The Mill Dinette

by DRM

She sat at the back table by the big air vent that had never worked, some­times nurs­ing a cup of cof­fee, other times mov­ing quickly through an egg cream and a cup of soup with a look of vora­cious satisfaction.

Once or twice, she and Renee, the coun­ter­man, mur­mured to each other, leav­ing Renee with a sly smile on his face. But most of the time she was alone. She seemed to notice what went on around her.

I would sit at my table and play out ways to open con­ver­sa­tion. Just be direct, I would say, and then I’d do noth­ing because I wanted to honor her feel­ing of being alone. I spec­u­lated to myself about her, though. There was noth­ing that kept me from doing that.

She was about my age and attrac­tive. She was alone. Only Renee ever spoke to her, even though I saw her almost as fre­quently as I was there, which was often, since the egg plate was inex­pen­sive and the cof­fee was fresh. One time, she’d bro­ken her own quiet and hur­ried back to the pay phone at the end of the counter. That was the only time she did some­thing out of rou­tine. All the other times she ate, waited and left. She didn’t even look at the mag­a­zines or papers on the counter.

Renee and I rarely every talked. We were sus­pi­cious of each other. He was cheery and bois­ter­ous with his set, a col­lec­tion of attrac­tive young col­lege women, neigh­bor­hood peo­ple, book­ies and the occa­sional hale-well-met col­lege jock that wan­dered in. I was surly and earnest. I wanted to know what the story behind the story was, the sor­did truth, the romance and mis­for­tune. I didn’t under­stand yet that some of the best parts of life were just string­ing together the min­utes with­out worry for the big picture.

He got my order right and never made me wait.

One night, the rain began to pelt down with­out warn­ing. The girl was just about to go out the door. I offered her my jacket.

She took it with­out say­ing any­thing. I was sur­prised she didn’t protest. She just smiled.

The smile was thin, a taut line along her upper lip, lag­gard at the bot­tom, threat­en­ing to slump into a pout.

The next evening she returned my jacket.

“You kept me from melt­ing,” she said.

“Like the wicked witch?” I was look­ing for mean­ing, the secret she must be keeping.

“Like an ice cube. It was a warm rain,” she smiled.

I laughed. She leaned pushed down on the chair where she had draped my jacket.

“Why don’t you sit down,” I suggested.

A con­ver­sa­tion launched in quick darts of delight and mys­tery. We talked about the counter, about the wall, about the ways that the chairs held symet­ri­cal posi­tions over hours and hours. We talked about the rain, where it had come from, fields, cities that were faint mem­o­ries or dis­tant oppor­tu­ni­ties. We became free. We floated on a slug­gish stream, filled with the untapped famil­iar­ity of the hours and days that had pre­ceded us.

We paused. She told me her story.

She was a lit­tle girl and she saw her father kill a man.

Her aunt saved all of the news­pa­per arti­cles and sent them to her when she went to col­lege. She had been lived in a series of fos­ter homes for most of the decade.

“I would sit over the pho­tos for min­utes at a time ask­ing if that was really me. What I was remem­ber and what I knew hap­pened were com­pletely different.”

“I’ve had a lot of fright­en­ing mem­o­ries,” she said. “I avoid nos­tal­gia. You’ll never know the curves it can throw at you.”

She was sit­ting back, with her hands clasped at her belly and her heels kicked out like a cowboy.