fortytwo

(part two)

He is not alone. The woman he’s with is tall, frail-looking, and short white hair. Not from age, though, at least I don’t think. She stands near the door, which is near the counter with the cash register, and watches me closely. 

He walks with deliberate pace, each stride precisely as long as the last. He doesn’t blink. I do.

As he sits, he pulls a pack of cigarettes from his coat pocket and it makes a slap as it falls to the table. He motions toward them, but I decline. As soon as he pulls a smoke from the pack, the waitress tells him there is no smoking. She tells him this as she is pouring coffee in the empty cup in front of me. 

He never takes his eyes off me.

He lights the cigarette.

The waitress pours coffee into the empty cup in front of him.

She pulls the cigarette from his lips and drops it in the coffee cup in front of him. She is proud of the hissing sound. He looks down at the soaked cigarette and ruined coffee, and then looks up at the waitress. He still hasn’t blinked. He tells her that his friend by the door may like a slice of pie. As the waitress walks away towards the front door, he removes another cigarette from the pack, lights it, and inhales deeply.

His partner talks to the waitress. She seems very imposing. I have not met her, but I am afraid of her. She stares deeply into the waitress’s eyes for what couldn’t have been more than seconds.

He blows smoke in my face as he stares at me. I do not cough.

The waitress returns, and I can see that her left eye is painted red, like all the blood vessels in it burst all at once. She looks at my guest, and looks at me, and asks us if we would like more coffee.

fortyone

(part one)

I’m not real. I don’t think I exist.

He didn’t ask me why I wanted to meet at this diner. He just said he would be here at ten. I’m early, because I’m always early. I’m like clockwork.

Everyone here is real, I think. The waitress is the same one who serves me three cups of coffee and a slice of cherry pie with whipped cream every Wednesday night, the only night I come here. I’m sure she’s real. There have been a few times where I’ve seen people who I didn’t think were real. They’d come by once or twice, and then never again.

The ceiling tiles have stains of yellow and brown from when smoking was allowed in here. It’s been long enough, someone should change those. Everyone is eating as they should, talking as they should, being how they should. Everything in order.

I feel nervous. I know I should be slightly sweating. It’s a Thursday. It is ten. A man with a fedora walks into the diner. He’s here to see me.

He exists.

#109

We met for a date in the park. You brought sandwiches, not knowing what I would like, but you had a beef n cheddar and a jamocha shake and I knew right then you were not like all the others. I was already breathless with happiness by the time the storm started, and we climbed down from the tree it’s perfect for climbing you said, waiting to see my reaction. We made sandcastles under a lightning sky and laughed till we cried and I didn’t know then that laughter and tears would be our lives.

#108

it's been years, she thought. years! maybe it's unconventional, but is it conventional that he's really the only person i want to talk to lately?
she typed out a letter. it was short, funny but not overwhelmingly. she didn't edit a word. pretense never escaped him anyway. no explicit, "how are you, what are you up to lately, we haven't talked in so long". just the conversation, where they left it off that night when she desperately threw her arms around his neck and his arms hung decidedly, achingly, unwaveringly at his sides.
she had asked him that night if he was still even a little bit in love with her.
three long strides toward the door and then he turned. "call anytime."

forty

She grinned as she continued, "I know that isn't the case with you, I feel like I know you well enough to know that."

"No," I said. "You really don't."

And that was the last time our eyes met.

And that was the last thing I ever said to her.

thirtyninepointfive

(this one doesn't count, but I've had a couple people ask about it lately, so I figured I'd put it somewhere...)

Remember when you said 'la la la' and I said that was my favorite song, for ever and never, and you said you hated the smell of aqua velva and i said good, because i'd never buy that swill, and I wish I never left you and I wish I never loved you, and we gave hubris a name and that name is Louis, only the English spelling instead, and you realized that the colors of your flag were also the colors of a beaten corpse, and you kept a journal of all your failings and it was a page longer than the journal of your success because the pen ran out of ink, and another awkward moment passes, and 'goodbye' is written backwards on the bathroom mirror, and good old Hank reminded us that "the southwest is full of sadness", and the folk singers lost their fingertips to their centuries of steel strings and muzzle-loaded love letters, and we cherished every minute of our empty picture frames, and we agreed that we hated the word "sucess" almost as much as we hated the word "hate". almost as much as we hated each other.

thirtynine

She sang at imperfect pitch but splendid meter about her dreams and about her loves and about how they were often not the same things, and that nothing is. And her new coal-eyed song without sound is the most telling of all, and all I wanted was to be told.