Two versions of an exercise I did for a writing workshop:
1. Slow Morning
A large raindrop runs down the
outside of the diner window. It runs
into a previous drop and swallows it, doubling itself. Soon the pane is covered with drops. For a moment, one is reflected onto a single
crumb on the stained table.
Janet has her
elbows on the table, her head in her hands, staring down at the surface of the
table, counting the imperfections. Too
many.
She is sitting
alone in the Seattle
diner.
Where is Bob?
She glances at the
clock across the room. Ten o’clock. Bob should have been here half an hour
ago. Her fork is teetering on the edge
of her empty plate. Janet moves her
elbow and bumps the fork into secure position.
She does this without removing her head from her hands.
She wants to
glance at the door again, but the shuffling waiter has been giving her strange
looks. She should have sat where she
could see it without turning. Her
fingers tap on the sides of her head.
She lets her eyes
wander around the room, without turning her head toward the door. No one else is in the diner except her and
the owner and the one shuffling waiter.
The owner has made a point of not looking at her. The waiter has been shifty and suspicious. When Fredric told her about this place, he
had failed to mention that a wary waiter would be snooping about. At least there were no customers, as he had
promised.
Janet takes her
stained napkin and once again carefully wipes her large plate— the center; the
rim, all the way around. She places it
in at the seat across from her. She
slowly lets out a deep breath. Good
enough. She places her hands on the edge
of the table. No. She wipes the plate again; puts it back
exactly.
She leans
back. She begins to turn her head toward
the clock again, but stops herself. Her
internal sense of time tells her that only a minute has passed. Where is this Bob? She closes her eyes. She tries to mentally picture his face, but
is not sure of the eyes. She turns to
the open purse beside her on the seat and pulls from it a crisp manila
folder. She lays it evenly on thee table
before her and examines five photographs of Bob. One is from his driver’s license, one from a
newspaper clipping, and the other three from a discreet photographer with a
long-distance lens. She stares intently
at them for fifteen seconds each. Her
mouth moves silently to count the seconds.
Then she closes the folder and puts it back into her purse. She double-checks to make sure that it will
not diminish the accessibility of the silenced pistol. She wants to double-check the pistol as well,
but knows it is not wise, not with that waiter.
She reaches for it anyway. Biting
her lip, she just scoots the purse a fraction closer to herself instead.
She glances at the
waiter. He is cleaning the hallway near
the restrooms. The owner has buried
himself in a newspaper. Janet slips out
of her booth and into the one across from her, where Bob will sit. She mimes reaching out, taking something off
the plate. She stares at the seat where
she was just sitting for a moment, wishes she had a mirror. What will he see? Hastily she switches back to her original
seat, glancing at the door again as she does.
Where is he?
A man walks in the
door.
He glances around
quickly. He takes off his
sunglasses. It is Bob.
Janet goes
tense. The muscles in her arms
seize. Her eyes look everywhere but at
Bob’s face.
The owner of the
diner is nowhere to be seen.
Bob sees Janet and
approaches. He puts his hands in his
pockets as he reaches the booth. She
swallows quickly and nods for him to sit.
He sits.
“You’ve eaten,” he
says.
Her eyes go the
plate exactly in front of him, then back to his face. He has tired eyes. “Yes,” she says. She breathes very steadily. “I have eaten.”
“I have not,” he
says. “Do you mind?”
Her eyes
widen. “The waiter . . . the waiter’s
busy.”
He glances
casually, nods. “Of course. And the owner?”
She slowly lifts
her right her arm toward her purse. “He
knows to, eh, look very closely at something else.” Now that it is happening, it seems to be
happening much too fast. She rests her
right elbow on the back of the booth.
The feel of cotton on leather does not comfort like it should. Her hand dangles just above her open purse.
He leans forward,
over the plate, puts his elbows on the table on either side of it.
No waiting now.
Janet takes the
pistol and places it on the plate, pointing at him. For a moment, she does not take her hand off
it. Bob’s eyes flicker. He leans back ever so slightly.
Janet withdraws
her hand quickly. Bob reaches out, lets
his hand descend onto the gun. He turns
it toward the window. He picks it up,
turns it over, examines it; does all this with one hand. He sets it back down on the plate, butt down,
silencer pointing in the air. He brings
up his other hand.
Janet is very
still.
Bob takes off the
silencer in a few brief twists. He holds
it up, examines it. He replaces it just
as efficiently. This whole time his eyes
have been always on the gun. Janet
watches him as he watches what he is doing, almost detached from his own
actions, and certainly detached from any interaction with her.
Janet
swallows. She pushes a stray strand of
brown hair back behind her ear.
Bob makes a
clicking noise with his tongue. “Looks
good,” he says. He puts the gun inside
his jacket. Then he gets up and
leaves. Janet follows him out with her
eyes. The wind slams the door.
Janet glances at
the clock again. 10:04. The whole thing has taken less than five minutes.
She puts her
elbows back on the table.
She puts her head
back in her hands.
The rain keeps
hitting the window, hitting the window, hitting the window.
Her
words with Bob are the closest thing she has had to a conversation this month.
2. Too Late
John’s
late and he knows it. He forgot his coat
on the way out the door and is still cursing himself under his breath about
it. It is Sunday morning and he is not
going to church. His mother would not be
happy if she could know. He has to make
an awkward half leap to get over a puddle at the edge of the curb. Then, too suddenly, the glass door of the
diner looms before him, rivulets running across the flaking yellow
letters. He takes a breath before he
opens it, even though it means that much more rain will soak into his
disordered hair. He straightens his
shoulders decisively and pushes through the doorway.
At once the full
force of the diner hits him, old and cheap and blaring, bursting in a thousand
directions at once. A child is screaming
in a booth, his parents insisting that he finish his meal. A teenager is looking everywhere but at the
girl across from him. The lights are
piercing too—who needs glaring ‘80s style lights at this time in the
morning? From somewhere in the back, a
cook’s shouting bites through the clamor of dishes and the sizzle of
grease. He can almost feel his shoes
sticking to the floor. The smell of
burnt burgers hits him. Too much salt in
this place. He is thirsty already, and
he just walked out of a downpour. He is
dripping all over the dirty tiles beneath his feet, of course, and he sees
little puddles under the rest of the customers as well. He drags his eyes off the floor and looks
around for Cindy. To his left, a hefty
waitress with blank eyes clatters a tray of what must be pancakes down on a
table. To his right, an elderly man is
unaware, as he gestures, that his elbow keeps coming precariously close to
sending his milkshake to the floor. The
clock hanging in the middle of the room catches and holds John’s gaze as it is
about to fly over the buzzing room once more—twenty to eleven; he’s a solid ten
minutes late. Figures.
He pushes on,
deeper into the diner, unconsciously biting his lip. An old woman is rustling her newspaper
heartily and won’t stop. The usually
pleasant smell of coffee is overwhelming in this high of a concentration. Where in this hell is she? He tries to focus, but his head feels like an
anvil. The bathroom doors jump up in
front of him; he has gone too far and hit the end of the crooked row of
booths. He turns around and—
There she is. Cindy sits in the nearest booth, facing him,
her head barely above the back of the booth.
No wonder he hadn’t seen her. He always
forgets how short she is, even though she’s two years older than him. Two years?
Yeah, that must be about right.
Her face is forcefully composed; her expression does not change when she
sees him. She just blinks. One of her hands holds up her chin. The other rests on the edge of the table in
front of her, fingers tapping lightly but insistently. An empty coffee mug stands off to one side,
atop a folded newspaper, like a solitary medieval keep surrounded by barren
fields.
Now something must
be done. He can’t just stand there like
a deer in her headlights. He takes a
breath and reaches the booth in one stride.
He slides in gingerly, feeling her eyes on him the whole time.
“You’re
here,” she says. She sighs. “Good,” she adds.
He
shifts his neck so it cracks. “Yeah,
yeah,” he says quickly. “I got your
call.”
She
blushes. “Last night? I don’t know what—”
“No,
this morning.”
She
throws a glance over at the empty coffee mug but doesn’t say anything.
“You
look really tired.”
She
shrugs. “I’m okay. You?”
He
doesn’t want to admit that his head is killing him. “I, uh . . .
I’m doing okay. Yeah, fine.”
She
raises an eyebrow. “Late night?”
Yeah. But they’ve been going out three weeks. Since when does that give her the right to
question him about where he goes or how late he stays up every night?
A
truck going by outside on the street throws water up against the door, yards
away. For a moment he watches it run
down.
She
sighs again. “You smell like a
hangover.”
He
tries to laugh. “Look I’m sorry I had to
cancel. Or sorry it was so last
minute. Sorry if that was a problem, for
you.”
Her
lip curls up a little. “You had to?
It was a problem for me?”
“You’re
the one who called at 2:30 in the morning.”
She
is silent for a moment. “It just strikes
me as strange, John, that you would value your spur-of-the-moment drinking
night thing with your college buddy over your planned-for-a-week nice dinner
thing with your girlfriend.”
He
can’t see the front of the clock from where he is. “You say my name like you hold it against me,
Cindy.”
She
blinks. Her eyes—her big hazel eyes that
he thought were so sad and beautiful the first time he saw them, the first time
he saw her—look owlish now. There is a
little thread of bloodshot color, in the corner of the left one, which her
eyelashes keep trying to cover up, unsuccessfully.
“What?”
she asks at last.
“You
use my name like . . . like a leash to try to pull me around.”
Her
mouth opens and then closes again. She
rearranges her hands on the stained surface of the table. “I was trying to get your attention. You look like you’re not listening to me.”
“You
listen like you’re not looking at me.”
He whips off the goofy, habitual inversion before he can think to stop
himself. They irritate her, he discovered
some time ago, but his mind had gotten wrapped into the pattern, and sometimes
his tongue followed too fast to correct.
She
slaps the table. “John!”
He
starts.
“Do
you even care?”
His
eyes go to the back of the clock again.
“About what?”
She
pulls herself up and puts her elbows on the table. “About me! You remind me of Nathan.” As soon as she says it she puts her hand over
her mouth.
His
eyes go wide for a second, but then he slouches back.
“Not
usually,” she says quickly. “I mean, not
really.”
Too
late. A pretty waitress hurries past,
and he lets his eyes follow her legs.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says.
“I think we’re done here. You’ve
said what you wanted to, right? I remind
you of your dead-beat cheating ex-husband.
Because I cancelled a date.” He
reaches over and turns the empty coffee mug upside down on the newspaper. “Check and check mate. Very well done.”
Her
face contorts. The rain on the window
throws odd patterns of light and shadow on her face. Then she sets her teeth. “You know, you sound like him too, when you
talk like that,” she says. “You don’t
want to take responsibility for anything.”
She scoots defiantly out of the booth and stands, looking down on
him. “I knew it would come to this. I knew it.
I knew it last night when I called at 2:30 and there was nobody home. I guess you were either still out drinking
and ogling strippers or you were crashed in your bed drunk out of your mind.”
He
notices the black circles under her eyes for the first time. “Whatever you say,” he says. He can’t do anything to stop her now.
She
looks around, like she’s trying to find words, like maybe she could grab some
from the amused faces in the neighboring booths. However, they are silent, and she doesn’t
find any, and she strides off past him toward the bathroom. As the door marked “Ladies” swings to behind
her, she calls, “Don’t be there when I get back!”
The
cook is shouting from the kitchen again.
John
stands and lets a long breath out. He
walks past the newspaper woman, past the old man’s shake, still balanced, past
the teenagers avoiding each other’s eyes, past the child in rebellion, past the
dripping coats, through the puddles and the wafting smell of grease being
burnt.
He
curses her, curses himself, curses the diner, curses Seattle, pulls his collar up around his chin,
and walks out the door, back into the rain.
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