One night I was out drivin’ and thinkin’ and lookin’ for signs of what my next move might be, but I was gettin’ no answers from the parade of headlights underneath a blanket of stars as the broken white lines sliced the blacktop right through the heart of an endless night. And as my mind drifted through all the lost possibilities left behind on roads not taken, a faint blue glow lit up the road as I came upon an all-night roadside diner with a jittery neon sign struggling to say “OPEN”. So I pulled into the empty gravel parking lot and let my headlights and the hiss of a grateful engine announce my arrival to no one in particular.
The diner was small but clean enough with no customers if you don’t count the drunk snoring in the last booth. The cook was leanin’ against a cold stove reading the horse-racing form and lookin’ for a winner down in Tijuana while the Mexican radio station reminded you that you don’t have to know the language to know it’s a sad song. I was letting the scene take its place in my mind when an old waitress looked up at me, laughed and said, “Looks like you beat the crowd, boy; anywhere you like,” and waved her hand like a queen blessing the palace with her dangling cigarette like a scepter that froze time.
So I picked a booth and collapsed my weary self down exhaling my burdens like the sigh of a Norther as the broken spring in the seat reminded me my search for comfort-mental and physical-wasn’t over, and the only thought I could muster was, “…might as well order somethin’.”
The waitress got up slowly, takin’ her time and, obviously not pleased with me choosing the booth furthest away from her royal throne, made her way towards me managing a painful limp that made me feel guilty and my feet hurt just from watching her.
“Somethin’ to drink?”, she said.
“Naw,” I said, “just coffee.”
It seemed that after years of taking a beating from the same lesson every night, one sign had finally stayed lit long enough to find its way into my view and make me realize that my response to the question, “Something to drink?”, was going to require a bit more consideration on my part from now on.
-KO and PR, Fall 2023
