Faulty Predictions

Miller Duskman’s Mistakes

118 Miller Duskman’s Mistakes Miller Duskman’s first mistake was shipping the fancy pizza oven from Italy to Morningstar, Ohio. His second was taking out a full-page ad in the Star Record to inform us that his pizza was made from a gourmet Neapolitan recipe. No one wanted his pizza with that burnt thin crust and the cheese made from buffalo milk. Why would anyone want anything to do with Italian buffalos when you could drive five miles from town and find farm after farm with cows producing good, clean American milk? If Miller had done his research, he would have known that in Morningstar we liked our pizza from Joe’s, and we liked the crust doughy and thick, the cheese a gooey mix of provolone and mozzarella. We didn’t need to see dough tossed in the air. We loved watching Joe push out dough with his stubby fingers in the dented metal pans he’d used for years. And besides, we had no money for twenty-dollar pizzas that wouldn’t fill our stomachs. The glass factory had closed down two years before and the broom factory had closed right after that; many people were still out of work when Miller showed up. I’ve run the Ladybug Bed and Breakfast for the last twenty-five yearsinMorningstar.AskmeanythingaboutthistownandIcanlikely giveyouananswer;peopletalktome,tellmethings.Theystopbyfora muffinoracupofcoffee—andmindyou,IneverchargeanyoneIknow for food—and they tell me what they’ve seen and heard. And so when Missy Carlton, the librarian, stopped by with the newest Mary Higgins miller duskman's mistakes 119 Clark I’d requested, sipped the mug of Earl Grey with cream I’d prepared for her, and said there was a new face in town, I listened hard. The rumor was that Miller had an aunt and uncle who’d lived in Morningstar years ago, and he’d come to stay with them one summer when he was a child. After he’d grown up and made his money on Wall Street, he decided to come back to Morningstar because of his good memories of that childhood summer. But I’m not sure if that story is true. Miller couldn’t have been older than thirty. Most of us have been in Morningstar all our lives, and if a new child, especially one like Miller with a head the shape of a tire swing, appeared for a summer, we would have noticed. And there are no Duskmans in town, never have been. Certainly no one claimed him when he showed up and opened the Brilliance Café on Friendsville Street in the space where Ike’sHardwareusedtobebeforeLowe’scametothenorthendoftown and drove poor Ike Bell into the grave. Even those of us who wanted to keep shopping at Ike’s had a hard time, since Lowe’s was cheaper and hadabetterselection.Wewonderedifthestressoflosinghisbusiness caused Ike’s heart attack. We felt sorry about that, guilty, and swore we’d do better about supporting our own. Miller Duskman’s third mistake was building the outside of the Brilliance Café completely out of glass. Who wanted to be watched while eating, like an animal in the zoo? I guess he thought it made the place look cold and modern, like something you’d see in a city. All that old brick and stone downtown, and then the Brilliance Café glowing like some giant ice cube plopped in the middle of the block. I’m not sure how the whole building managed to stay upright; I couldn’t see any metal or glue or anything else holding all that glass together. I’m sure he got some architect from New York City to draw up the plans for it, someone who knew nothing about the weather in Ohio, and I didn’t trust that the building would stay standing through the windy fall and the blizzards of winter. Every time a storm hit Morningstar, I’d wonder if the building would be knocked over in a gust of wind, and I was always surprised when I drove by it and saw that it was still there. To tell you the truth, that all-glass building was like something miller duskman's mistakes 120 magical, and maybe if someone we liked had constructed it, we would have been impressed. But we couldn’t believe Miller tore down Ike’s Hardware. The structure was sound, the floors made of good black cherry, and the building had...