Veronica :: Glider Diner :: January 2009
Booth eleven was crying.
It was cold and dreary and fully winter outside. They had come in with snow dusted on their shoes and dressed in funeral clothes, and I immediately felt awful to be rushing in and taking orders when they clearly just needed to be alone.
I was trying to decide if I should go over. It was tricky, because it was so delicate. I didn’t want to assume that they wouldn’t order anything, but I also didn’t want to upset them any further.
He moved over and sat on her side of the booth, where they were packed in against the plastic coating of the seats. He wrapped his arms around her.
My sensitivity cursed me again, and I felt a few tears welling up myself.
Her eyes ran with mascara. He made an attempt to brush away a few crumbles from her cheek and also to say something sweet, but she only cried.
I wasn’t sure what to do. I obviously couldn’t do much, except bring them a hot breakfast or a cup of coffee. And that wouldn’t help, wouldn’t change things, wouldn’t even come close to alleviating pain.
Luckily, he knew this.
“Pam,” I could hear as I took an order at the next table. “This was a bad idea. Let’s go home.”
“Jim--” she started, and I couldn’t hear the rest.
But I could see. They left, hand in hand, the black material of her dress swishing as the two folded into the unmistakeable pattern of loss.
Luckily, they had each other.
“Veronica,” my best friend and best co-worker, Jasmine said to me after they were out of sight and we were filling maple syrup containers. “What was going on with those two?”
I smiled with a little ache. I thought about life and its fragility, the way it could just be gone. You had to hold on to the “right nows” and the “this moments,” and even though it always seemed cliche, you had to admit that it made you a little happier, more appreciative.
“They love each other. They’ll figure it out.”
Jasmine put a sticky hand on my shoulder.
“You’re really weird when you get all sentimental like that, you know.”
It might not have been the right thing to say, the right time.
But she was my best friend, and there were certain conditions to that.
Starting with letting some things go without argument, and ending with continually, unfailingly, and most importantly-- being a shoulder to lean on.
Chapter End Notes:
I'm sort of seeing it as Pam's close aunt had died-- kind of weird to add this one, but I thought that it's a very telling part of a relationship and I actually sort of had an experience of waiting on a couple like this.
