Saturday Night at the Lakeside Supper Club

ALSO BY J. RYAN STRADALKitchens of the Great MidwestThe Lager Queen of Minnesota VIKINGAn imprint of Penguin Random House LLCpenguinrandomhouse.comCopyright © 2023 by J. Ryan StradalPenguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.A Pamela Dorman Book/VikingLIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATANames: Stradal, J. Ryan, author.Title: Saturday night at the Lakeside Supper club : a novel / J. Ryan Stradal.Description: New York : Pamela Dorman Books/Viking, [2023]Identifiers: LCCN 2022039043 (print) | LCCN 2022039044 (ebook) | ISBN 9781984881076 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781984881083 (ebook)Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.Classification: LCC PS3619.T7224 S28 2023 (print) | LCC PS3619.T7224 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20220829LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022039043LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022039044Cover art and design: Nathan BurtonDESIGNED BY MEIGHAN CAVANAUGH, ADAPTED FOR EBOOK BY CORA WIGENThis is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.pid_prh_6.0_143148852_c0_r0 ContentsCoverAlso by J. Ryan StradalTitle PageCopyrightDedicationChapter OneChapter TwoChapter ThreeChapter FourChapter FiveChapter SixChapter SevenChapter EightChapter NineChapter TenChapter ElevenChapter TwelveChapter ThirteenChapter FourteenChapter FifteenChapter SixteenChapter SeventeenChapter EighteenChapter NineteenChapter TwentyChapter Twenty-OneChapter Twenty-TwoChapter Twenty-ThreeAcknowledgmentsAbout the Author_143148852_ For Auden, if he so chooses OneMariel, 1996Mariel Prager believed in heaven, because she’d been there once, so far. She’d like to report that it looks an awful lot like Minnesota. The next best place to heaven, in her experience, was a type of restaurant found in the upper Midwest called a supper club. When she walked into a good one, she felt both welcome and somewhere out of time. The decor would be old-fashioned, the drinks would be strong, and the dining experience would evoke beloved memories, all for a pretty decent price.• • •SINCE SHE WAS A KID, Mariel had spent countless days at Floyd and Betty’s Lakeside Supper Club on scenic Bear Jaw Lake, Minnesota. The place wasn’t particularly scenic itself, just a one-story brown wooden building with bright red front doors and tall windows on the side facing the lake. The sign outside read FINE DINING AT A FINE VALUE SINCE 1919, and because everyone trusts neon, fulfilling that promise was the duty of the owner, which, for the past two weeks, had been Mariel. On her watch, a proper supper club meal began with a free relish tray and basket of bread, followed by a round of brandy old-fashioneds, and then a lavish amount of hearty cuisine, with fish on Fridays, prime rib on Saturdays, and grasshoppers for dessert.• • •BEFORE HE DIED, Mariel’s grandpa Floyd had told her that she was ready to take over sole ownership, but this morning, she wished that someone else—anyone else—were in charge instead. After locking the front door of her house, Mariel wanted to hurl her body into the lake and float away.For a long time, she’d simply managed the Lakeside’s bar. It was a job she’d kept since becoming the owner, because it was the greatest watering hole in the north. It was loud and smoky, her hands were never dry, she never sat down, and she loved it. Every summer weekend, the horseshoe-shaped bar and its wood-paneled lounge were packed with people fresh from fishing boats and softball games and cars that had driven up from the Cities. It was a place where people chose to be on the most memorable nights of their lives, and it was a pleasure to be at the center of it all.After what happened last night, though, she wasn’t up for any of it, but that didn’t matter. If she wasn’t standing behind the bar when it opened at 5:00 p.m., people would talk.• • • MARIEL’S QUIET, PEACEFUL COMMUTE to work had always been her favorite part of the day. From door to door, it took exactly fifty-four seconds—the time it takes to make a perfect old-fashioned—to walk at an ordinary pace down her driveway, across a county road, up the gravel shoulder, and into the paved parking lot. It had her two favorite smells, the sharp, earthy tang of pine trees on one end, and the stubborn mix of stale cigarette smoke and fry grease on the other, smells she’d always associated with belonging and pleasure. If she spotted an animal en route, she’d give it a name, like that day, when she saw a squirrel she named Pronto. Most important, if she could make it from home to the supper club without any interruption, it’d be a good day, guaranteed. The day before, her husband, Ned, stopped her in the driveway to kiss her before he left for the weekend, and it had been the worst day in a long time.That morning, Mariel almost made it. She was a few steps into the Lakeside’s parking lot when someone ruined her day.“Mariel!” a woman’s voice bellowed from a white station wagon. It was Hazel, the oldest of her regulars from the bar.Mariel sighed, and turned to face her. “How ya doing, Hazel?”“Better than I deserve,” Hazel replied. “So, where’d you go last night? You just up and vanished on us.”“I was feeling sick, so I went home early.” That’s all Hazel needed to know.“Oh, jeez. Food poisoning?”Mariel just decided to nod.Hazel responded with a brief, exaggerated grimace. “Well, you look all right today. By the way, nice T-shirt.”Mariel had to look down to remember what she was wearing. It was a Bruce Springsteen concert shirt from sixteen years ago. Maybe the last time she’d been to a concert.“Thanks. Well, I should get to work.”“One more thing. Your mother called me. She needs a ride home from church, and wants to know if you can do it.”Mariel hadn’t seen her mother for more