Dandelions
The diner is called Lucky’s. I don’t know why. The soda’s flat, the coffee’s weak, and the waitress’s name tag screams DOLORES, but she only answers to Dee.
I come here to read at lunch. Same booth every day. Back corner. By the window. The one where the vinyl is split, its vertical seams held together with silver tape.
I order the smash burger. No bun. Never touch the fries. The plate holds the book, pages spread open, the edges picketed with fluorescent tabs—pink, lemon, electric blue—like I’ve notarized every story, line by line.
I’ve been on this same story for eleven days now.
Dee refills my coffee without asking. She used to make small talk. Now she just pours and walks away, like she’s learned not to interrupt whatever’s happening to me in this booth.
The story is titled “Orphans.” I’ve read the first twenty pages, maybe forty times over. I keep returning to the same paragraphs the way a tongue returns to a broken tooth.
A woodworker. An apprentice. An ex-wife who calls on Sundays.
Three people, ordinary as dandelions.
I read until my eyes blur. Not crying. Not exactly.
I put the book down. Release the breath I didn’t know I was holding. Pick up my fork. Set it back on the plate.
Outside the window, cars move through the intersection. Someone waits to turn. Someone doesn’t make the light.
I take a deep bellyful of air. Let it go.
Dee watches me from behind the counter, the way you watch someone sleeping in a position that can’t be comfortable.
The kid holds his pee in the middle of the night because of creaky floors. Eighteen months in the old man’s house, and he still moves like a guest who might be asked to leave.
I know that architecture. I spent years calibrating my footsteps. Learning how to move, learning what invites attention, and how to pass unseen. That calibration isn’t soon forgotten.
Each day, I return to Lucky’s with the intention of reaching the end, and each day I’m defeated somewhere in the middle. My eyes well up. My throat constricts. The world outside the window goes soft at the edges.
Near the end—I won’t get there today—the ex-wife leans her head on the old man’s shoulder. They watch the kid in the darkness. He’s humming. I know what’s coming. The kid doesn’t.
Dee slides the check onto the table. I’ve been here two hours. The lunch rush has come and gone. My coffee’s dead cold. Fries gone pale. The burger has congealed into something more clinical than culinary.
“You okay, hon?”
I look up. Her face is kind in the way that diner waitresses’ faces are kind—professional, practiced, sincere.
“Just reading,” I say.
She glances at the book. Fluorescent tabs jutting out at odd angles. Happy little gravestones honoring every place I’ve been arrested.
“Must be some story,” she says.
I close the book.
“Yeah,” I say. “Must be.”