Neon Burnout

Still and humming, the world moves slower here. People talk to not be heard and listen to find there’s nothing to hear. Even the kitchen is tired, too heavy eyed to clatter plates together, whirl machines, or break glasses. There aren’t many orders anyway. My back hurts from standing behind the long counter, wrapping around me and my coworkers like a restrictor, but one of the night, alike all the other people in it’s apathy for the fast pace of time. Somehow even the neon of signs of one liners and brand names are faded to a more average color, the pleasing pastel colors, mainly pink, seem to have aged several years and several shades lighter, and the cartoon people having a wonderful old time in the 50s poster seem to be like the customers. 

          The customers. A few of them are familiar faces, the same ones everyday or every other day or whenever they like. The others, maybe half, are always new. They come from roaring highways and far away, the glow of the bright lights from places since passed still kissing their face when they walk in. They come to slow down for a while and find they are quite in luck because here, time doesn’t move at all. The travelers are my favorite and it dulls me even more to watch them forget where they were going on the way out the door, the kiss of the cities gone without even a lipstick mark. They leave looking for a bed to sleep on because if they can dream they might remember why they got in the car in the first place. 

          The travelers are my favorite right when they come in. They have an air of mystery and memories not yet known. I play a game with the snake of the counter and guess where they came from and why. Today, two men came in an old, rust colored or possibly covered pickup truck. They walked toward the door as I’ve seen bees fly, in a general direction but a twisting, wobbled manner. One of the men, the shorter one, slammed through the door as if it was locked in a huge burst of laughter and unbalance, scaring a few of the other customers. They stumbled over to the closest empty booth, to the left of me near the window, and sat down in a flurry of un-dressing to feel appropriate in the heat of the diner. When they were finished there were two piles, one containing a old red trucker hat with the edges chewed and the print too effaced to read, the other a brown and orange fleece jacket that seemed rather new, and both a heavy, orange puffer jacket, the kind that squeaks with every movement. 

          “Dan, you rascal! I needed that money to pay for dinner tonight!” Said the one on the far side of the booth. I felt encroaching for a moment because I was taught by my grandma that eavesdropping was rude, but I was taught by her husband that talking loudly was ruder. 

          “Johnny I ain’t the rascal when you’re the one who lost! Beats me why you’d pick poker when you barely know how to play!” Responded the man apparently named Dan, to the one apparently named Johnny. Even with this small thread of information I played my usual game and wove a jaw dropping tale of their lives from the safety of my apron shaped loom. They were poor truckers, moving something in the back of that rusted truck, heading somewhere far from somewhere far. From a small town in Georgia. They’re old buddies, from school, and the things they were moving belonged to a mutual friend. Their friend was moving west and they were taking the opportunity to adventure with the failsafe of ending up right back home.

          “I know how to play poker! Why do you think we been drivin longer hours these days? Wouldn’t be here if I couldn’t play cards!”

          “I know you can play cards, that’s for sure, but poker ain’t it! You lost to the likes of me for Christ’s sake!” The thread switched colors and a new pattern began to play. Johnny was a cardsman, but not with poker. Blackjack was his game. They’d been traveling from town to town cleaning house on novices in bars with deep pockets and loose chips. They’re looking to play with high rollers in real casinos, but refining their skills and building their buy-in along the way. They were much more interesting than I had originally thought.

          “I only lost to you cause you cheated, like you always do! Think you’d learn by now, after the trouble you get into, to stop it, or least learn to not get caught. There aren’t six aces in a deck, Dan!”

          “I ain't never cheated once in my life!”

          “You ain’t never lied neither!” Johnny erupted with laughter.

          “You can’t prove nothin. It doesn't matter anyway, you just worry about finding the money for dinner, I’m paying for mine with my winnings!”

          “I ain’t that hungry anyway.” They both became suddenly more calm. My patterns were now criss crossing each other and the same colors began to show through. They were poor, without enough for both of them to eat at once. They were driving to get from town to town more than heading anywhere, the gone man’s paycheck to paycheck life. They won’t end up on a hotel bed tonight, but the familiar leather of their truck seats. Financing their escapades of survival through smaller escapades of risk has always been the way they lived, even as kids in a town of dust. They aren’t running from or towards anything, more that they run because it’s all they’ve ever done and will keep doing until one day their legs tire at the same time and their feet will finally be just behind. Then the dust they came from will have a chance to reclaim what belongs to it. They have always belonged to it.

           “I ain’t hungry, neither, actually. Just suggested comin in here cause it looked warm. I saw a bar about a mile back, not too shabby the drinks are all secretly water, but not too fancy we’ll get kicked out. Just the way you like um. Let’s head there!” Dan said, and rose in his seat as if to stand up, if there weren’t a table at his knees.

          “That don’t sound bad, but you’re payin!” They both scooted out from the booth and became re-shelled in their winter armor in record time. They left in a hurry, but less like bees. Their conversation must’ve humbled and sobered something within them. Threads to my loom. I ran a few more stories through my head, making sure to pull every string they frayed until my fingers bled and the novelty wore off. 

          I never bother to guess exactly where they’re going. Even if they haven’t forgotten by the time they leave, by then most have already made arrangements at an inn and have the hook cutting right through their cheeks. I don’t dare to wonder where they were once headed because I don’t believe in a world beyond this place. I’ve never seen it. People come, expecting to leave the next day, or the day after that, but they always stay. They don’t leave the next morning, or the next day or even week. They find ten more reasons to stay every minute they choose not to leave, and five more things to explore in this town for every one they ignore in another. Their flaming curiosity burning just around the next bend of the road dims little by little until suddenly the light is brighter by the lamppost, and the road disappears entirely, drowned by the safety of a stationary metal pole. 

          Without a road, they don’t need cars, so they sell them. The cold starts to bite, so they put the money in a worn down old shack of a home on the east end of town. They feel a creeping silence, so they buy a dog to keep them company. They get hungry and come back to the diner, day after day, and become the familiar faces at the other half of the tables. Eventually they become the face behind the counter.

          They never leave. They can’t, even if they wanted to, because if they could that would mean that there is a world past this place, this town. A world of towering glass and rolling green. A world of poker stars, clubs, and casinos. A world of people under the city lights I sometimes see the memory of. A world of people of tongues and colors, of ideas, thoughts and wonder. A world of neon that doesn’t dim, colors that don’t fade, and people that don’t drear. But that world doesn’t exist. It can’t, because if it did, I wouldn’t be stuck here.