EPISODE 6 — The Diner
The Tuesday it happened, Tank had been drinking since noon.
Not his worst day. Not even close. Just a slow, gray Tuesday, the kind where the quiet creeps in around the edges and Buddy’s ghost sits in the corner of every room.
The club had stopped at Harlan’s Diner because Spider liked the pie. That was the whole reason. Pie.
Tank saw the old man and the dog come in — the veteran, the Malinois, the corner booth, the bacon on a real plate — and something hot and sick rose in his chest.
Look at him, the guilt whispered. Look at what you don’t have. Look at the man who kept his dog.
It wasn’t fair. None of it was fair. Tommy Kowalski had loved his dog just as much. He’d just been nineteen and stupid for ten seconds on an icy road, and he’d been paying for ten seconds for twenty years.
“Well, well,” Tank heard himself say. “They serve animals in here now?”
He watched the old man answer, calm as stone. Watched the waitress freeze. Felt his brothers watching him.
And then his hand was around the water glass, and he was standing, and he was walking — and some part of him, some small buried nineteen-year-old part, was screaming don’t, don’t, don’t —
He poured it anyway.
The water ran down the dog’s face. The dog didn’t flinch. Just sat there, dignified, looking up at his master like nothing in the world could break him.
And Tank stood there holding an empty glass, breathing hard, waiting for the satisfaction.
It didn’t come.
What came, instead, was the snow. Miller’s Curve. A shepherd mix breathing funny in his arms.
And then the old man stood up.
