The Two-in-One
Betsy took the kids upstairs on cue. All I’d said was that we needed to make some hard decisions, and I’d said it in the same tone I’d employed for twenty-five years of explaining tax penalties to late filers. Like those filers, Leticia and Armin weren’t stupid, just human enough to put off the inevitable long enough to get themselves in greater trouble.
And who’s to say that their long shot was impossible? Maybe a troupe of traveling fitness nuts could have jogged into town after the OSHA deadline and granted their now-nonsmoking grill-pub a reprieve. Perhaps that troupe could have become enamored with our town’s quaint charms, and become a newer, fitter class of regular customers, keeping the Two-in-One grill-pub going and adding an upscale organic grocery and a GNC in the bargain.
If it had happened that way, our friends might have continued to limp along the way they had before. Instead they sat at my kitchen table, starring into the uneaten half of the crumb cake they themselves had brought.
“Maybe we could have a grand reopening as a family-style restaurant,” Armin suggested, and then, “No, hear me out. We’ve got a great location; a school and two churches share the same slope, and we’ve got the space to accommodate large groups if we re-jigger the dining room and the lounge. I could set up an omelet station and juice machine for a minimum overhead and maximum impact.”
He was thirty in the hole a month after OSHA, and yet I could see how undefeatable Armin was, could see how he could kiss Betsy’s throat last new years eve and make her giggle when the ball dropped ten, nine, eight, seven, and slap my back right after, unashamed on five. You wanted everything to work out for him, so you found yourself lowering your raised eyebrow and taking him seriously, or not, whichever accommodated him more. I could only guess that Leticia felt the same, because she didn’t blast him right out of the chair the way Betsy did me when I proposed getting a family dog after she’d just finished hinting to me how hard it was to keep the house in order.
“Hon, the restaurant is hemorrhaging money, and has for some time. We stayed afloat with liquor sales.” Leticia turned to me with the face I recognized from high school that goaded unpopular boys into serving on school committees and chauffeuring her to jock parties. “What we need is a smoker’s porch, to win back our old clientele. Also, we can pick up an underage demographic with an under-21 night. A dance floor and DJs. We can sell them pizza, soda, and energy drinks.”
She’d done more research than her husband. It might have convinced a business loan officer, and I would have given it so much rope to see it succeed, if it weren’t up to me to look after their best interests.
“These ideas – both of them – are good, solid ideas, and I think you should hang onto them.” I found some solace staring into the crumb cake before I met their eyes and continued. “Who’s to say that down the road you’ll never get a chance to follow these dreams? I’ve seen a lot of people stymied by circumstances, only to come back stronger than ever, and better off when they weren’t supporting past debt.”
It was out there, now. They weren’t stupid. “Look, the way things are now, you couldn’t keep the place long enough to implement any of those changes, even if you had the spare cash to renovate.” They had stiffened like nutcrackers, and developed an almost filial resemblance through the identical red circles appearing on their cheeks.
“We have to find a buyer soon. If we can – and I believe we will – you’ll be able to take the pressure off your house for some time, give us some more options about… about what to do next.” Armin was standing, compressing his lips into a thin line as if he were concentrating on a difficult pool shot. “C’mon, Frank. You can’t think this is a good thing. What options do we have without the moneymaker? The Two-in-One’s in a slump, yes, but even I know you can’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, just ‘cuz she misses a day.”
Letitia tried to whisper something in his ear, but it was closed. “Frank, man, I know you’re trying to help, but we’re good at making our own luck, better than the average Joe who comes to you in trouble. I’ll go out there and raise the money we need, and then I’ll invite you over to dinner, where we’ll laugh about how we thought we were going to have to sell everything, when we were really just a minor adjustment away from going gangbusters.”
We were mostly silent after that, and I got up to refill their coffee mugs. The pad hissed when I put the carafe back, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the crumb cake as Armin forked the last of it between smiles of contentment.