{Tell me about a breakfast you were once privileged to have, Eggs over easy? Grapefruit? One thin slice of toast? Not even that. You ate a pickle- an it never tasted so good. You vowed to eat pickles for breakfast for the rest of your life. Then what happened? Tell me. Be Specific. Go. Ten Minutes. }
Red mingled neon lined diner seats holding conversations and memories tucked beneath tables set with old silverware shaped in compass formations and pointed in the four directions. Hunched low, eyes diverted to the sun setting just beyond the shadow of the stained half pulled blinds.
It was on odd time for breakfast, but timing was never my strong suit, or any suit for that matter. The coffee dressed in brown, and creamers that cause cancer stacked in messy pyramids. (Sometimes I missed the smell of cigarettes with a side of bacon)
It made the perfect setting, for the perfect breakfast. Because, in the words of Thomas-Builds-A-Fire, “Some days is a good day to die, and some days is a good day to eat breakfast.” And given this my first meal outside of the ward, I was lucky to be alive.
“Where you from, hun?”- the waitress asked with a forced drawl, the kind you heard in the bonanza reruns grandpa watched when we were kids.
“Well,” I hesitate, trying on words in my mind, seeing how they fit. “I guess, I never really felt like I was from anywhere, if I must be honest.”
“That would be nice, now wouldn’t darling,” she says, “Nobody up in yer business all the time, no embarrassment from being picked on as kids, or yer kids embarrassing you.”
She stops, and with her, time stood still, hot pot of coffee in stasis, the sound of smacking gum between red lips reverberating through space. She gives me and my bright orange jumpsuit a look over, soft and southern eyes drinking me all in.
“Well damn, hun. You do look well traveled and in need of, oh, I don’t know, some greasy kind of healing” she snaps, her fingernails like knives unsheathed.
“Today was a good day” I proclaimed, grinning with a pharmaceutical smile, “Didn’t have to use my AK.”
“That’s nice, Hun.” She grabs my menu, gives me a wink, and disappears into the greasy purgatory of the setting sun. The sound of time unwinds, the clank of glass, and the choir of line-cooks, standing in for the angels.
“Today was a good day..”