Diner

This year makes ten since a health inspector shut the diner down.

Johnny and his brother never did anything with it after that. Didn’t even sell it. Kids spray painted X’s across the siding, pulled knives on each other behind the dumpsters.

For a while, once a week, a row of vans pulled up. Townspeople speculated terrorism.

Then cars stopped parking there altogether. Nobody salts that sidewalk when it snows.

I’ve become just like everybody else. I drive by it and comment.

*

Any pants as long as they were black. Shirts could be black or white. I went to town at Walmart. Two pairs of yoga pants, a couple scoop necks.

By the soup vat, a daytime waitress grabbed my wrist. She said, “It gets better. Don’t do nothin’ permanent for nothin’ permanent.”

“They’re cat scratches,” I said. “I have a cat. Steve.”

“Hon, you scared me. I know how it gets. I just wanted to be sure.”

She pressed her plastic nails to each type of sweetener packet. She showed me each thing behind the counter like that. Pressing at it and popping her gum. We poured decaf into the pot with the pale orange lip.

*

I took classes at the community college. 

Astronomy, American Lit, Psych 101, and Woody Shrub Identification, meant for landscape design majors.

I hadn’t applied to any state schools, had believed my high school boyfriend and I were going to get married. So I was stuck at home with my mother and younger sisters for another year. The condensation on the walls of my corner bedroom made the paint bubble and peel. My heart was no longer broken, just so ready to go and get on.

Our horticulture class walked around the campus. We taped plant scraps into notebooks and scribbled Latin names.

Taxus, Thuja Occidentalis, Prunus Laurocerasus, Buxus are the ones that I can remember now.

A redneck boy in class got my number. Sometimes we sat in his truck until the lot emptied out. He pulled from a one hitter. I sipped from a plastic water bottle.

We didn’t kiss then. The air always flattened between us. We left that night class dry and dull. Flayed by the fluorescent light. So we sat in his truck while the color came back to us.

*

Johnny put me on nights with Shanna.

Johnny told us about Egypt, and how he missed his mother. His older brother came to America first, and he followed a few years later.

Johnny’s brother came by to drop off cardboard boxes. He was tall, chiseled. Johnny’s shoulders sloped and his face was round and cupped like a clementine.

Shanna was back home after a stint at a state school. She said her parents said they wouldn’t pay for her just to party.

Johnny used to sing this song about Shanna:

“Shanna doesn’t go to school. Shanna is an asshole.”

“Fuck you!” Shanna flipped Johnny off through the plastic kitchen window.

He laughed into the stirring soup. Boxcar scars made it look like a cry.

*

Johnny lived above the diner.

His nights were just up a flight of stairs.

“It’s lonely,” he said. “I’d like a woman.”

“Me too,” said the cook.

“Are you gonna just keep her prisoner up there all day while you work?” Shanna said. Her boyfriend was ignoring her, so she had to take her anger out on somebody else.

“She could work here,” Johnny said. “During the day we work here. At night we watch television.”

“That’s all you can ask for,” said the cook.

*

The cakes were my favorite. Johnny kept the glass case so clean. On Mondays he slid a tray of chocolate mice into place. He carried cakes from the fridge, sliced them so customers could see inside.

When we were slow, I spun around on the stools. I fantasized about slipping a slice into a Styrofoam container.

If I worked morning into afternoon, the day took on a certain shape.

I stood at the register and thought about Steve. How his hips were losing sync with his head, and how he couldn’t eat hard food without my soaking it in water.

Sharp sunlight shot from the snow and into the windows. A lady eating cream of wheat slipped on her sunglasses.

*

I came home with all kinds of gossip. The cook was the youngest brother of that family from just across the creek line. He biked to work in the freezing cold. He argued with the waitresses about feminism. He whipped up special recipes like fried ravioli and wanted Johnny to add some of his original creations to the menu. 

The girl my sister’s high school boyfriend lost his virginity to was engaged. She chose to celebrate it right there at the diner. 

The bank tellers from across the street came to pick up their chef’s salads. They told me how one girl got fired for sleeping in the bank vault after a bad fight with her boyfriend.

The woman with that little dog met up with the man who owned those storage units. He ate country fried steak with a knife and spoon. 

*

Winters in central Pennsylvania. The sky won’t snow but it stays gray. And when the weather men anticipate precipitation, the temperature overhears, and warms up, so you get a mud rain.

Once, me and the boy from class, Tommy, skipped. We took his truck out on a tour of the back roads.

“I used to babysit at that Alpaca farm,” I’d say. “The mother kept red beet eggs in the fridge. On sweet rolls I’d stack turkey and cheese for sandwiches. Me and the little girls set up a blanket in the middle of the field.”

“That’s Danny’s mom’s house,” he’d say. “I smoked weed from an apple and we laughed our asses off.”

“My second job, when I was 15,” I’d say when we passed Monkey Joe’s.

“First hand job,” he’d say when we passed the big bales of hay.

*

Johnny sat in the booth while I rolled.

“I’m going to be a stripper.”

“You need to get married to a nice, Christian man.”

“I don’t believe in that.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Well, yeah it does. I’m gonna be a stripper because no man is gonna give me money any other way.”

“Don’t cut your hair either. Keep it long for your husband. Maybe you’ll meet him soon or you already have.”

“I’ll know when I meet him.”

“Don’t be an asshole like Shanna.”

“How am I being an asshole?”

“I want to find a good woman.”

“You will, I'm sure. And I’ll move to the city and become a stripper.”

“Stupid, stupid.”

*

Shanna’s boyfriend’s pick-up truck pulled in. Sharp blue headlights shone through the finger-smudged windows.

“We’re going downtown. Come with us.”

“You’ll get stabbed,” the cook said.

“You’re racist,” Shanna said.

“Do you read the news?” The cook flipped his latex gloves into the trash.

“No.”

I said, “I’ve got class tomorrow or I would.”

“Not till nine though?”

“I’m trying to chill with drinking for a little.”

Shanna said, “Drinking isn’t my problem, it's this goddamn boring town.”

*

I slept over at Tommy’s a couple times. He bought us big bottles of Yellowtail.

When his parents went to bed, he cooked us frozen soft pretzels. January in weak yellow radiation. He sprinkled big chunks of salt on top.

In the basement we kissed and kissed. Made love on the wall-to-wall carpet.

Mornings, we woke early. He chased heartburn medication with apple juice. Chafed skin circling my whole lips.

I would still be drunk. I would drive past the high school, where my sisters would be parking. Hair parted and ankle socks and their still, sturdy stomachs.

*

“Let’s go to the strip club right now,” Shanna said. 

“I’m related to too many people around here,” I said. “Maybe up porn highway somewhere.”

“It’s all crack whores up twenty-two,” the cook said. 

“They got a name for crack whores’ customers?” I said. 

The cook said, “It was with some buddies only the once. Not a regular.”

Johnny said, “God gives you beauty and you waste it. You laugh in His face.”

“And do they gotta name for God laughing in the face of me? Motherfucking thirty dollars for six hours.” Shanna held up her ones.

“Sweetie pie, God’s laughing in the face of the whole world. You’re not special,” the cook said.

“No,” Johnny said. “He is not laughing.”

*

Once I came home from work and thought the dog had eaten Steve. The dog sat beneath the weeping cherry tree, chewing. It was a long body with brown gray fur. I called my mom, crying. She sent my father over to the house. I stood at the back window, having searched the whole house for Steve, who was nowhere. 

My father shooed the dog back, pinched the groundhog by a spot of still-dry fur. 

Steve was tucked behind the dryer, my mom discovered when she went looking. His body was warm from the machine’s running. I pressed my face to his purring belly. 

I cried still, for the senselessness of so many things and how I couldn’t get a handle on a single corner of the world. 

In the community college cafeteria I couldn’t stomach anything except grilled cheese. My astronomy professor wore Hawaiian shirts all through the winter. My plant identification notebooks slanted at a steep angle, broken bits of cypress spilled into my backpack. 

*

Shanna’s boyfriend broke up with her. It wouldn’t last. It never did. But when it’s your heart busted…So we passed a bottle of Rumple Minze back and forth. Pressed our palms to the vents in her parent’s SUV. 

“Let’s go out. Let’s go dancing somewhere,” she said.

“Okay but it’s a Tuesday.”

“We need weed,” Shanna said. 

“There’s this guy in my class. I’ll text him.”

“I have to pee but Johnny locked it behind us.”

We threw gravel up at his window. No lights flicked on. Shanna dipped around the side to squat to pee. 

“Johnny, hey, motherfucker!” she said. 

I cupped my hands to my forehead and pressed my face to the glass. 

Johnny sat in the dark, in a booth. He shook his head at Shanna. The door swung open, let a little of the work smell out into the graph paper air. 

“Come party with us?” Shanna popped the end of a Camel Crush. “You ever smoked weed before?”

“We’re not getting any,” I said. “He’s asking what color underwear I’m wearing.”

We got a hotel room instead. The Red Carpet Inn. 

Johnny talked a little more once we finished two bottles of wine from the gas station across the street. But mostly he just laughed at us. 

We stood on the motel balcony smoking cigarettes. 

“In the winter the air won’t take the smoke like in the summer,” Shanna said.

The balcony overlooked the interstate. Too dark then to see where the mountains stopped and the sky started. Johnny wrapped his hands around the wrought iron barrier. He leaned against it, looked down into the first-floor porch. He pulled sunglasses from his pocket. They were cheap and shaped into the numbers of the New Year. 

I had drunk enough wine to start the sugar crystals crawling up my back teeth. 

We fell asleep to cable TV. Shanna and I in one bed. I never saw Johnny fall asleep, actually. He sat on the ledge of his bed. When we woke, he wasn’t there. 

*

Tommy skipped class without me. It was a once-a-week course. He cut the next class too. I gave up ever seeing him again. 

Without him there I couldn’t sit still. Even with my water bottle vodka. Blue lined notebook paper started to blur. My tongue too big for my mouth. 

There’s that despair. When a boy you don’t even like stops hanging around. And then the hometown, the community college, your mother’s house all have this smell of boiled chicken bones. Somewhere, hours or years away, there’s a big party going on without you. 

*

I worked there all of three weeks. It was open for all of six.

Johnny’s brother still runs a successful diner two towns over. I still see the cook, on his bike, crossing the bridge.

This was just one of those buildings that can’t even keep water in.

One day a man in a suit sat down. He said he had big ideas for advertising the place. I sent Johnny over to him. Johnny stood there shaking his head.

I wrapped napkins around my thumb and forefinger. His plate of scrapple and eggs had sat under the heat lamp too long.

“I’ve seen this many times,” he said. “Places like this. They open up and shut down. If nothing changes, nothing changes.”

I leaned against the cake case. Orange icing carrots leaked color into the cream cheese frosting.

“Con artist,” Johnny said when the man left. I pocketed the five he left beneath the pepper shaker.

*

But the health inspector.

It wasn’t what people thought. Honestly not a cleanliness issue.

The health inspector came in looking for trouble. He didn’t like Johnny’s accent. There were translation issues. A termite inspection paper missing. Johnny swore the men had come, but he didn’t know he was supposed to receive a certificate. The health inspector pretended not to understand him.

The health inspector taped a sign to the door.

“Please,” Johnny said. “Please don’t do this.”

The health inspector lit a cigar, flipped open his phone.

I was the only waitress there that day.

Johnny sat on a stool and just shrank.

“Fuck that guy,” I said.

“Don’t talk like that.”

The cook came out from the kitchen with a plate of plain chicken wings. He tucked a napkin into the neck of his shirt. I thought it seemed like he liked the way the bones cracked when he pulled them apart.

“Can I have a slice of cake?”

Johnny nodded.

“I’ll cut you one too.”

I slid a chocolate mousse mouse onto a side plate and set it in front of Johnny. My carrot cake slice was thick, the pecans were wet.

That winter was full of sharp, sunny days that settled between your ribs.

And this is the problem with me, I’m realizing. What I’ve said about the bones, the cook. All I’ve said about Johnny.

I don’t know a thing about what people think, or like, or don’t. Not the cylinder shape of their longing or the weight of their upstairs nights.

I thought I did. I even knew I did. But now, I hardly know mine.