I sipped bitter hot coffee from a thick white ironstone mug with a stained chunk broken from the lip. It sucked. The artificial creamer in small plastic cups did not help, nor did the sugar. I’m diabetic, so I couldn’t use it anyway. I drank the coffee only because it was hot, and I was cold from being outside. The bench on which I sat in the booth beside the front window was tacky from being poorly wiped with a filthy wet rag. Condensation dribbled down the glass. As cold as it was outside, inside Jean’s Diner was steaming like asphalt after a summer storm. The aroma of coffee, eggs, hashbrowns, waffles, toast, bacon, and sausage collided like bad music, the players out of tune, making a sour mess out of what should have been hearty breakfast food. I yearned for the purity of fresh bread baking, the living smell of yeast.
It was the 287th morning that I wished I was somewhere else. Anywhere else. From the dour faces surrounding me, I surmised I might be in the right place even if it wasn’t where I wanted to be. Sad lives collecting wordlessly, drawn like suicidal moths to flame, fluttering against the deadly light.
The broken bell above the entry door rang another loser into the heat. Snow flurries spun on lazy breezes that swept dull gray air from corner to corner, car to car. With a spare napkin, I wiped the window for a translucent view of the parking lot filled with rusty cars and dented pickup trucks. I had arrived on foot, my piece-of-shit car in the shop waiting for a repair I could not afford.
The skinny guy in the last booth hacked so long everyone turned to see him cough the shattered remnants of his lungs onto the greasy floor. He drained his small glass of tepid water and tried to draw a deep breath. He chased the water with a slurp of the same bad coffee I was drinking then lit an other smoke.
Damn, I hated being there.
A woman two tables away struggled to levitate her sleep-starved eyelids. Much of her excess makeup had melted during the endless night, and what remained clinging to her face she had smeared into unintended places. Blue eyeshadow darkened the end of her jaw below her earlobe. She was a wreck and tried hard beyond reason to smile at everyone from under her sagging eyes. Everyone. A pretense of contentment.
I didn’t smile at anyone, not even the waitress. And the waitress didn’t care. She was marking time at the start of a long shift, no doubt suffocating in the stench of the place, doubtless longing for her first break.
I stewed alone, full of reproach and antagonism. I could have picked a fight with a nun. Why hadn’t the owner of this dump scraped the decades of grease from the corners, freshened the slimy walls with a couple coats of paint? Sure, the diner was cheap, but couldn’t it be clean?
The lousy coffee ran straight through me. I needed to pee badly, but I refused to walk to the back hallway that I knew would be cluttered with a dirty mop, a scummy bucket of gray water, and roaches rattling as they scattered to the walls. The restroom door knob would be grimy and slick, loosely hanging from its final screw. Not only would the toilet be fecal- and urine-stained up to the rim, but even the sink would be coated thick with old dirt, the detritus of sad cheap losers like myself, despite being showered dozens of times daily with soap and water. Hell no, I could hold my pee. I was staying in my seat and smoking another cigarette.
“You orderin’, hon?” The waitress appeared beside me in her pale polyester uniform and spat the disingenuous term of endearment with true spite, maybe more.
“Don’ know. Haven’t made up my mind. Jus’ gimme some time.”
“Ain’t got all day, and you takin’ a whole booth. Otta move up to the counter.”
“Think I’ll sit where I am.” I glared into her eyes with disdain, daring her to make me move. “More coffee, if you can call it that.”
“Yeh. Sure. A bully. A smart-ass. Order somethin’ or my boss’ll….”
“Your boss’ll what!” I wasn’t scared. I hated the joint. What could he do, throw me out? It’d be a favor.
She spun her heels on the slippery floor and clicked her way back into the kitchen where she leaned into the cook’s ear and bobbled her head while pointing behind her back in my direction. I guess I pissed her off. Too bad. I lifted the menu and scanned the recitation once again. Impossible to segregate the smells and feeling of the place, nothing looked appetizing. Of course, I only had a five in my pocket which didn’t help. Sausage and egg biscuit. Yeh, I could afford that. Douse it with some fake maple syrup and a few pats of butter. It wouldn’t be much more than a snack, but I’d have to call it breakfast.
I stared out the window opaque with steam, seeing nothing, thinking less, and almost imagining myself on a beach with a soft sea breeze and the murmur of small waves rushing up the sand. I didn’t notice the waitress leave the kitchen with the cook and round the end of the counter coming my way.
“Hey, asshole. You givin’ Suzy a hard time?”
“Not a bit. She’s just short on people skills and thought I was takin’ too long to decide about breakfast.”
“You seem to be the one lackin’ people skills, as you call them. Why don’ you just move on? We don’ need jerks like you takin’ up space.”
“But I want to order breakfast. You still in business? Sell food to pay your rent?” I waved the crumpled menu toward his face.
Suzy interrupted, “You said you didn’ know what you wanted.”
“So, now I do.”
The cook shook his head with telltale disgust. “Suzy, take the jerk’s order. I gotta get back to the grill.”
“Yeh, cook me somethin’ tasty.” I wanted to throw a bottle of ketchup at his departing fat ass, greasy towel dangling from his belt, white t-shirt and pants stained.
Suzy glared at me, pen poised over her order pad. “I’m waitin’.”
“Yep, I see that. It’s what a waitress does, ain’t it?” My contrived accent and smirk belittled her, but she knew she could do nothing about it. I paused long enough for her to start to speak again before I interrupted, “Sausage and egg biscuit.”
She hurriedly scribbled my order on the Guest Check and hustled off to hang it on spring of the stainless order wheel at the kitchen window, then grabbed a pot of coffee to make the rounds to customers with dry or cold cups. I relaxed and lit another cigarette, my eyes wandering the room. Why had I been so hard on her? Shit, she was just trying to make some money for rent. She might have a kid or an old disabled mother at home. We call people who work for minimum wage the “working poor.” They never make enough to get ahead, never more than a week from being broke. One bout of flu and all her cards would tumble. Hell, truth was I was closer to being broke than I admitted to myself. Not enough money to pay the repair shop so I could drive my shit car. I had bought a pack of cigarettes from Mannie’s bodega on my way to the diner, and I had enough left to buy a biscuit. That was it until pay day. Part time minimum wage slave working poor I was, though I tried to disguise it with a crappy attitude and offending other people. I needed to see myself as better than someone, anyone.
For a brief moment, I considered apologizing, but then realized I could barely cover the cost of the coffee and biscuit with a couple nickels left for a tip. Not enough to keep her from feeling cheated and insulted. Not enough for her to accept my apology as sincere. No, better leave it alone. I had screwed up, and there was nothing to do.
I squashed the cigarette butt in the ashes of the glass ashtray as Suzy dropped the plate with my biscuit on the table.
“More coffee?” She omitted “Hon” this time. Guess that told me where I ranked in her world.
“Sure.” I curled my lips in a partial smile, but I bet it appeared as more of a sneer. Suzy splashed the coffee into the mug and slid to the next booth without another word to me. Yes, I had pissed her off, and nothing was going to change that. Better just eat and leave, head back into the snow.
Tension touched my shoulder. The eyes of nearby customers revealed a fear that I might flare, pull a pistol or a knife, strike without control, a patron with no limits. The couple closest to the front door rose swiftly and dropped a few bills on their table as they hurriedly escaped the smothering heat, the incipient threat, fleeing into the fog of wind-swept flurries.
Nothing mattered to me. Why did I stop in this lousy place to grab a bite? I slugged a swallow of hot coffee and slid out of the booth, dropped my five, seething because I knew self-important Suzy would draw her own image of what kind of person I was, a loser, selfish and misanthropic, if she even knew what misanthropic meant. Of course she wouldn’t. No matter how right she might be, she did not know me and could not know who I really am as a person. The people I despise are always that way, thinking they know what they do not, oblivious to not knowing what they do not know. Just down on my luck and still paying most of my bills with some delusional prospects of a better job, better pay, at least better than she would ever do in a greasy diner like where she worked.
To hell with her and all of them. I humped my coat over my shoulders and buried my hands deeply into my pockets to brace for the frigid wind outside. Ignoring the faces that followed me, anxious what I might do next, I walked out the front door, ringing the broken bell again and making sure the door slammed shut behind me.