Chapter Text
She drove past the town’s broken sign, feeling a gut-punch of unease, the worst she’d felt since summer camp. The girls were mean and the instructor was fed up with the twelve-year-olds eccentricities, i.e., boasting about nascent cleavage. Tabitha was born competitive, always vying for her parents' attention even when there was no sibling to be favored. She stole the girls' thunder by being as resourceful as teen camp required. Rivalry suited her best, she liked the thrill of the win but with that came endless meandering rivers of thought and constant badgering questions she needed to look up answers to. Because there was an abysmal gulf between reveries and real-life, Tabitha Tate wasn’t immune to defeat. She couldn’t handle failure as it seemed to be undermining her self-worth. She refused to countenance any valuable lessons from loss. Her grandpa, Pop, had been wonderful when her desperation for betterment hit hard. He was funny and interested, loving and gentle. He flew every summer to Chicago, stayed the week, regaled her with eerie stories, some were even printed on a meager column clipped off whatever the Blue & Gold was and written by some FPJIII. She reread them when she missed her pop, because, for some reason, her parents wouldn’t go or allow her to visit him at Riverdale. Their hard stance about severing ties with their hometown had her intrigued but not invested enough to defy them. Pop didn’t press the matter either, father and son had a silent agreement. Doesn’t it get lonely at night, grandpa? she asked him once. He’d just smile placidly and say Oh, the Night Hawk keeps me company till dawn. Her grandpa spoke in riddles, she didn’t make sense of most of what he said but adored his soothing voice and reassuring gaze. She thought about her career throughout college and strangely her brain tended to fly off the rails and drive her to a neon-lit diner, her Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe, her legacy. She dreamed of working with him, putting into use the merchandising and marketing strategies from school without spoiling its very soul with lifeless production chains. She hoped he’d be as supportive and sweet of the idea as to when she came out to him in senior year. Again, Tabitha wasn’t exactly known for her hastiness, she pondered her choices, took her time polishing her plan, and Hiram Lodge, her grandpa spat in an accusatory tone, burned down the diner, and with it her aspirations. Pop was heartbroken, the kid whom he fed had turned against him. He packed when the damage was declared irreparable and moved out and into Chicago. His radiance dwindled. He aged overnight, indulged in what the elderly spent their time. It hurt to see him numb the pain, fade away into old age. His impassive expression suggested he was over the outrage, maybe he’d moved on and so she’d have to. But then she caught him tearing up quietly in his armchair, reading something. He got up, tossed the paper in the bin, and went out. She fished the wrinkled article, an editorial of the Lodge Ledger.
“Out with the old. Like the asteroid that wiped the dinosaurs off the face of the Earth, nature or fortune has struck again, toppling another dinosaur, Pop’s Chock’lit Shoppe. The struggling diner has held on for far too long. We can only hope that its charred remains will be swept away quickly, lost to the winds.”
The offense of mailing week-long gossip trash to Pop’s new place popped the lid on something in her. She felt something ignite in the pit of her belly, an ache for revenge blossoming in her chest ruling over her natural pacifistic tendencies. Hiram Lodge knew that he’d struck the heart of Riverdale, baring the town from the only figure that provided hope and warmth to its inhabitants. She couldn’t fathom how tough it is to have to figure a purpose to your life when you’re eighty-something, uprooted, and had witnessed your ancestors trace, your hard work, livelihood, and desires go up in flames. The original plan was to expand Pop’s. She didn’t have to stick to it, right? What was that often-used Roosevelt quote? Do what you can, with what you have, where you are. Except that she’d go to the eye of the battle to revive Pop’s and that she’d do with the money she’d been saving. She left a note to her parents and grandpa set for Newyork’s crime capital.
She killed her engine in the parking lot. The diner was objectively a massive mess yet it held its debris together. The windows were broken, vinyl booths burnt. She pushed past the kitchen door and was surprised that it wasn’t trashed too. In a moment, she was circled by angry-looking men, gesturing widely and howling something to her face.
“Who the hell are you, intruder?” The words sounded intelligible and once she registered the question, she took a step closer to the scowling man and matched his tone.
“I’m Tabitha Tate, the new owner. Who the hell are you and what are you doing on my property?”
Her index finger was dangerously poking into the man’s chest. Her heart pounded against her ribs. Civility only ran deep in Riverdale and if she was to confront Hiram Lodge, she’d have to learn some jabs.
Something flickered in the men’s eyes. They were gauging her to find a trait in her face connecting her to Pop, but they weren’t given much time to do so as she frowned, demanding immediate answers.
“Pop used to give us free meals at the end of the day. He left...you know, after the incident . We found that the kitchen was functional. The speakeasy has been spared too. We sleep in there.”
His words came in a slur. He looked at the gaunt figures emerging from the stairs. She could have kicked them out, they weren’t a part of the plan but her grandpa was good, he persevered through the town’s corruption and wickedness. She nodded lightly and headed out.
Exhaustion won over as she cried herself on a cheap motel bed. She’d been shielded her whole life, never had gotten this close to poverty and hardship. Day one was a lot to take in for someone who reeked of privilege and entitlement. In the dark of her foot square room, her fear of failure swelled, threatening to crush her lungs but as the first slanting rays of morning sun glinted through the blinds, she found that she could shoulder it all, that she’d give her best, fail and try again, fail better. She cared so much , and she wanted her grandpa to know it.
Meeting Archie Andrews reassured her. There were sparse forces in Riverdale acting under the veil to help the needy and save the town. Unfortunately, Archie’s crew was dispersed between the fire station, the community center, and the mines. She thought of the men in her diner, maybe if they were supervised, they’d do the work for a decent paycheck and free meals. They were delighted and agreed immediately to set work into motion. Pop’s office was intact, so she got access to some of her grandpa's recipes and his well-handled books. He had been doing it all by himself for so long. The menu’s prices were symbolic, the items varied, tasty, complex and weirdly named. She had simply no idea how to prepare those. Culinary prowess wasn’t exactly proportionate to shared DNA. The money would cover the renovation’s expenses and a month's worth of rent but then she’d be broke.
The restoration went almost smoothly except for that one time Reggie Mantle, Hiram’s wingman, lurked behind the diner with a bunch of Ghoulies as one of the crew called them. He said they wanted to scare them off, intimidate her but Archie contacted a lady, Toni Topaz, Serpent queen, social worker, cheerleading coach at Riverdale High and soon-to-be mother -yes, everybody was multitasking, even eight-months pregnant women- whose gang’s engines roared, encircling the Pop’s and terrorizing the offenders. Repairs brought her closer to Riverdale’s story, its original sin, the murder of a kid by his own father, its gangs' war, and the town's villain, Hiram Lodge, the shoe shiner’s kid turned mobster. Her Pop was a man of few words but his actions spoke volumes.
Pop’s was as good as new, hosting one more time an exhilarated crew and celebrating their work. The business should be launched soon but no amount of Youtube videos would help her develop her non-existent cooking skills. Her grandpa's recipes were indecipherable, too much scribbling on the margins. Her batter was either too runny or too thick, her milkshakes good but nowhere near as delectable as her grandfather’s. Burgers were, needless to say, an impossibility at this stage. She prided herself on excelling at the coffee machine but the kitchen tools were scary, voluminous, the knives too long, as if ready to go for a slaughter scene -do not even get her started on the fryer. She excluded some items from the menu, and Pop’s was more of a Café than a restaurant, until then she’d have to figure something out.
She hung a staff wanted sign and went about scrubbing the counter.