And so they did. The inside of Mermaid’s Landing was both less ramshackle and more confusing than the outside. It seemed whoever ran the place couldn’t decide between a traditional 1950s diner feel and an homage to the ocean theme, so they simply went with both. The scuffed black-and-white-checkerboard floor lay beneath a ceiling strung with fishing nets filled with plastic fish. The jukebox at the far end of the diner was wrapped in artfully placed artificial seaweed. Even the stools at the diner counter had little shark fins on the backs of the seats.
At one booth sat three men in leather vests and varying degrees of facial hair neglect, at another a teen girl in what appeared to be a life-ruining spell of quality time with her parents. Nora approached the counter, occupied only by an older man slowly making headway on an ice-cream sundae, the stool’s shark fin peeking out from under suspendered corduroys.
The woman behind the counter, somewhere in the late stages of middle age and the early stages of complete apathy, greeted them with a blink. Her name tag read “Goldie” against the baby pink of her vintage-inspired, crab-patterned blouse.
“Hi,” Nora tried when Goldie said nothing. “We—”
“What’ll it be?” Goldie pulled a little notebook and even littler pencil from the apron on her waist.
“Oh, no, we just needed some directions.”
Goldie snapped the notebook shut with an exasperated sigh. “Can’t help you unless you order something.”
“What? Really?”
“No grub no love, kid.”
“That is definitely not how that goes,” Charlie muttered.
“Fine, I’ll take a tea,” Nora tried.
“We don’t do tea,” said Goldie.
Nora sucked in a sharp breath. “Okay. Fine. A juice, then. Now, we’re trying to get t—”
“That won’t cut it,” said Goldie.
“What?”
“Juice is two fifty. Directions cost more than that. Has to be food. No food? Just ’tude.”
“This is ridiculous,” Nora said, the frustration and fear that had plagued her all day raising her voice louder than she’d intended.
Goldie just shrugged as someone tapped Nora on the shoulder. She turned around to find the three bikers from the booth in a horseshoe around her and Charlie.
“These folks bothering you, Goldie?” said the one with the most ostentatious beard.
Goldie looked over the twins for a moment, considering. “Maybe.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” said Charlie. “We were just ordering. The Hungry Man breakfast looks good.”
“Hmm,” said Goldie. The bikers didn’t budge. “Where are you headed?”
“Virgo Bay,” said Charlie.
Goldie’s stony face eroded into something unrecognizable.The bikers surrounding them took a step back. The air seemed to be vacuumed out of the diner for a moment. Even the teenaged girl with her parents looked up from her phone. After a silence that was too long for Nora’s comfort, Goldie turned towards the kitchen. “I’ll get that order going for you,” she said, her voice suddenly small and without edge. The bikers slunk back to their booths.
“Uh, the directions?” Charlie called at Goldie’s retreating back, but she didn’t turn around. “The hell was that? All I said was ‘Virgo Bay’ and they scattered. What is this, a town of Capricorns or something?”
The old man at the counter chortled into his sundae.
“Let’s go,” Nora said, defeated. “We can find a place to stay for the night and try again elsewhere in the morning.”
Charlie shrugged and started following his sister away from the counter when the old man turned around. “What do you want with Virgo Bay anyway?”
The twins stopped. “We’re looking for some friends of our father,” said Nora.
“In Virgo Bay?”
