Diner for two

“PASS the sugar, would you please, darlin?”. The man was old and looked weary, thought Daisy. He was oddly dressed, wearing a black Stetson and dressed all in black, with a thick, heavy black coat that still cloaked him. It was August, and a hot one. 98 degrees Fahrenheit outside, yet he hadn’t taken the thing off. Not like the AC was that great in here either. He didn’t appear overheated or bothered by the thick blanket that engulfed him, but there was a sadness about him, she devised. He slouched slightly and didn’t look up. And when he spoke it was with a soft, raspy voice. He didn’t seem to want to be there. Or certainly didn’t want to be seen there. 

Daisy slung the glass sugar dispenser down the recently cleaned counter so it glided towards him, like a rock on an ice rink during a curling match. She pictured miniature little men and women chasing the curling stone down the counter’s ice after it had been dispatched by the lead; frantically sweeping in front of it to varying degrees of ferocity as they either tried to speed the stone up or slow it down, guiding it precisely to its mark. Maybe they would use the straws as brooms, or the diner’s knives and forks. Spilt salt or sugar accounted for the shaved ice their skates churned up. 

She pictured a glorious victory, but the old man’s thin, bony hand, clad by what looked an obscenely large amount of skin that hung macabrely over the pointy bones like an oversized sweater, reached out meekly and accepted the heavy receptacle. His hand was so frail she thought the sugar dispenser might smash it in pieces. “Thanks for the sugar, Sugar”. Suddenly there was a thin, warm smile adorning his face and she found herself blushing. This man must be 50 years her senior and she was not aroused by him, but there was something in that minute moment of geniality that made him so familiar and friendly a strange sense of allure towards him washed over her; almost like they had known each other in a previous life. He heaved the container up like it was an unbearable, unmanageable weight, like an Olympic weightlifter struggling with an insurmountable barbell, determined to obtain that unobtainable gold medal. Once again he exuded fragility. He poured the contents into his coffee, for what seemed like an age. He must have emptied half the tumbler into his cup. He drank, quietly, as if any sound he might make would arouse suspicion. He was arousing plenty just by his presence and demeanour, Daisy thought.

She went about her duties, serving other customers. When she returned from the kitchen a few minutes later, a book was open in front of him and he was reading it methodically, he was about halfway in it seemed. There were no orders waiting and a few customers had left so she approached. She could now make out what he was reading. “Oh, I love that book,” she said. He sensed genuine glee in her voice. “We studied it last year in school. I hadn’t ever really liked books prior to that one, but it kind of changed my perspective, on everything.” 

“How do you mean?” croaked the old man. 

“Well, before that all I used to care about was cheerleading and boys and going to the mall at the weekends with my friends. Then, I got the job here after my mom lost hers and dad got sick; we started reading that book in class and I started to realise there might be more to life. It made me dream and yearn for something more, beyond high school, beyond this town, beyond my previous boundaries.”

“Yes mam, On The Road tends to have that effect on people. It certainly did so for me,” he said, almost with an air of triumph.

The statement obviously begged a question, but she was happy to oblige. “So, were you Dean or Sal?” she said.

“Oh, neither really,” the old man replied. He smiled and added: “More so Sal, perhaps. That book came out when I was just outta high school and every kid was hitting the road and realising for the first time that they could escape where they were, what they were, and just go anywhere with just a few bucks in their pocket. I certainly didn’t have Dean’s charisma or moxy. I was kinda nerdy and shy, like Sal I guess. But certainly not as clever or as talented as him. I think I related more to Ed Dunkel.”

“Oh, I loved Carlo Marx,” beamed Daisy. 

“Not Dean?” said the old man, genuine surprise in his voice.

“Nope. I know he’s supposed to be this wild madman who’s handsome and charismatic and this great fireball of energy, but the impression he left me with was that he was just a bit of an asshole.” Her words were tinged with blunt honesty. “I much preferred Sal, but my favourite was Carlo.” 

There was a pause, a comfortable one. The man slurped the remnants of his mug and motioned for another cup. Daisy grabbed the jug off the hotplate and poured. She removed plates from the end of the counter and delivered them to the kitchen, returning to wipe down the counter thoroughly; waving to the departing couple and smiling cheerily at them as they vacated. 

“So, you did the whole pancake stop tour of America? Went coast to coast, followed the path of Dean and Sal?” Daisy asked, coming back behind the counter to pick up where she left off. Outside you could hear the continual yet meandering calm of the traffic roaring along Route 84 towards Lubbock.

“No, not at all,” came the response. “They inspired me to leave my home town, get out and explore the world. But I didn’t go to any of the places they went or the things they did really. I just left one day and sort of never really came back. I roamed for a little while, travelled with what money I had, then got jobs here and there. But I never came back home to Elk Mountain, not for 7 years. And only then because my momma passed.”

“Elk Mountain.” It was more of a statement than a question, but the man sensed she’d never heard of it. “What the hell is that, sounds like a made-up place?”

“Well, it kind of is, I guess. It’s out in the middle of nowhere, Carbon County, Wyoming. Population, less than 200 I believe.”

“That’ where you’re from?”

“Was, I guess. Never felt like home much. When I left, never really came back, had nothing to come back to, ‘cept for momma. But after hitting the road like Mr Kerouac suggested, I settled down in a few places, got a few different jobs, fell in love a few times, fell out of love a bunch. Got married once, had a few kids, but then we went our separate ways. Don’t really see the kids too much, not anymore anyway. Got a few grandkids too but never seen ‘em either. The kids took their mother’s side after we parted and I just sorta went back to my life on the road. Once I got on it after high school, it was always where I felt most comfortable. Where I belonged. That’s how I felt.”

A gleam had appeared in Daisy’s eyes. She peered into his hoping to see something of her future in them. But they were much like him, dark and mysterious. They didn’t give too much away. 

“So, where were your favourite places?” There was a tinge of excitement and expectation in her voice. She was eager to know more about the world that was out there from someone who’d been out there and explored it. 

He regaled her with tales of his trips east and west, to San Francisco in the swinging 60s and the feeling of freedom. Those years had passed pretty quickly with few different women and a lot of puff. In the 70s he’d spent a brief period as a forester in West Virginia. Hard, exhausting, filthy work. But great people and breathtaking views. There’d been a girl there, Carla, that he thought he might have been serious about at one point, but it never amounted to anything. 

He’d worked at a ski resort near Utah for a couple of years, supplementing that with working as a barman during the quiet and dull off-season. That had been where he did settle down somewhat and met his wife, though he never told Daisy her name, and he didn’t bring up the kids again, although they must have had them there as he’d taken a serious job not long after meeting her in an accountancy firm, he said. 

Daisy occasionally tended to her laborious tasks but it was getting late, the night had come in, and there weren’t many customers in the diner at all now. She didn’t realise until looking at the clock that read 10.04pm that a couple of hours had zoomed by chatting to the wondering minstrel. She wondered how often and how many other people had been entertained by his tales of the road. “Jeez, my shift has finished. Wait her while I get my coat and I’ll give you a lift to wherever you need to go.” She sped away into the kitchen. 

“So then, it seems you don’t much like talking about your family, especially the kids and grandkids, why’s that?” Daisy’s voice echoed down the diner as she returned for the last time from the kitchen, the door swung back and forth on its hinges, which had ever so slightly begun to creak. But now, it was just her left there. The old man had vanished. She looked out onto the dimly lit forecourt but found no sign of him. There were still a few cars left, including hers and the manager’s, but she didn’t recognise any that had left recently, so he couldn’t have driven anywhere. Did he go on foot? There’s no buses this time of night she told herself, and he couldn’t have called a cab in the time I was getting my coat.

She went out the door into the cool evening. There was a crispness in the air now, rare for August. She looked left and right down the road running past the diner, nothing of much except interstate in either direction. He was gone. She went back inside, called to Carl and the guys left in the kitchen that she was taking off and trudged out to her car. She drove home, slowly, a sadness had now crept over her and replaced the buoyancy of the last few hours. 

*****

She came into work the next day just before noon and the hive of activity around the place didn’t register at first. It was a roadside diner, it was always busy, especially at lunchtime. People were frantically coming and going during grateful breaks from their monotonous office jobs in the city, or wearily shuffling in or out, after an arduous journey, or heading back out on one following a feed and a rest. She hadn’t even realised there were multiple cop cars swarming the parking lot and officers talking to customers outside. She was just emerged from the locker room after putting on her uniform when Carl barked her name. “DAISY”. She looked up, startled. “There she is officer, that’s our waitress, Daisy. She was working yesterday. She saw him.”

Daisy stayed where she was, rooted to the spot, as if her legs were trapped in cement. The blonde-haired officer approached her morosely. He was young, early 20s she guessed. Slim, well dressed, but not handsome. His cropped hair didn’t sit at all well on his head and when he flashed her an awkward smile, it revealed his ugly, crooked teeth. She gave him an equally awkward return grin. “What’s going on officer?”

“Miss, have you seen this man?” He shoved an A4 piece of paper in her face, black words on white background with a red trim around the outside. It looked non-descript, save for the bold black lettering at the top. ‘WANTED’. It took her a few more seconds to realise the face staring up at her was the old man’s from the diner the previous day. Her heart dropped. 

“He was in here yesterday,” she said, suddenly keen to present an alibi for herself. “We talked for hours. What’s wrong?”

“He walked out of Cedar Hills Correctional yesterday following a visit from his lawyer,” the officer offered in return, obviously embarrassed. “There was a mix-up somehow and he just strolled out. He’s been inside for the last 30 years after murdering his wife; bludgeoned her to death in the living room one morning and just walked out of the house while his two infant children were in their playpen.”

Daisy’s heart plummeted further. She felt like she was falling. Her legs felt weak and a fog began to cloud her head. All she could hear was the meandering calm of the traffic roaring along Route 84 towards Lubbock outside.