark brown hair and eyes so deep green they sometimes appeared almost black.

There was one other difference. One that no one in the town of Spirit Falls knew about, except for Noah’s parents, and Cody. Noah was gay. It was a secret he’d kept well-hidden even before hearing how some of the guys on the team talked about “fags” and “fruits.” They would use those and other even more derogatory words while pointing to one kid or another who met what they considered the criteria for being gay.

By the time he reached his junior year, Noah was well versed on how to date a girl without letting it get beyond the occasional hug and maybe peck on the lips. He also knew how to break off with them before they got too clingy. As soon as he graduated, he bought an old car and used it to take periodic trips to New York City, which was only a hundred miles from Spirit Falls. Generally, he’d just go to a club to dance and talk and, as he laughingly put it to Cody at one point, “Be with my own kind.”

The two young men were now twenty-two and still living in the town where they grew up. Cody was a manager at the hardware store they’d both worked at while in school. Noah was the desk clerk and general factotum at the Irish Rose Bed-and-Breakfast, located just a quarter of a mile from the base of the falls that gave the town its name.

* * * *

As the sheriff parked in the lot behind the town hall he shook his head in amusement. Noah Graham was dashing across the bridge over Spirit River. If you’d leave home earlier…”That’ll be the day,” he murmured as he got out of the patrol car.

Once he was inside the building, his first stop was his office in the basement where the sheriff’s department was located. He paused long enough to let the dispatcher know he’d arrived and that he had an appointment with the mayor, then headed upstairs.