Jimmy Bohnslav

A Night At The Diner

The waitress spotted the quartet of kids chatting their soprano pre-pubescent voices away in the corner booth. Great, she thought to herself. Just what I need at the end of a long night. Isn’t it past these kids’ bedtimes? She checked her watch. A smudge of dirt on her wrist. She knocked herself in the forehead. Wrong wrist. She lifted the other one. Jeez, she was really tired. Ten o’clock. Oh well, she thought. At least this will be the last table. She strode over.

“Hello, my name’s Nancy,” she said, trying to put on a cheery tone. Unsuccessfully. She had to speak up to be heard, so absorbed they were in their doubtlessly unimportant conversations. “What can I get ya’ll to drink?” From one corner, a boy in jeans and a Red Sox cap (at the dinner table? Kids have no manners these days) replied, “Root beer here!” His vice was his best baseball game vendor impersonation. It’d be better if he didn’t look like a mouse caught in a rat trap.

“Sweet tea for me,” said a preppy-dressed girl with a thick-as-honey Southern drawl.

The next one was another girl. She was a tomboy with close-cropped hair. She called out “Dr. Pepper!” Elegant in its brevity.

The last, a boy in a leather jacket (probably a future gothic kid) commanded, “Gimme a Coke, and make it snappy!” The rest giggled.

Very goddam funny, she thought to herself. Outwardly, she replied, “Yeah. Right.” She collected the bill for another table and headed to the bar. After whipping up the drinks, she returned to Der Tisch des Teufels, as she had taken to calling it in her head. Table of the devil was right. She distributed the drinks of Red Sox, Drawl, Butch, and Snappy as she knew them. She took care to slowly hand Snappy his Coke last. “Now what do ya’ll want to eat?”

Burgers all around. Big surprise there. Different condiments and toppings for each. She waited for the burgers to arrive, and then chauffeured them to their final resting places. Except for the sewer. Best not to think about that. “Everything look okay?” she asked. She hoped she sounded concerned.

“Umm…I asked for no cheese on mine,” Drawl drawled.

“It’s alright, Lauren,” Snappy comforted. “You know how forgetful these old ladies can be,” he said, glancing upward to make sure Nancy heard his snide remark.

His eyes drilled holes into her skull. Nancy inwardly reeled as if struck by a right hook from Muhammad Ali. First round knock-out. In some distant corner of her mind, a bell rang and an announcer blared, “We have a winner!” Old? She was bewildered. I’m not old. I’m only 30! She staggered perceptibly. What on earth did that kid say to me? Old? I can’t be old. Not old, not old... The denial echoed through her mind.

“Scrape the cheese off with your goddamn knife,” she stammered, and stormed off. The brats appeared baffled. It was probably the first time they’d heard a cuss word, outside of their father yelling at the TV during a college football game. All but Snappy, who just maliciously stared above his wry grin.

The rest of the night went by in a blur. The kids ate, left a measly tip. She irately remembered a cocktail napkin with “Here’s a tip! Don’t drink and drive! HAHAHA!” scribbled on it. Brats. It was probably Snappy. Damn kids and his damn eyes and his damn little smile.

She hopped into her Prius and drove. The rain came down in torrential bands. She flipped the radio on. “Yes!” she exclaimed. “This is my favorite song!”

“Well you know I gotta get out

But I’m stuck so tight

Weighed by the chains that keep me

 I’ve been hanging around this town on a corner

I’ve been bummin around this old town for way too long

I’ve been hanging around this town on a corner

I’ve been bummin around this old…”

She let her voice trail off. “Enough of that,” she said, and punched the radio back off. The song brought back the thoughts of that damn kid and his damn comment. “Damn those Counting Crows and their song,” she thought. “I don’t wanna think about this.” The rain kept pouring in prismatic sheets across the beams of her headlights. But even this deluge couldn’t wash out the insidious thoughts now wheedling their way through her mind. “I’m not really old, am I?” she wondered. “No. Thirty isn’t old. I’m just waitressing to pay off my student loans,” she told herself for the umpteenth time. “I’ll start my real career soon. Get a good job, settle down…”

But then she had a revelation. “I’m been telling myself ‘soon’ for how long? Five? Six? Seven years? I need to do something now. Tomorrow I’ll quit, and start on my career search.” She realized she was speaking aloud. She stopped herself. After all, she wasn’t crazy. Right? Right. Comforted by her newfound self-initiative, she drove on. She glanced at her rear view mirror. Damn guy back there needs to turn off his brights.

But wait. Something was off in the mirror. She checked again for a closer inspection. A smudge? She wiped at it with a thumb, the other hand on the wheel. Trick of the light, must be. She adjusted her mirror. The mirror moved, but the imperfection didn’t. “That’s…It is! It’s a wrinkle! When on earth did that happen?” Yes it was. A worry line, making a nice little furrow right in her brow. She really was getting older. Maybe that Snappy bastard was right.

“Aha!” she exclaimed, one upraised finger a declaration of her epiphany. “I’ll take my first paycheck from my new job and buy myself some Botox. That’s some incentive right there,” she decided. She laughed. It was broken and shaky, like a crazy person’s. She put it out of her mind. She finished her homeward-bound excursion, taking careful precaution not to look at her reflection. “Must have been a trick of the light,” she finally concluded. “No way in hell I’m that old.”

She pulled into the driveway. Nice little cozy place in a decent neighborhood. She went in, put down her things, and fixed herself a nightcap. Nothing like a little Jack to put you to sleep. Maybe more than a little Jack, actually. She turned on the TV for a while. Nothing good was on; she watched anyway. An observing doctor might have described it as a self-induced vegetative state.

Eventually conjuring enough energy to roust herself from her seat, she staggered towards the bathroom. Time to brush her teeth and go to bed. Whew, that was a pretty hefty nightcap. I can barely walk straight. She needed some well-deserved rest. She stumbled in and flicked on the switch.

“Oh. My. God!” she screamed in utter horror. She rubbed her eyes and looked again. Still there. Her face was lined with many more wrinkles than before. Her hair was visibly graying. “When did I get so old?” She appeared to have aged at least ten years in the car ride home. “No. It’s impossible to age so quickly. I must be dreaming. Or drunk.” She squeezed her eyelids shut and pinched as hard as she could. She slowly, tentatively, reopened them. It had gotten even worse. “I’m not insane, I’m not insane,” she reassured herself. “It must be some disease!” Whatever it was, it was progressing.

She watched in stupefied terror as her face wrinkled, like someone crunching up an old piece of paper. Her hair grayed and thinned and fell out. Her teeth grew loose, black, and fell out of her mouth. She spit them out, a disgusted grimace wrenching her visage. Her breasts dropped, in spite of her $30 so-called Wonderbra. All the skin on her body sagged and dripped like a wax statue placed too close to the heater. It was as if all the pins holding her skin to her body had suddenly been removed. Her hands futilely clawed her face in disbelief. “No,” she denied to no one in particular. “I can’t be this old!”

My friend Jack’s been playing tricks on me tonight. I’m just going to go to sleep. She hobbled her way to bed. Instead of the usual leap, she slowly, arduously, lifted herself into bed. She gasped with exertion once finally lying down. Whatever I've come down with, it really sucks. Maybe it will all clear up on it’s own in the morning. Slowly, in spite of the agonizing thoughts plaguing her mind, she willed herself into sleep.

In the morning, Nancy didn’t show up for work. Her manager, knowing she never missed a day, called her home phone. It rang and rang but to no avail. He sent someone down to check it out. What they found was Nancy, 75 years old, dead in her bed. The Death Certificate listed the cause as Old Age.