I own and work at a small town diner. Most of the time it’s just me in this small building with the black-white checkered floors and the peeling pink paint walls. I sleep in the apartment upstairs, a simple one bedroom that still bears the ghostly echoes of the previous inhabitant. I wake up early and go to sleep late, but at least I’m my own boss and I get to determine my own hours.
All in all, it’s a nice job, once you get used to the small peculiarities.
The place is called Charlie’s Diner, named after the old owner–the one who passed down the diner to me. Ever since I’ve got possession of it, I’ve been considering renaming it to my own name, but I haven’t yet. I’m always putting it off. It just doesn’t quite feel mine yet. So for now and presumably the near future it’s Charlie’s Diner with a blinking sign hanging out front and an H that doesn’t light up, and I’ll greet our customers and they’ll look at my name tag and write me off as just another one of the mysterious Charlie’s employees. And I never bother to correct them. It’s funny, how much more people are comfortable saying to a simple waitress.
We get all sorts of people, both from in and out of town. There are all sorts of things I’ve heard and experienced over these years. I’ve seen a woman who told me every facet of my present–but not my past or future, even she couldn’t discern that–using only a long hard look into my eyes. I’ve seen a tall man who needed me to invite him in, who proceeded to wreak havoc in my diner until I made him very aware of who was in charge of this place. Who still slinks back from time to time to order an extra rare burger alongside a slice of cherry pie. I’ve seen children with soulful eyes sit at the counter without speaking until they fade away as though they had never been there. I’ve heard muted discussions of buried bodies or deals gone sour as I deliver cups of coffee or sides of fries. I’ve talked with a woman who promised me paradise if I would only take her hand and a woman who said she would gouge out my eyes with her teaspoon.
We seem to attract the odder ends of the spectrum.
But this isn’t about one of those exciting days. This is about a slow night and the kind of things that happen when it’s dark outside and bright inside, slow music playing on the jukebox and only two customers together in this one booth. They were a young couple, a boy and girl, with a look like they were running away from something, the girl a bit older with smudged makeup and a deep red slip and the boy in his varsity letterman jacket. Maybe because it was already late in the evening, the only thing they had ordered were two slices of cherry pie with whipped cream, which they voraciously dug into as they shared a secret lover’s conversation, words whispered to each other with the urgency of those who believe deeply in the importance of imparting their feelings to a singular other person.
Because it was a slow day, it was particularly conspicuous when the door opened with a little chime and a man of inconspicuous height, clad in sunglasses, gloves, and an impressive trench coat strode in. He gave me a thin, kind of irritated smile, as he stood statue-like in the entryway.
I recognized him the moment I laid eyes on him. This man was one of our regulars.
We have two types of regulars. The first are people who live in the town. They frequent this diner, a staple of the area, rather often, and order a coffee or slice of pie while chatting with their neighbors. You get to know them personally–their names, their jobs, their kids and their homes. I couldn’t call them friends, but they’ve become regular, well-integrated parts of my lives.
The second do not live in the town, per se. These are the ones to watch out for.
And of course this man was of that type.
It was fortunate that today was a slow day. Our regulars–be they the second or first type–do not often appreciate waiting. This sunglasses-clad man was an especially salient example.
I had learned that the hard way the first time the two of us met. But that’s beside the point.
“Welcome to our diner,” I said as I hurried over, bowing my head. Raising it, I looked directly in the man’s face, my eyes meeting the area where his eyes should be. The sunglasses were near-opaque–two eerie voids which reflected my pale, drawn, yet still affably smiling face. Being unable to determine someone’s expression always gives me a chill. There was still that thin smile resting on his face, but the emotions lying behind it were as mysterious as he himself was.
“I will take my booth,” he said slowly, articulating each syllable like I might not understand him properly. Like I was a small, somewhat stupid child and he was an adult who disliked anyone younger than him but was forced to interact with me nonetheless. An uncle at a family gathering. A teacher who didn’t seem to understand that his job usually entailed liking children. A detective forced to cross-examine a young witness.
(At least I’m assuming those are salient examples. Maybe this was an entirely unique situation, the haughty way in which he treated me, non-analogous to anything you’ve ever seen before.)
I bowed my head again–a measure of respect–because after all, he was looking down on me with reason–because it was for the better that I comply with his view of me–and gestured with my hands towards the nearest booth. He gave me this little look of disdain.
“That is not my booth,” he said. “You know that.” I winced.
“I’m sorry,” I responded. I was, honestly, sorry. I would much rather that this little conflict could be avoided. That his booth was free, or better yet, that he had never come in in the first place. As though he could tell what I was thinking, he evenly stared at me, lips curled back. Or maybe his eyes were closed and he wasn’t even looking at me in the first place. It was impossible to tell. “That booth, then.” The one the young couple was sitting in.
“My booth, yes.” His overly patient, supercilious voice had begun to fray at the edges.
“Of course. One second, please.” When I was turned away from him, my expression soured. What a hassle, I thought, but of course there was nobody to express this to.
I strode to the booth that he was so insistent on sitting at and apologetically smiled at the couple.
“Look,” I said. “I’m really sorry about this. But that man over there–” they peeked out of the booth to stare while he looked off at the pink walls, paint cracking– “is one of our regulars, and he really feels strongly about this booth. It’s the one he always sits at. Could you two move over to the booth right there?” I gestured to the one right beside his booth. It was phrased as a question, but my tone didn’t indicate that. The boy didn’t respond, but the girl nodded, grabbing both plates.
“Of course,” she said. “Let’s go.” The boy had a slightly irritated expression, but he followed her over, and in direct response to that the man strode over and slid in, taking off his coat and folding it up beside himself.
“One slice of cherry pie,” he said. I nodded, jotting the order down on a notepad in the pantomime of professionality. Nothing more needed to be said. I didn’t need to make small talk, not with this customer.
As I slipped behind the counter, I saw, out of the corner of my eye, the boy angrily whispering something to the girl. I frowned. Trouble was brewing.
Before I could do anything, he was turning around in his seat and leaning over, yelling at the man,
“Look, we weren’t going to say anything, but we’ve got to say that you can’t expect to always get your way.” The lack of a response seemed to bolster him, and the boy clambered out of his seat, followed by the far shyer girl, who stared at the ground, cheeks flushed. “It’s an asshole move. Pick another seat next time! You see us sitting there and you send over the waitress to clear us out. What the fuck is your problem, man?”
He was posturing for the girl, I was sure. But his intentions didn’t matter. In fact, the lack of earnest emotion backing his words might even have been a strike against him.
That was when I began to move, getting out from behind the counter and heading for the little confrontation.
The man turned his head sharply towards me and then looked back at the couple. He now had this gentle, easy smile which would inspire a feeling of friendliness in anyone who saw it. But in that brief second when he had turned to me, I had seen a very different expression on his face. It was a warning. Do not interfere–this is not your place.
I stopped in my tracks.
Look, I get it. It’s annoying. It’s frustrating. No one wants to be forced to move from your seat in favor of some guy with a thin smile and sunglasses and a clear superiority complex. But even if nothing more is at play–even if it really is just some guy–getting uppity helps no one. Not him. Not me. Not you. All you did was start a fight that’s going to get somebody hurt, upset, or just fizzle out with nobody getting anything out of it. I mean, did you want the booth that bad?
So that’s why I didn’t feel too bad heeding that flash of warning as the man in sunglasses stood, walked over, and patted the boy on the shoulder with a friendly air.
“Hey,” he said. “No hard feelings. I didn’t mean any harm.”
“You’d better not have,” grumbled the boy, but his anger was quickly dissipating in the face of such earnest affability.
“Here. I’ll buy you two a drink. A coffee? A coke?”
“Do I look like a coffee drinker?” asked the boy, half-friendly. “A coke. For both of us.” He jerked his head towards the girl. “Her too, I mean.”
Then he and the girl slid into the booth. The man stared at them before following suit, sitting across from them.
“What brings you here?” he asked, casually, while gesturing at me with his hand. My hands were trembling a bit as I opened the fridge door. I eavesdropped on their conversation while opening the cans and pouring the drink into tall, thin glasses.
“With ice,” the boy hollered after me, before turning back to the man. “The two of us are just swinging through.” The edges of the man’s lips turned up.
“Excellent,” he said. “How are you finding our little town so far?” The boy shrugged.
“Like I said, just passing through. We haven’t seen any of it, and we’ve got no plans to. The girl got hungry so we needed to take a pit stop, isn’t that right?” He nudged her playfully. She batted her eyes and nodded, smiling widely.
The man gestured for me again and I carried the two glasses over, my expression steely. I didn’t blink as I stared at him, hoping to convey one singular idea: I did not approve, of course, but I knew I was not to act. I knew I was not his ally but I would nonetheless do my best to not be his enemy. And as his gloved hands brushed against mine to take the drinks, I wondered if he was vaguely approving of my conformity to this role, or if my inaction was merely something to be expected. I felt the icy pit of fear in my heart slowly thaw in the wake of frustrated anger, but the melting was too slow and I was too late, glasses already handed over, my role fulfilled for the time being.
“Wait,” the man said to the two teenagers who had reached out for the drinks, as he slipped off his right glove. I, all too well aware of what would happen, stood by the table with bated breath as he proceeded to slip off his other glove as well and took hold of both glasses–one in each hand.
A festering darkness blossomed where he touched the glass, spreading from where his skin had come in contact with the glass into the liquid itself. Like oil spills on ice, the cola turned murky, even the ice cubes filled with crystalline, inky black. In that pitch darkness, the couple’s faces were reflected, shocked and pale and wide-eyed. I also saw my own reflection in the black which tendrilled through the glass, the liquid, the ice, and the blankness of it gave me a cold thrill. Somehow, that unflattering image of myself is what stuck in my memory from that night—mouth in a hard line, eyes stony, and brows knitted tight. I breathed out and my reflection did the same, shattering the dispassionate illusion just as the liquid sloshed and the other me distorted, the man having raised both glasses at the same time.
“Drink,” he commanded, holding them out to the couple. They recoiled.
“No,” said the boy, hastily standing. “No, thank you for the offer. But I’ve forgotten we’d better go. We are in a hurry.” He grabbed for the girl’s hand as she slowly edged out of the booth.
“You have time,” the man responded evenly. “Drink.”
The boy didn’t bother to respond, already headed to the door. The man gave me a look and gestured towards the two with his head. I gave a little sigh and a helpless shrug, like what can I do? He didn’t say anything in response, but I understood. Unfortunately, I understood.
The two were walking as quickly as they could, but their panicked movements lost to my easy strides across the checkered diner floor. I pulled at the hood of the girl.
“Excuse me,” I said. “You haven’t paid, yet.”
The girl looked at me with frantic eyes and tried to pull away, but I have a strong grip. The boy hesitantly looked at his hand, linked with hers, and let go.
“You cover it, Janet, and I’ll get the car started, okay?” he demanded.
In that time, the man in sunglasses was already beside me. The boy started moving towards the exit again, but it was too late–the man had grabbed onto his hair and was pulling his head back, pushing the glass up to his mouth. He had seemingly used the moment I had earned him to put his gloves and coat back on. Asshole—he didn’t even need my help to catch up to them. He had made me complicit for fun.
Most of the liquid dribbled down the side of the boy’s face, but it was evident that some had gotten into his mouth from the sickly expression and gurgling sounds he made. The man’s grip was tight, fingers pushing against the scalp as large tufts of dark brown hair stuck out in the gaps between each digit.
“Swallow,” said the man. “Make things easier for us both.” Surprisingly–or perhaps it was out of necessity–the boy obliged, and the man continued until the entire glass was either down the boy’s throat or dripping down his face. Then he casually placed the glass on the counter and turned towards the girl, whom I still held tightly in my grip.
The one I felt bad for was the girl. But the man in sunglasses doesn’t discern things like that. She was implicated in the insult against him, so he took revenge on her as well.
Revenge might be the wrong word. This wasn’t a manifestation of his anger towards the two–rather, it was a natural, necessary process. He was disrespected, and what he did to them was a simple exchange. A bargain. I was not allowed to get in the way of that.
Nonetheless, I felt obliged to do something. This was my territory, in some strange sense of the word, and I felt empowered by the fact that I was the one holding onto the girl.
“She owes me money,” I said. “You’ll have to be satisfied.”
The girl–Janet, that was what she had been called–squeaked in assent, bobbing her head up and down frantically. The boy remained frozen in place, dark liquid slowly bubbling out of his nose.
“Neither she nor the boy are more innocent,” drawled the man.
“This diner is owed five dollars by the two of them combined. One way or another, they must pay that up. The boy paid their due to you, and the girl can pay their due to me. That seems fairest to me.”
The man seemed to mull over it for a moment. Then:
“Is it fair?” he asked with a shoddily concealed warning in his voice.
“It is.” I released the girl, and she remained statuesque between us. “Come on, Janet.” My voice was commanding, and to her credit, she quickly recovered and fished out her wallet while I kept my eyes fixated on the man. Then she pressed a five dollar bill into my palm.
“No tip?” mocked the man. She stared at him with wide, dinner-plate eyes. “Come now. You’re free to go. You and him.” He gestured towards the boy, who still stood still, staring off at something nobody else saw.
“Let’s go,” whispered Janet, throwing her arm over his shoulders and half-dragging him along. He moved almost mechanically, legs cycling in a fair imitation of walking yet only thrust into gear by her prompting. When the two vanished out the door, I turned back to the man.
“Here’s my tip,” he said, already on his way to the exit, dropping his remaining glass on the counter while on his way. “I wasn’t your only visitor tonight you ought to be wary of.”
Then he was gone, out the door and swallowed up by the night.
I stood there, frantically cycling through what he meant. Wasn’t implied that someone had been in, and I hadn’t noticed them. That was bad. Very bad. But who could it have been? I ran through the list of customers we had taken in my head. The nice old man from town. The family during noon. That couple. And of course the man in sunglasses. Which of them was he talking about? Had I missed someone come in?
Then I heard a clattering from the kitchen and my blood ran cold.
It’s very hard to describe the kind of fear I felt in that moment. I feel as though I may have been downplaying how nervous I still get in these situations. Sure, to some extent I’ve become desensitized–these peculiarities have become no less abnormal than anything else–but the sound of something moving in that dark backroom I couldn’t see was still terrifying. Something that was not supposed to be there was there, and it was just me in the now-silent, silent diner with windows that faced a black void.
But precisely because it was just me, I had to swallow my fear and pull out my phone. Not to call anyone–there was nobody to call–but to turn on the flashlight and then, with my other hand, grab the handgun I kept under the counter, loaded with silver-tipped lead bullets. (It might not help, but it couldn’t hurt.)
With a pounding heart, I shone the light into the kitchen area, illuminating the area in the most eerie of ways.
And five sets of eyes stared back at me.
The light from my phone glinted off those strange, black orbs, shocking me to the extent that I nearly dropped it on the ground. Fortunately, I had enough presence of mind to keep my cool–because showing that momentary fear wouldn’t help–and raise my gun.
“Get out of here!” I shouted, waving it around. “You’re not welcome. Get out of my kitchen!”
I knew what these creatures were. Small but voracious, they would steal whatever they could get their skeletal claws on–and today, I was lucky enough to be their target. My pans had been repurposed to become gleaming iron pelts for their bodies and their stomachs bulged with what I presumed to be ingredients from my pantry. The walls were just as coated in flour and egg yolk as they themselves were.
It was sort of a comical sight. A comical but unpleasant sight. The little creatures aren’t a threat if you put on a brave face, though. They’re cowards at heart, ones which might be able to tear you apart with those claws but would far rather flee when caught.
For a second, they continued to sit there, still staring at me with unblinking black orbs. Don’t blink, I told myself. For the love of everything holy, do not blink.
Then they turned tail and scampered off, leaving me to take inventory of everything that they stole away.
In all:
Two pans.
One pot.
Three cartons of eggs.
An entire gallon of milk.
Two sacks of flour.
I should feel lucky that they didn’t take any more. But I don’t. When it comes down to it, these creatures are one of my least favorite. They’re easy to deal with, sure, but I’ll never be seeing what they took and gobbled up again. Sure, they run off, but what good has it done me? To interact with them is to placate and never step over that certain line–because while it may seem as though I have the upper hand, to actually raise a hand against them would be suicidal. I must stick to my lane and they’ll stick to theirs, but they’re the only ones who reap a benefit.
If it isn’t clear, I hate my powerlessness. I own this diner yet I am constantly at the mercy of the customer, who carries behind them far more force than I ever could.
Maybe that was the real reason why I tried to protect that girl today. To assert my control over this area. Of course, the most noble rationale behind my actions would have been genuine kindness. The least would be because of my own inferiority complex. I was fine with pretending it was some sort of middle ground between the two.
I’m not a good person. But I don’t think I’m a bad one, either.
I don’t know what happened to the boy. Nor, technically, do I know what happened to the girl. All I know is what I will do–and what I will do is go restock the pantry and open like normal. I will bake a pie that is to die for and serve our customers steaming cups of coffee. So if you’re ever driving by and see a flashing sign reading Charlie’s Diner with an H that’s never on, stop by. We’ll make it worth your while.