Each time the door opened, Liam’s head snapped up. He’d seen fourteen people come and eleven of them go again since arriving shortly after seven a.m.; it was a popular diner with the locals, his waitress had explained when she brought him a menu, which Liam had not yet looked at. He had spent the first five minutes of his visit surveying the dining area: white walls lined with a variety of certificates cheaply framed, most recently one from two years earlier proclaiming the diner served the “best coffee in the tri-cities”; a series of well-used booths covered in washable fabric lining the wall closest to the street; stainless steel stools lining the worn wooden counter along the back, tended by a cheerful college student who greeted everyone who sat there with a smile and a bright “coffee?” as she slid menus in their direction from the large stack at the end of the counter that she periodically ran a bar rag across. Down the middle were six square tables, diagonally positioned, each with four chairs, suitable for small groups or to be pulled together for an eight, ten, twelve, sixteen, up to twenty-four top party. He imagined it was a regular after-church destination on Sundays. He was sitting at the center table, farthest from the door, so he could see each person walking in. No one had entered for several minutes now. Liam fiddled with the salt and pepper shakers, then finally took up the menu and glanced through its contents- the usual diner breakfast fare- served all day! Proudly emblazoned across the top of each page: a variety of egg plates, with and without toast, sausage, bacon, and ham; a list of pancakes of increasing complexity and sweetness culminating with a chocolate pancake with ice cream, whipped cream, cherries, and sprinkles that you could get for half-off with proof it was your birthday; something called a breakfast casserole that involved hashbrowns, cheese, eggs, sausage, and a house “breakfast sauce”; biscuits and gravy, grits, “ask your waitress about today’s baked goods”. Liam’s waitress, a kindly-looking middle-aged woman with a snaggle tooth, old-fashioned wire-rimmed glasses, and crimson lipstick, wandered over for the third time since he’d sat down. ‘Barbra’, her nametag declared, with a hand-drawn daisy in yellow Sharpie after the second ‘a’. “Ready to order? D’you want to hear about today’s baked goods?” she asked. “Or tell me about the house breakfast sauce instead?” Barbra smiled one of those trying-to-be-cute smiles. “Oh, I’m sorry, can’t tell you that, it’s top secret! But I can tell you, everyone just loves it!” Liam smiled back and ordered a coffee to stave off being asked to relinquish his table as the diner started filling up. “Best coffee in the tri-cities!” Barbra assured him, gesturing at the framed certificate. She left briefly, returned with a cup and a steaming pot, set the cup down, poured, wiped a stray splash from the table with her rag, and moved off to wait on a new table. Liam left the cup where she had set it and returned to his survey of the faces that entered the diner, many more now as the rush hour crowd filed in: a giggling trio of young women dressed in black pants and white shirts on their way to their department store job; men singly or in pairs wearing business attire, a woman in her mid-thirties with pink hair greeted enthusiastically with a chorus of “Mary!” from waitresses, counter-tender, and even a few guests, evidently a well-liked local or coworker. At one point, the diner was filled, and Barbra, who had given up approaching his table after his fifth “I’m fine, thanks” in favor of waiting on more active customers, kept darting looks over at him, which Liam registered but avoided meeting. Eventually, things evened out, and the diner maintained a half- to three-quarters full status for much of the morning. Barbra wandered back over to his table towards eleven o’clock. “I’m fixin’ to leave,” she said. Liam understood this meant he should ask for the check, which came to $1.34. He placed a twenty-dollar bill in the book, closed it, and slid it across the table. “Keep the change.” Barbra thanked him, a note of gratitude-tinged surprise in her voice. “D’you still want that?” She asked, gesturing to the full cup of coffee. Liam nodded, and she shrugged and left. He saw her whisper something to the girl behind the counter, who looked over at him and laughed. He imagined the exchange: that poor guy’s been here since seven doing nothing but watching people come in that door. She must be pretty special for him to stick around so long! The thought brought a wry smile, quickly smoothed back into studied disinterest. The lunch crowd replaced the morning crowd: young mothers pushing strollers and holding grimy toddler hands, senior citizens, another flurry of men in business clothing, six women in a book club, their dog-eared and Post-it-noted paperbacks on the table alongside their club sandwiches and Cobb salads and iced teas. The college girl at the counter was replaced by a slender and bored-looking young man with thick black spectacles who spent all his non-interacting time with his nose in a book or scribbling furiously in a little black notebook with an old-fashioned fountain pen. Barbra’s replacement, Ginny, had dyed red hair shaped into a sleek pageboy, a long nose, and a no-nonsense air that compelled Liam to ask for another menu and order a sandwich and fries. “You want me to dump that and get you a fresh one?” She asked him, indicating his hours-old cup of coffee, still untouched. “Sure, thanks,” Liam said because it seemed she wouldn’t take no for an answer. “You don’t mind my askin’, what brings you in today?” Ginny asked as she set down the plate of sandwiches, a few chips slipping off onto the Formica tabletop. He picked them up and placed them back on the plate. “’Cos it doesn’t seem to be the coffee,” she added, with an effort at humor, as she set down a fresh cup to replace the one she’d just taken back to be tossed. Liam gave her a vague smile. “I’m meeting someone.” “Been here a long time,” she observed. He nodded but didn’t elaborate. After a moment, she grew impatient or bored and moved away to another, more talkative table of customers. Liam listened to their laughter and back-and-forth banter without hearing anything they said, lost in that haze of sitting around just waiting for … something. Someone. Around two-thirty, Ginny walked back over to his table and tsked when she saw he hadn’t so much as eaten a chip off his plate. “I’m goin’ on my lunch break,” she informed him. “If you need anything while I’m gone, Paul will help you.” She indicated the young man behind the counter, currently wiping off menus with an air of resignation, his notebook splayed pages-side down on the counter to one side, a pen ostentatiously tucked into the breast pocket of his white button-down shirt. Liam thanked her and watched her walk through the double doors on the other side of the counter and vanish into the depths of the building. He returned his attention to the room in front of him. At this point, the lunch crowd had died down. A few people were seated at the counter sipping coffees, and some students were occupying booths, their textbooks and laptops spread out on the tables, wet rings spreading under sweating glasses of ice water. Each ringing bell announcing a new customer’s entrance caught Liam’s attention, but otherwise he looked down at his untouched plate of food and unsipped coffee, lost in the company of unarticulated, half-formed thoughts. Ginny returned twice more, once immediately following her lunch break to check on him and again just before six p.m.: “My shift’s over.” Liam asked for the check, which came to $11.39. He slipped another twenty into the book and handed it to her. “Keep the change.” She thanked him, and her eyes went soft. “You sure you don’t need anything else?” He heard the note of pity in her voice. “No, thanks. I’m fine.” “You don’t mind me sayin’, you’re a real good-lookin’ man, and you seem real nice. I hope she appreciates you,” she said in a sudden burst of boldness. Liam smiled at that. “She doesn’t even know me.” “Blind date, huh?” Ginny tsked sympathetically. “Still think she’s comin’?” Liam shrugged. “Nothing to do but wait and see.” Ginny’s expression registered admiration. “Well, good luck to you. Hope you come in again.” Liam smiled again. “Not likely. I’m just here for the day. Just for this.” Ginny’s expression turned to total disbelief. “And you been here all day, just sitting at this table? Even with all the museums, parks, stores, and other things to do out there?” She gestured to the door as a symbol of the bustling city beyond. “Like I said,” Liam answered, working to keep his tone easy, “I’m just here for this.” Ginny’s lips pursed. “Well—” She seemed to be at a loss for words. “Are you sure you don’t want anything else?” “You could tell me what’s in that breakfast sauce,” Liam suggested. She got the hint. “House secret. Have a good night.” Liam watched her walk away. As Ginny reached the front door, she met a woman in her sixties at the entrance. Small and nervous looking, she stepped aside to let Ginny pass, closed the door behind her and turned to survey the room. Liam straightened up and looked intently at this woman. Her face was gently lined with wrinkles and looked tired and careworn. Her hair, brown and heavily threaded with grey, was carefully arranged in a side-parted shoulder-length style. She was dressed plainly, in a button-down shirt slightly too large for her slender frame and well-worn khaki pants. There was nothing remarkable about her except that as she looked at him and he looked at her, it was through eyes of the exact shade of caramel brown, with the exact tilt at the outer corner, with which each observed themself in the mirror every morning. After a long pause, during which her body language suggested she might turn and leave, the woman seemed to make up her mind. She pulled her shoulders back, sighed, and passed the line of tables down the center of the room toward Liam. He stood as she approached, surprised to find himself shaking. He gripped the top of his chair for support. She stopped across the table and gestured to herself. “Frances Highwater.” “Liam Highwater,” he responded, indicating himself in return, his voice sounding like that of a stranger to himself, nervous and self-conscious. “May I join you?” she asked, gesturing with a slim hand at the empty chair opposite him. He nodded silently, slipping gratefully into his seat again and hoping she couldn’t see him trembling. Get a grip, Liam! She sat and took in the scene before her, just as Liam had done when he arrived. “That looks good,” she said, eyeing the sandwich on his plate. Liam nodded. “Been here long?” She ventured next, studying his face. “Not terribly, no.” “I don’t mind saying, I was of two minds whether to come,” she said finally. “It’s just—I wasn’t expecting you. This. Any of it.” “I—wasn’t expecting it, either,” he agreed. “It just—I. Just happened.” He stopped talking and looked down at his hands, folded into one another on the table before him. “You look well,” she said after another long pause. “Life’s been good to you?” He nodded. “And you’re happy?” She pressed, still studying his face as though she would memorize it, as though he were a puzzle she was trying to solve. He nodded again. “Well, that’s nice. That’s good,” she said and lapsed into silence again. Liam’s third waitress of the day, Ashley, came to the table all smiles and dimples and upspeak. “Hi there? How are you today? You want to see a menu?” She asked Frances. Frances looked at Liam with questions in her eyes. “You should try the coffee,” he said. “It’s the best in the tri-cities area.” “It is!” Ashley agreed. “Can I get you a cup?” Frances nodded. “Decaf, please.” “Anything else?” Ashley asked, including Liam in her probe. Liam said he wouldn’t mind another cup of coffee himself. He had a long drive ahead of him. “You drove here?” Frances asked as Ashley walked away. “And you’re just here for today?” “Yes.” “Well. That’s—” Frances broke off and looked away for a moment. Then, she reached across the table, knocking chips off his plate as she grasped his hands. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you spent all day here waiting for me.” “I’ve spent my whole life waiting for you,” he blurted before he could stop himself. “Come hell or high water, I’d have stayed until you came. A few hours in a diner is nothing.” “It’s a lot to me,” Frances replied, giving his hands a quick squeeze and, just as quickly, withdrawing her own hands back to her side of the table. Liam broke eye contact and looked down, noticing how much like her hands his own were, down to the bitten nails betraying the genetic predisposition to anxiety that characterized the heavy silence they sank into. Ashley returned with two steaming cups of coffee; noting the looks on their faces, she discreetly set them down on the table and left again without a word. “What should I call you?” Liam asked finally, looking up to meet Frances’ scrutiny again. They held one another’s gaze for several minutes, an unspoken conversation that felt more intimate and important than anything either of them could have said aloud, emotions flickering from one set of eyes to the other, reverberating like some code only they understood. Finally, Frances swallowed and said, her voice husky with sentiment: “I hardly deserve it, but—” “Mother,” he finished, and they dissolved together into undefinable tears. Behind the counter, his idle onlooking transforming instantly into studied interest, Paul pushed his glasses up more firmly on his nose, picked up his notebook, pulled his fountain pen from his pocket, and began scribbling furiously.
Melissa Ridley Elmes is a Virginia native currently living in Missouri in an apartment that delightfully approximates a hobbit hole. She is the author of two poetry collections, Arthurian Things (Dark Myth Publications, 2020) and Dreamscapes and Dark Corners ( Alien Buddha Press, 2023). Her fiction and poetry have also appeared in Washington Square Review LLC, Belmont Story Review, Black Fox, Poetry South, Star*Line, Dreams and Nightmares, and various other print and web venues. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Elgin, Rhysling, and Dwarf Star awards for speculative poetry.