Mesh and Lace
She stands there in the doorway hugging her sequined elbows, looking out and then at me. I put my hands out to reach my pockets, forgetting I’m not wearing my apron. We both laugh nervously at the useless gesture.
“Well,” she says again, “thanks.”
I don’t know quite what to say so I hug her. She smells like hairspray and cigarettes, not like I expect her to smell at all. I can almost pinpoint it before she lets go: Aqua Net and Kools. Somehow I think I expected her to smell like magazines, like perfume inserts or something. She clicks off in her stiletto heels, still hugging her elbows, and doesn’t look back.
I stand there looking at the sky and hear a motor purr a little in the distance. Noise and light come back as Cary opens the door.
“I think those are your old high school buddies,” she says, taking a bobby pin from her apron pocket and pushing it open with her front teeth before using it to pin back a stray hair. “You want to just hang out here? I can handle it,” she says.
Outside the storeroom I hear noise and laughter, a harmony of voices incongruent with midnight. Behind them the ever-present sizzle of the fryer and the hum of the jukebox sounds timeless, absolutely timeless. Like no one and nothing can ever change it. “Nah,” I say. “Finish taking tables one through four and I’ll take five and six. Tell Joe to come back here and take a couple more boxes of onion rings down from the top shelf of the freezer.”
Cary shrugs and nods absentmindedly before letting the door swing shut after her.
I take my lace-trimmed apron off the peg next to the ladies’ room and tie it on, looking at my face in the mirror. I smooth my hair a little bit, tuck some of the oilier strands behind my ears. My face is drawn, tired. I look for the crow’s feet but they’re not really there. The tired comes from the cracked makeup, the way I hold my mouth like I’m sucking on a lemon. I air out the fabric under my armpits and relax my shoulders best I can.
Outside, my old classmates have gathered around several booths and the jukebox. I hear one of the guys, whose back is turned to me, call out some of the names of the old songs like he can’t believe they’re still there. He slips a dollar into the mouth of the machine and I hear the tones on the control pad from where I stand. I hear the first few bars of “My Sharona.” One of them, a girl I remember being friends with, is wearing some kind of fur coat. I can’t help but wonder if it’s real. Imagine that, a fur coat in the middle of Mirtha’s Authentic American Diner.
I grab my notepad from off the countertop where I left it and slide the pencil over my ear with a smirk. I go over to the soft fur-coat booth first—there’s maybe six of them squeezed in there, their faces hidden behind the sticky plastic menus. I slide the pencil out and start tapping my eraser on the pad to get their attention. I ask the obligatory “What can I get for you?” and wait for the face of recognition as I recite today’s specials, not even looking at the blackboard.
