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Her cheap perfume sells her out. The second thing I notice is her greying white t-shirt hanging in stiff angles across her body. I imagine her at home draping laundry on a line strung above the kitchen radiator; old t-shirts and jeans squished next to baby onesies.
I keep staring at her slouching there behind the counter. Fluorescent lights advertise her lifestyle. If I’m clever enough I can probably figure out her occupation before my food arrives.
Ah, the things you occupy your mind with while dining solo at a sticky formica table. The only distraction: the alluring smell of sizzling bacon grease popping through the midnight silence.
Before I finish creating her imaginary job portfolio, the cook, Jay, according to his peeling name tag, clanks my plate of sunny side up eggs and homefries down in front of me.
“More coffee?” He asks without a smile.
I shake my head. “N’, thanks.”
Before the first bite of eggs hit bottom, the door hinges creak, bells jingle around the door knob, and cool night air hugs my ankles. Another pre-dawn diner looks up from underneath his worn out baseball hat offering me a warm half smile that pushes in a dimple on his cheek. His quick tilt of the head reminds me of the landscaper outside my building. He always greets me with a hat tilt too. I wish I knew the landscaper’s name. I scribble a mental note to ask next time.
I continue to shovel in my yolk soaked potatoes as the man settles into a stool one chair away from the young woman whose resume I haven’t finished sketching.
He offers her the same nod and mutters his order to Jay while he tips the coffee pot over his cup.
Jay hustles back to the kitchen. The old man looks around his counter space and then looks toward the young woman’s plate. “Sweetie would you mind passing me two creamers?”
She startles at the sound of his voice. But quickly stiffens herself. She stops swirling her eggs and lays her fork on the edge of her plate without a sound. She pushes the bowl of creamers toward the man, clasps her hands together and harbours them between her knees.
He splashes in two creamers and lifts his steaming mug savoring that first warm sip. Cupping both hands around his coffee he looks over toward the young woman.
“Long day?”
She hunches over a little tighter as if his words pinched her in the ribs, and she replies with a barely visible nod. A grey fog of fatigue rolls in around her.
The man watches her a second longer; and the edges of his warm smile invert. It’s the same look I give my kids when they are sick right before I cover them with a blanket.
Jay returns a moment later to the girl. He places a closed to-go box next to her plate, and asks if she wants another box for her eggs.
“Just the check, please.” She mumbles.
“Your breakfast neighbor paid your bill and added an ice cream sundae to go.” He says patting the top of the closed box.
She looks towards the older man, but not directly into his eyes.
“I saw the little fellow on your keychain and thought today would be a fun day to serve him a sundae for breakfast.” he says.
“Thank you.” She whispers.
“I’ve never seen you in here before. Are you new in the neighborhood?”
She turns back to her plate.
“Sort of.” she replies. She curls even further into herself, willing, yet failing, to render herself invisible.
“ Well my wife and I live a few blocks from here and we love to invite the new neighbors over for dinner. Plus she makes a mean plate of spaghetti and meatballs.” He smiles and points to her keys laying on the counter between them.
“And bring the little guy. We have a basketful of toys from the grandkids that he can play with.”
The young woman remains facing toward her plate.
He plucks a pen from his shirt pocket and writes something on a napkin. He folds it and swivels his stool around to face the girl.
“Here’s my address.” He lifts the napkin toward her. It dangles between them before she slowly lifts her hand to take the paper.
“Spaghetti and meatballs tomorrow night at 5. My wife’s number is on there too. Call if you ever need anything. Really.”
She stands to leave, taking care to lift her keys so they don’t clatter.
“G,night,” she says to the man.
Again he tips his hat. “G’night.”
The door closes behind the girl and the night air flutters the napkin underneath my coffee cup.
I’m not really sure what I just witnessed. He looks like a grandpa, but I guess you never know around here.
While I’m still trying to figure out the old man’s motives, Jay approaches my table and slides the check next to my water cup. He tracks my gaze toward the man, and then turns back at me.
“Yeah, he does that all the time. Most of the girls coming in here at this time of night work across the street.”
“Really? But, why does he invite them?” I whisper, too curious to mind my own business.
“You really want to know, son?” the man asks from across the small restaurant.
I blush a little. And nod.
He turns in his seat clutching his mug.
“Everyone needs to be seen not for what they do or what they have to offer. Each of those girls needs to be noticed just for being. And my wife and I, we see them. But they wont know it unless we tell them.”
While I’m still processing what he said, he looks into his mug and then back to me and says, “Do you know God, son?”
That question snaps me to attention.
“Yes, I’m a pastor actually. In fact, I was working late tonight, figuring out the budget for next year and praying. Mostly praying though.” I say and finish with a chuckle.
“You should come to dinner sometime too. You want to encounter God? Hang out with the people who most other people think are the farthest from Him. That’s where you find Him.”
“So what do you do? Preach to them? Tell them to get another job?”
“No, we listen. We ask about their lives. We make time to listen to what’s important to each girl. We offer friendship and help if needed. But mostly friendship. These kids need to know someone sees them, hears them and believes in them.”
“I’m so confused. How did you even.. Why did you…?” I stutter.
“Well,” he begins and pauses. He looks over at Jay who’s wiping down the counter the young woman just vacated, “when was it, Jay? Two years ago when I first came in here.”
“Yeah about that.” Jay replies.
“I stopped in one morning after my new night job. I clean a building downtown 3 nights a week. And about 5 or 6 girls were sitting at that table in the corner over there.” he points toward a table in the back. I turn to look at the now empty table.
“Blue balloons were floating above one of the chairs and a few presents were stacked on the floor.” he says.
“Was it girls from the club?” I interrupt.
“Yeah yeah. The thing was, they were dressed like girls from the club, but they were so sweet to the pregnant girl in the seat. I eavesdropped as they took turns going around the table telling their friend one wish they had for the new baby.”
He looks past me again toward the table conjuring up memories of the girls’ gathered there. And then he continues, “One girl said, ‘I wish your baby boy never sees the inside of a club, and grows up to see all the sacrifices you made for him.’ And another said, ‘ I hope you get to be the mom you want to be and that no one and nothing gets in your way.’ There was a kindness and a sadness to what they said to the mom-to-be. And unmistakably a humanness.”
I blurt my thoughts out loud. “The girls from that club had a baby shower? Here?”
“Umm hmm” he says and sighs. A faraway look dawns in his eyes and I wait silently for him to verbalize what he is remembering.
“I drove home that night and couldn’t stop thinking about what they said and how they said it. I was so uncomfortable with my thoughts that I prayed for God to clear my mind.” He swallows a gulp of his now lukewarm coffee.
“I’ll never forget that car ride. The sun was waking up over the horizon spreading deep yellows and oranges across the sky.” he waves his hand out in front of him in an arch. “It was so beautiful that morning. Then I heard a voice, clear as those morning rays of light piercing through the shadowy sky, ‘Son, they need a dad. Will you follow my lead on this one?’”
Whoa. I had heard God before too, but it was mostly about people in my regular orbit. Take the trash out before your wife has to ask. Forgive your neighbor for cutting the grass at 7am on Saturday morning. But this. This was crossing over into another lane.
“How do you even do that?” I asked.
“Well first I had to ask my wife if she would be a mom to them. There was no way I could single parent this.” He laughs.
“No, seriously, I didn’t know. But my wife, you know, she’s the smart one. When I got home she was already up pouring water into the coffee maker. At that point I couldn’t even keep it in. I felt like the words were dancing around inside of me. Plus she can read my face in a second anyway.
But when I told her she was like, ‘Wait those girls down on Mercury Street?’ She looked at me like I had lost my mind.
‘Wait a second, honey.’ I said. ‘How about right now, while that coffee is brewing, go in the room and ask God to speak to you about it.’ She laughed, but she went.
When she came out five minutes later she had tears in her eyes. ‘Honey, you won’t believe what God just showed me.’ She lifted her bible to my face and pointed to an underlined scripture. I put my readers on and took the bible from her hands. It was Romans 16:2
I ask you to receive her in the Lord in a way worthy of his people and to give her any help she may need from you…
When I looked up my wife was sitting down looking out the window. Her face, still wet with tears, was all scrunched up in thought.
Then she says, ‘How will we know what they need unless we ask? And everyone needs to eat so let’s bring them dinner and see how it goes from there. We need to go back there before your shift on Friday.’ she tells me.
‘You mean go to the club on Mercury Street?’ I ask.
She looked me straight in my eye and said , ‘Yup’.
And that’s how it started.”
I sit back in my chair releasing a long exhale. My heart drums a little faster in my chest and my body sags as if someone wrapped a heavy blanket around my shoulders.
The man walks over to my table and places a folded napkin down next to my check.
“Hope to see you again soon. Let’s finish this conversation then.” he says, chasing his kind comment with his familiar warm smile. I open the napkin and read it before tucking it into my pocket.
He turns to walk out the door. “Jay, you have a good one.” He says. They wave at each other and he’s gone.
*
I sit in the parking lot for a few minutes rubbing my hands together while the car warms up. I can’t get the image of the young woman with the cheap perfume out of my mind. I shake my head to refocus my thoughts and start the engine.
As I drive home deep reds and oranges ripple from the horizon as the sun peeks up from the east. But the beautiful sunrise doesn’t eclipse my mental photograph of the diner woman. And since I never really saw her face, my little sister’s profile and chestnut brown eyes fill up her missing features.
I walk in my front door, yank my shoes off and tuck them under the shoe rack by the door. I tiptoe upstairs to the bedroom and peek inside. Dawn glows through the blinds softening the sharp shadows of night surrounding my wife. She’s reclining in bed cradling our nursing baby.
I kneel down leaning onto her side of the bed and whisper, “Babe, I think we’ve got this ‘Church thing’,” I gesture air quotes with both hands, “all wrong.”
She replies in a soft chuckle. Her cheeks rise into her famous half smile. And I get the impression I‘m not the first in the family to realize this.
I reach for the napkin in my pocket and ask, “You up for dinner at a friend’s house tomorrow at 5?”
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