Had I understood this wrong? I’d just come into the diner, settled myself on my stool, and Maurice and Bald-Walker were talking. Bald said how he misses going to the games, what with the pandemic and all, and Maurice complained because they’d cancelled his softball league for safety and social distancing. “First year I haven’t played since I was a kid,” he said.

People will surprise you sometimes, but was he joking? Maurice is so old he makes me feel young, and — he plays softball? I wanted to ask him, fast-pitch or slow-pitch? And which position? He’s a little shaky when he walks, so I can’t see him as a shortstop. He’s tall and lanky, maybe he plays first-base.

More to the point, though, he’s bald, liver-splotched, and there’s an oxygen tube in his nose. Does he take the tube out and leave his oxygen tank in the dugout when he’s at bat or running the bases?

No mockery is intended, only respect and amazement, but — so many were the questions I didn’t ask.

♦ ♦ ♦

Usually I don’t work on Fridays, and start my weekend with an omelet at the diner. This week, though, we worked overtime — overtime, while working from home, how weird is that? So I went to the diner on Sunday instead, but it seemed to be mostly the same cast of characters, sipping coffee and eating eggs on a different day.

♦ ♦ ♦

A mid-30s black woman came in, alone, and she’s — what’s a polite word? — plus-sized. Hey, I like ’em plus-sized, and I’m plus-sized, double-plus. She was wearing a sleeveless white t-shirt that showed off her arms and other attributes I’m not supposed to notice but did. It was a blazingly white t-shirt, too — like she’d walked in from a detergent commercial.

She sat several stools away. Kirstin had just asked me, “What’s for breakfast?” and I was in a moment’s pause that always lasts five seconds, so Kirstin tossed a friendly glance at this lady as if to say, Good morning! I’ll be with you next.

The lady nodded, and the subtitles said No rush, but Harvey was in a hurry. He darted from the kitchen to the front with an order pad in his hand, and he was smiling, something I’d never seen before and couldn’t see this time, since he was wearing a mask. There was no doubt he was smiling, though, as he said good morning to that lady, poured her a cup of coffee, mentioned the morning’s special, etc.

It’s unusual for Harvey to take orders while Kirstin is working, and he’s never so energetic or friendly when he’s taking my order.

Must be hellish to be an attractive woman, I was thinking. Sure glad I’m a lumpy old man.

After Harvey took her order and walked back toward the kitchen, this lady plainly rolled her eyes and very, very slightly shook her head. She said a paragraph with that gesture, thinking she’d said it only to herself, but I overheard it and quietly chuckled.

We made eye contact from a dozen stools apart, and she might have slightly smiled at me, I’m not sure. Possibly she shrugged, as if to say, That’s the way it goes, or maybe I was imagining it. Then the moment was over. She started scrolling her phone, and I read my magazine.

♦ ♦ ♦

My omelet hadn’t yet arrived yet, and I glanced at the door because someone was walking in. He was wearing a mask, but I knew the face. It was Rufus. Oh, fuck it all to hell.

Rufus and I work in the same office, but we’ve both been working from home since the pandemic started. Why did I look up? If I’d kept my eyes in my magazine we could’ve plausibly pretended not to notice each other.

He’d seen me, though, and seen me seeing him, so he walked toward me, smiling. I made an effort to smile, too, but inside I was screaming.

“Hey, Doug!” he said, too loud from too far away as he kept coming too close and too closer. Oh, jeez, no. Rufus is not a workplace enemy, but he’s not a friend, not even a workplace friend, and not someone I want to see outside the office, but — here he comes.

When he was half a dozen steps away, I answered, “Hey, Rufus, how ya doing?,” smiling but also using my sci-fi telepathy to transmit a message: Don’t sit here, don’t sit here, don’t sit here.

And it’s nothing personal. I almost like the guy. He’s a big bear of a man, younger and nicer and more outgoing than me. At work he’s about 75% present, the other 25% lost to years of drug abuse, but that’s no problem. 75% is more than enough to get by at the office, any office.

Three steps away, he was still walking at a normal pace but in my mind it was like slow-motion video of a mushroom cloud spreading over Wisconsin. He’d want to sit down and eat with me, talk with me, but I have nothing to say except that I’d rather eat alone. Do I have to say that to him?

At work, his desk is fifty feet from mine, but it’s a different department so we rarely interact. In five years we’ve had maybe three conversations and I don’t want a fourth, not here, not today, not during my sacred breakfast alone at the diner, alone.

But he’d arrived, and there he was, standing over me at my stool. “So, we both eat at the best damn diner in town,” he said, and the dreaded chit-chat was underway.

What I wanted to say was, “Go away,” but instead I told him I’m usually at Bob’s Diner on Fridays, and he said he’s always at Bob’s on Sundays, blah blah.

Commit to core memory: Rufus said he always comes to the diner on Sunday mornings. If anything keeps me away on my usual Friday mornings, there are five other days to choose from, but this diner is now closed for me on Sundays.

I asked Rufus how he likes working at home, not because I care but because it was my turn to talk. He answered, but instead of listening I noticed his eyes darting between some empty adjacent stools. He was thinking, Am I supposed to sit with this guy and have breakfast with him? Same thing I was thinking.

The answer was emphatically NO but there’s no way to say it tactfully, especially since the question hadn’t even been asked. Tact, man — my supply of it is short, and they don’t sell it at Amazon.

“Hey Rufus,” I said softly, “we don’t have to do this just because we ended up at the same diner.”

“Oh, thank Christ,” he said, blurting it out before I’d quite finished what I was saying. “That’s exactly what I was hoping one of us would say. See you at work, Doug, if we ever get back there.”

And with that he beelined to a table way, way at the back of the diner. We both enjoyed our breakfasts in solitude, and later it occurred to me that the table where he ate was about as far from my stool as the distance between our desks at work. A nice, socially-distant distance.

♦ ♦ ♦

Toward the end of my blissfully solitary meal, three men came in together. They were buddies, obviously, but not loud or rambunctious so what do I care? They took three stools, between me and Black Woman in White T-Shirt.

The last of these three men had parked his butt on a stool that left just one empty seat between us. A little too close for me. I’m Mr Solitude. It’s why I come early, soon as the diner’s doors are unlocked.

Kirstin approached the newcomers, said “Hi” with her ordinary smile, and then she said, “Sorry, you guys can’t sit at the counter. Not enough empty stools between the customers. Why don’t you take that table near the window? I’ll be right out with the coffee pot!”

These three men obediently relocated to the table where they’ve been directed, and as promised Kirstin was promptly there with coffee and three cups.

Dimly I remembered, yeah, that’s right. It’s not merely me being anti-social, there’s a rule during the pandemic: Customers who aren’t from the same household must be separated by an empty seat. She’d surmised they weren’t from the same household, so they couldn’t sit at three consecutive stools.

Kirstin had enforced that rule, protected me and those three customers, and she did it so smoothly that none of us quite knew what was happening, even as she made it happen exactly as it’s supposed to happen.

Usually tip big, but this morning I tipped bigger.

♦ ♦ ♦

Not much later, a couple of 30s women entered, one black and one white. They sat at those same counter seats where Kirstin wouldn’t let the men sit, which she’d wiped off after they’d gone to their table. Since there were only those two ladies, and they were obviously from the same household, there was plenty of room between us all and no rules were broken.

They said yes to coffee — almost everyone says yes to coffee — and one of them asked Kirstin, “Do you have any vegan options?”

“Well,” she said, “we could make you a nice vegetable platter, with or without a side of hash browns, and our ketchup is vegan. We can make oatmeal with water instead of milk, and some of our regular vegans enjoy dipping un-buttered toast into the oatmeal.”

Honestly, that’s not the answer I’d expected, and it sounded like a pretty good breakfast.

One of the ladies ordered the veggie platter with hash browns, and the other ordered watered oatmeal with unbuttered toast. When their food came, they shared off each other’s plates, like my wife and I used to do…

♦ ♦ ♦

Between reading my magazine and eating my meal and absorbing the diner’s low-key ambiance, sometimes I take it for granted but today I noticed, Kirstin is damned good at her job.

There’s nothing on the menu about vegan options, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d simply said, “Sorry, no,” but she must’ve heard the question before, and had the right answer instantly.

She’s always busy, pouring coffee, taking orders (sometimes quite complicated orders, with special requests and allergies to be considered), bringing the food and silverware and condiments, checking in later to make sure everyone’s happy, taking orders over the phone when it rings, washing dishes or peeling potatoes when there’s a lull, adding up the numbers on everyone’s tickets, remembering everyone’s names and ‘usuals’ and making just enough conversation to let each customer know that she gives a damn, but never so much as to be intrusive.

More than all the rest of it combined, that last part of her job is what I couldn’t do. Conversation is the worst part of being human, at least for me, but Kirstin is always listening to people talk about football, politics, the weather, the coronavirus, the royal family, or whatever any paying customer wants to babble about. She laughs at their same tired jokes she’s doubtless heard 10,000 times.

When she’s dealing with male customers, sometimes she discreetly mentions her husband in the chit-chat — a defense mechanism, I think, to remind stupid men that there are boundaries.

Yeah, I really couldn’t do her job, but she’s great at it, and today I said it as I paid. “You’re damned good at what you do, Kirstin.” Then I put on my mask, nodded at Rufus in the distance at the back of the diner, and left through the door at the front. 

9/12/2020
Republished 5/14/2025

Breakfast at the Diner
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