The Crab Trap

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     At the end of Top Sail Road, a sun-faded blue and white diner called The Crab Trap was being very gradually devoured, over the course of its five decades in operation, by a neighboring sand dune. Inside that diner, Meg fidgeted. Just one of the five tables was occupied, and they were paying their bill. She refilled salt shakers that were still three quarters full. She rolled paper napkins stuffed with silverware and fastened them with paper bands.

     She considered herself a natural navigator of human interactions. Beloved by all. It was this point of self pride, in great part, that had made her first three meetings with Herb so confusing and disturbing. The most recent, on just the Saturday prior, was disastrous, leaving her shaking and in tears. 

     The previous owner of the Crab, Ms. Harper Ivey, had assumed a grandmotherly disposition toward her, sharing gossip and homemade cookies in equal measure. It was after her stroke and eventual death that her estranged brother swept into town and began his visits (inspections, he called them) and his talk of lawyers and changes. Meg had loved the woman, and she loved the diner, but more than anything, she did not want to be chased from her home.

     To commune with Herb was to be poked through the bars of a cage. He parried her every attempt at cordiality. It provoked desperate feelings in her. He presented with no screaming or raised fists, yet his every action seemed consciously designed to make her feel inferior and worthy of suspicion. 

     She cleared the table in the corner, wiping the surface clean of jelly and syrup and coffee. Like the slow pulse of the ocean on the other side of the dune, waves of anxiety rose and crashed within her, squeezing her heart and guts, a sensation that intensified when finally she turned to see Herb’s long, dark Lincoln, its sharp edges jumping out against the warm curves of the coast. She braced herself for the coming storm, and for the performance she was about to give, doubting its ability to wrangle the violence of lightning and thunder. 

     He moved with an aged species of determination, crunching across the hot grit of the parking lot, angled in his stride toward the sweet coolness of the luncheonette. Shy of being tall, and with weight to spare on his sturdy frame, Herb wore a uniform of charcoal slacks with a blue Brooks Brothers shirt tucked tight over his belly, white sleeve cuffs rolled back to his elbows. He hit the glass door at a gallop, turning the charming creak of the old hinges to a howl. 

     “I need those papers. The stuff I asked you about before,” he said as he reached the countertop, shooting only a glance at her eyes and then turning to survey the rest of the place while awaiting her response. 

     This opening gambit rattled her. It was difficult to keep the rehearsed script in mind while panic threatened to suffocate. Trying to parse his urgent request, Meg focused on her breathing and fought the urge to cross her arms like a shield between them. She watched his chest and matched her breaths with his own. Smiling, she waited for his eyes to come back to her. 

     “Hello, Mr. Ivey. I’m sorry, which papers are we talking about?”

     He gave a sigh, one with both exasperation and real resentment in it. He seemed angered by the obstacle of her. “Again, you need to get me the last two years of Department of Health inspection reports and your income tax documentation.”

     While he spoke, she took down his list on an order ticket. “I will be sure to get those things together.”

     “Well, I hope so. Let me tell ya something—I can have customers kicked out, the doors locked, and the windows boarded up by this evening. I don’t have to waste my own money to keep this shack open.” 

     After Saturday’s emotional meltdown, she had lain in bed, stretching and relaxing her arms and legs and face, letting the knot of her mind loosen, until eventually she fell into an exhausted flavor of meditation. In this state, it suddenly became obvious to her that the problem of Herb is a problem that others have faced throughout time. There must be an answer to a situation like hers. To a person like Herb. She would just need to find it. 

     She Googled and YouTubed and Tik-Tokked until a solution had been triangulated. She found that there were many approaches to conflict, some obvious, others quite dubious, but the consensus seemed to point toward a sort of mental judo maneuver in which one is asked to resist every defensive impulse triggered by the aggressor and instead validate their pain and vulnerability. To step across that line dividing enemy from enemy and somehow transform into an ally.  

     Meg stood poised behind her countertop, filled her lungs with salty air, and began.

     “Herb,” she said, “you seem like someone who is under a lot of stress. You obviously take your work and your reputation seriously. You just lost your sister, and then this situation was dropped in your lap and before you knew what happened, you’re responsible for employees and a business and all the other things that come along with it. I can tell that you really care about doing things right. I don’t have the experience that you have, but I want you to succeed and if you can be patient with me, I’m on your team.”

     Her heart was tripping and thudding so rapidly that she felt faint, disconnected. She watched his face and there witnessed an actual softening of brow and jawline. He looked a bit disoriented, was briefly speechless, even seemed to be searching back through the words she’d just said for a phrase to latch onto and to retaliate against. 

     “Yes,” he finally said, a look of relief unnarrowing his eyes. “That’s right.” He seemed to suddenly be seeing her. “It has been a hard time.” 

     “A hard time,” she repeated, inviting him to elaborate. To confide. He slid onto a stool and she reached under the lip of the counter for a mug. He talked and she kept the coffee fresh. As the tension in her shoulders and back began to uncoil, she basked in a languid kind of euphoria.

     She let him ramble on about battles large and small, nodding, smiling, as she imagined squaring off against the giants waiting in her future, finding the wound that fuels their rage, disarming them with grace and with ease.