Lovers at the Diner

I never wanted to live here, in this terrible town. Here lived clean people with dirty minds and judging stares, in old rotting houses with peeling layers of paint and moss coating the walls that were once new. All growing old in a quiet town that has nothing more to offer someone like me. I suppose there's a bit of romance to it if you have an imagination. Probably in the fifties or sixties everyone here was a newlywed, looking to turn a rural town into a home, putting up shops and churches and more churches, having kids and settling down. 

I guess now all those people have long since turned old and grey, those of them who aren't in the ground already. And from what I can tell, most are bitter and mean now, since their town of dreams grew old with them. If I was one of those people who was hopeful to my core, and not a shallow romantic, I believe I could find beauty in the crumbling brick or the dandelions sprouting from sidewalk cracks, in the coloured glass windows of a building I dare not step foot in, or the old red barns sitting long unused, but I'm not one of those people. I want my roses handed to me on a silver platter. 

I don't look like someone who would be interested in anything more than this little town. My face reveals me to have lived just under twenty years, but with the way I dress I think from behind I could be mistaken for a retired old cowboy. I’m destined for greatness, I think. In a world outside this town, I’ll live in a whirlwind of romance and intrigue, of luxury and drama. For now though I’ll keep my hands shoved in my jeans pockets and my head down as I go about my business. 

This feels necessary for survival sometimes. Walking down the street means I feel a lot of eyes. I don’t know what it is about me; maybe the way I wear my hair or how I dress, but it seems like in public or even among friends sometimes I’m sort of the odd one out. Like I have some kind of secret criminal identity even I don’t know about. Like when I’m out for a stroll I have to be pulling down wanted posters with my face on them. If that makes any sense at all. As far as I can tell no one's outlawed me here yet, but that doesn't mean it feels any less like it.  

And I write all this from the corner of the diner, where that day an old man was watching me curiously. I noticed he and I were wearing the same jeans. Maybe I was blending in a little too well. 

He and his wife sat down, and he kissed her on the cheek, and well, I sort of wished I had his whole life and not just the same Levis. Sure, I don't like it here all that much, but maybe it would be different if I made my roots in this town a long time ago. I wouldn't mind living in an old house with peeling paint, if its doorway was the one I carried my wife through the day we were married. If I really belonged here, it wouldn't be so bad. 

"Can I get you anything or are you just here for the atmosphere?" 

The waitress leaned one hand on the table and one hand on her hip. I knew her, of course, I knew everyone in that town and everyone knew me. But it wasn’t the kind of knowing where I was familiar with anything more meaningful than her name, or which church her family brought her to. 

“You work here now, Darla?” I guess maybe that was a silly thing to ask. I don’t think she was taking orders and bussing tables for fun. 

“I sure do,” she said, smiling. “Where have you been the last few months?” 

“I don’t know. Home, I guess,” I replied. Gosh, where had I been? “I’ll have a coffee if you don’t mind.” 

“Sure, of course...you’re living in that little cottage house these days, right? Down on...?” 

“Rosehill.” 

“Oh, good for you. That’s a nice neighbourhood. Maybe I’ll pay you a visit sometime, it’s sure been a while.” 

I watched her walk back to the kitchen, wondering what she was talking about. Been a while since when? Maybe that was just something people said. 

The older couple got up and left a few moments later, mumbling as they went something about disliking the waitress’s low-cut shirt. I was of the opposite opinion. 

I got my coffee and found quickly that it was very sweet. So sweet I think I pulled a face and had to hope that Darla hadn’t seen. I could have sworn I ordered black coffee. I thought that around here coffee was just a code word for the most bitter brown liquid you could put in a cup, but maybe I should have been more specific. 

“All good over here?” 

“Coffee’s got sugar in it.” 

“You looked like you could use something a little sweet.” And she winked at me.  

Maybe I could. 

Maybe that’s why I came back to that diner day after day. Me and Darla had some sort of connection, right away, one that made me feel things I thought I never would. She was pretty, and smart and funny, too. I’d sit there slouching in the red leather booth, convinced the world was some horrible place, and she’d lean over the table in the time she should be mopping the floor, and smile in a way that proved me wrong. Thank God I’d gotten that coffee. 

This is what they should have put on my wanted poster, right below my face and the words “dead or alive” should have been “was sweet for the waitress”.  

The more we talked the more I knew about Darla, and I started seeing her face more clearly when I looked back at my memories of this town. She was the girl whose heels clicked furiously on the floor of the school dances I attended. She was the one who I saw sometimes buying a new pair of sunglasses on a cloudy day. She was the girl who passed me on the street, who I never talked to, because she looked like an old Hollywood star just passing through town. She was a blonde with baby blue eyes and perfect proportions, a lot like someone I would see in the sort of movies my grandfather watches. Most often the lady who gets eaten by some kind of monster, or who falls into an unlikely and unexpected love affair. But she didn’t often say things like “save me brad!” or “how will I choose between these two handsome young men?” like they did in those movies. She often said things that made me lay awake at night wishing I had bothered going to school, so I’d have half a shot at being as smart as her. 

I wondered how she did it, sometimes. How did she so seamlessly carry out her life here when I’d just as likely spot a swan in the streets? But I guess I always wanted someone who didn’t seem real. This town was so real I think it scared me a little, it wore down on me. I didn’t want to get old one day. I don’t want to die. I just wanted to be swept off my feet by someone from my dreams and not have to worry about all that. 

And I got my wish, it wasn’t long before me and Darla were dancing together just like I always wanted to do. It didn’t matter that we were in the community center that smelled a little strange, and bad music was playing over the scratchy speakers. She spun me around and laughed, and even though we got a few strange looks, it was worth it. Her dressed to the nines for a local soiree, dancing with me of all people, was enough to make me laugh with her. 

I think little by little I learned that Darla was one of those people I sometimes wished I was. An optimist who always saw the silver lining, and if there was none, sewed it on herself. Eventually I realized that a rose has to come from somewhere. 

A bit of that hope started to rub off on me, holding hands and drinking one milkshake between us in a very cliche manner, I was thinking probably that if Darla wasn’t too much for this town, maybe I wasn't either. The only trouble was that Darla was almost the perfect girl, in the whole world’s eyes. The people on TV and in magazines looked like her, they just didn’t quite act like her. She was a bit too different, an off shade of feminine, a less traditional shade. I didn’t think I was anyone’s perfect anything, unless I was Darla’s. Which was beginning to seem like the case. 

“Gosh, I like having you at work,” she said to me. “It’s like getting paid just to sit around and chat. Hardly anyone but you comes in anyway.” 

“Don’t you have many friends who visit?” 

I guess when I wasn’t with her, I pictured Darla with a few close friends at her hip. 

“I don’t really have many friends in town anymore,” she sighed. “A lot of them moved to bigger cities, or we fell out of touch.” 

“Why didn’t you go with them?” I asked her. “I thought someone like you would be long gone by now. No offence, but you look like an actor who stumbled onto the wrong set.” 

“Not enough money. Not enough motivation,” she told me, and I looked hard for remorse in her voice, which wasn’t there. “It’s slow here but I like it that way. I think maybe we’re on the exact right set. This town looks like the perfect place for a western romance—” Darla put a hand on her forehead and fluttered her lashes— “Picture me tied to the train tracks, maybe you’re hunched over an old-timey bar, you and me riding into the sunset at the end of the movie.” 

That was an interesting scene to bring to my mind. Briefly I pictured Darla in one of those pioneer style outfits with a bonnet and all, I must say, it did not suit her. There was good fun in playing pretend, a sort of comfort in imitating a familiar set of roles. A bit like being a kid and playing with your father’s ties, or stomping around in your mother’s heels, though of course you’ll never be a businessman and you sure won’t marry one. So sure, I could be a toughened old folk hero of the wild west if it meant I could rescue a damsel of some sort, I could be a doting husband calling “honey I’m home!” from the doorway, if that made things easier. We could dress up as the familiar to cope with being other. 

Soon enough it was past closing time, and the sun was setting, sending streaks of orange and pink across the grey sky. Darla’s hair was like gold in this light and her skin seemed to glow. I wondered if she really was just a star that fell down to earth. 

She linked her arm in mine, and I walked her home, mostly in pleasant silence. 

I got to her front door, the one with the colourful welcome mat, and the flowers in baskets hanging from the porch, and I kissed her there. I had wanted to for a while now, and this moment felt like the right one. 

Surprisingly enough, I’d never kissed anyone before. I guess I thought that nobody here was worth it, and I didn't want anyone kissing me who didn't understand who I was at my core. And I couldn't tell just anybody. How could I explain in small town terms that I wasn't much a man, but I was a gentleman, and how I wasn't much a lady, but I'd sure like to be someone's number one girl. It just didn’t make sense with anyone until her. 

I don’t think I’ll live here forever, but for now, there’s a little beauty in the soil of our hometown. I have faith that it will sprout more than one odd flower.  

And I’m writing again from the corner of the diner, sitting across from the woman I love. Maybe we’ll grow old together, in a house with peeling paint. Maybe I’ll die young in a city far from here. Wherever I am, I’m the gardener of my own bed of roses, I’m the director of the movie in which I star, and my life is just what I make of it.