Empire Falls by Richard Russo Page A

wish you wouldn’t,” Miles said.
    “I know you do, but why not pay him the way he wants? What difference does it make?”
    “For one thing it’s against the law. For another, Mrs. Whiting would have a cow if she thought I was doing anything off the books.”
    “She’d probably prefer it, if she understood there’d be more money left over for her.”
    “Possibly. It might also start her wondering. If I play fast and loose with the government, maybe I’m playing fast and loose with her, too.”
    David nodded the way you do when you’ve been given an inadequate explanation and decide to accept it anyway. “Okay, I got another question for you,” he said, looking directly at Miles. “What makes you think that woman is ever going to give you this restaurant?”
    “She said she would.”
    David nodded again. “I don’t know, Miles,” he said.
    O NLY ONE TUB of dirty lunch dishes remained, but it was a big one, so Miles lugged it into the kitchen and set it on the drainboard, stopping there to listen to the Hobart chug and whir, steam leaking from inside its stainless steel frame. They’d had this dishwasher for, what, twenty years? Twenty-five? He was pretty sure it was there when Roger Sperry first hired him back in high school. It couldn’t possibly have much more life in it, and if Miles had to guess when it would give out, it’d probably be the day after the restaurant became his. He’d spoken to Mrs. Whiting about replacing it, but a Hobart was a big-ticket item and the old woman wouldn’t hear of any such thing while it was still running. When Miles was feeling generous, he reminded himself that seventy-something-year-old women probably didn’t enjoy being told that things were old and worn-out, that they’d already lived years beyond a normal life expectancy. In less charitable moods, he suspected his employer was shrewdly determined to time the obsolescence of every machine in the restaurant—the Hobart, the Garland range, the grill, the milk machine—to her own ultimate demise, thus minimizing her gift to him as much as possible.
    Their arrangement, struck nearly twenty years ago now—another lifetime, it seemed to Miles—when Roger Sperry fell ill, was that he would run the restaurant for the remainder of Mrs. Whiting’s life, then inherit the place. The deal had been struck in secret because Miles knew his mother would object to his dropping out of college in his senior year; for him to mortgage his future in order to be nearby during her illness would surely fill her with not just despair but also fury. Mrs. Whiting herself had seemed aware that their fait accompli was necessary, that once Grace learned of the arrangement she would talk Miles out of this futile gesture and remind him that she was going to die regardless, that compromising his own prospects was so perverse as to render meaningless her sacrifices on his behalf. Miles knew all this too, and so he had conspired with Mrs. Whiting to give her no such opportunity.
    His mother’s illness aside, taking over the Empire Grill had not seemed like such a terrible idea at the time. As a history major, Miles was coming to understand that it was unlikely he’d be able to find a job without a graduate degree, and there was no money for that. He’d started working at the restaurant during his junior year of high school, returning summers and holidays after going away to college, so no aspect of the restaurant’s operation was beyond him; and while the living it promised would be hard, its rewards meager by the world’s reckoning, by local standards he would make out all right. Why not run the joint for a few years and save some money? He could always finish school later. Mrs. Whiting would just have to understand.
    Of course, all that was before the textile mill closed and the population of Empire Falls began to dwindle as families moved away in search of employment. And Miles, being young, did not know, since there was no way he could,