Her hair’s bright. Unnaturally red. Not half-bad from behind. That’s the idea. The walls are maroon. Aqua, surf, and palm tables are scattered throughout.
A creak from the door. A short middle aged man steps in quietly. Frizz meets him at the register. Frizz is the waitress with the unnaturally red hair not half bad from behind. A little terrier by his black shoes. He looks past her.
Romero approaches quickly from the kitchen wiping his hands on a towel.
- God man where u been?
- Romero!
- Acupulco, you?
- U know…workin’ hard.
Both laugh. Romero does a little dance in his skeleton’s frame. Michael stands up.
- Romero.
- Yees Michael?
- Corn.
- Yees.
He bows. Acapulco follows him closely. My eyes fall to his bulging crotch as he walks by. He sits at the counter by the kitchen. His black straight seamless shirt is unbuttoned down to his hairless sternum. Bald head too. Hiding some sort of ethnicity. He settles in. Orders five meatballs. Sauce on the side. The bright red in the white china. Then the meat
-Yeah, five.
He holds his hand up.
In walks an older man wearing a Hawaiian shirt. He announces “BLT” and seats himself in the corner by the window, facing the wall. Frizz asks Romero to take his order.
- BLT please.
- Flies?
He smiles, exposing a gold tooth under his unfortunate mustache.
- No rice.
- Flies.
- Hold the rice please.
- Eff arr i eee ess
- No fries.
Hawaiian nods. A bar of sunlight lies across Acapulco’s shoulders and neck. He looks pensively into the steel kitchen. Michael holds a newspaper up over his shoulder. The headline is about the terrorist attack in Norway.
- You see this Joe?
- Yeah.
Acapulco cuts a meatball in half.
- Jesus. I got fifty graves over there.
- Where?
- Norway.
- Who?
- Family. Ancestors. Fifty or so graves.
Acapulco chews slowly.
- You gonna’ get buried there?
- No. I’ll probably go with dad—mom n’ dad. Over here in Glenvi—Jesus H Christ!
Michael leans back in his chair and looks up at Frizz, letting his newspaper float to the table.
- Just glance at it. Every time I read my paper, you try and read the whole damn thing over my shoulder.
- Oh I—
- —you walk by and glance at what I’m reading. Glance. Don’t read.
And a man walked in talked about dead people that used to come there. He paid and on the way out he paused triumphantly by the door and told Frizz that nobody carries five dollar bills anymore.
2 comments:
Not quite sure about the last sentence, but it does infuse the rest of the piece with certain urgency, as if there should be something important, something grand, to see behind the colloquial conversations that you just presented us.
On a whole, it feels authentic. Some good details throughout (liked the bar of sunlight) and the characters are felt.
I can't help but notice that your last post is titled "Cafe" and this is titled "Diner" and the tone throughout seems to carry the same cadence. (Not to be too prescriptive, like what Chambers mentioned today,) but I like the idea of maybe writing a series of these... Cafe, Diner, etc, since they could flow into each other nicely. Just a thought...
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