| The Restaurant- January 2001 The restaurant bustled gently at two p.m., whispering with the conversations of the dozen or so tables still occupied in the dimly illuminated room. At a chair in the corner, a teardrop of sunlight dribbled onto the tablecloth, pouring into a puddle of gold when the man reading at the window shifted his posture. Waiters hefted sweating metal pitchers of water and iced tea, weaving in and out of tables like white birds in their starched button-down shirts. Herb bread baked on the air, and pristine doily-bedecked dessert trays perched within easy view. �Can I have Saturday off?� a busboy asked the manager. �I� my grandfather�s funeral is�� The manager nodded slowly. �Will you need morning and evening?� �Yeah.� The boy nodded. �We�re driving�� he smiled sadly. ��He taught me how to drive, you know. In his truck.� Crash, and the little glass dish splintered, depositing its vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce on the floor like a broken egg. The four-year-old girl watched its slow cold creep on the stone tile and wailed, chubby fingers gripping the edge of the tablecloth. Her father grimaced and avoided the stares of his older children that said he should have been watching, that Mom would have been, as he bent and mopped ineffectually with his napkin. The woman tipped back her head and laughed, bringing the small glass of wine to her lips as the giggles bubbled from between them, meeting the man�s eyes across the table as he grinned at her. He touched the toe of his shoe against her sandaled foot, and his eyelids lowered sleepily as she set down her glass and stroked his ankle with her toes, holding his eyes all the while. �I�m glad you asked me here,� she said softly, remembering the first time they danced at the office Christmas party. He held her gaze and lifted one hand, signaling to the waiter for the check. An elderly man swirled a spoon into his white mug of coffee, tapping his cigarette against the edge of the ashtray. The rich hazelnut in his cup couldn�t disguise the thick scorched-tar fragrance tangled in his tired clothes and thinning silvered hair, and he sighed, knowing Edith would notice and take away his cigarettes again when he got home. A waitress clamped her teeth on a scream as she jerked her hand back from the ceramic plate, holding her wrist with the other hand and silently bending over her reddened fingertips, marveling that she hadn�t noticed the canneloni was just out of the 650-degree oven. Fire flared under her skin, and a waiter ran to her, blowing quickly on her fingers and holding her hands in his tenderly. So much for bowling tonight, she thought ruefully, meeting his eyes, and ran to the kitchen for some ice. �Don�t let him get to you like this,� a teenage girl urged her friend, patting her shoulder. Then she picked up a chip and slathered it with spinach dip, carrying it to her mouth and saying, �He�s slime. Not worth it.� �I know; I�m over it,� her friend declared, tossing her head. She planted her elbows on the table, grabbed a chip, and dug into the dip herself, her bravado almost as convincing as the coppery Clairol wash in her hair. The man reading at the window shifted again, and the sunlight on his tablecloth dried up into nothing. A small smile tickled his mouth, and he re-read the words in front of him: �Every person has a life to lead, fascinating in its own way. Every person has a story.� �Every person,� he repeated on a whisper, and glanced across the restaurant with hooded eyes. |