Lone Diner

There is something about being a lone diner. You always feel like you are sitting in an Edward Hopper painting, no matter how loud or crowded the room. Looks of pity cast your way, or looks of confusion. You cannot tell, but either way, you know what they see: a reflection of their greatest fear or their greatest freedom. How could someone stand to eat alone? What would happen if I tried?...

…You are eating alone in the pizza place downtown, other people coming and going. It’s Friday night, the busiest hours here, and you’ve stubbornly asked for a table over a place at the bar, because you want to spread out and write while you eat your food…

…At your first restaurant job, there was a lone diner who came in almost every week. Every restaurant has a person like this, a regular, undaunted by the prospect of a silent, public meal. She was a specter of your shifts, her stout frame plodding into view, her squirrely hair gathered in an ancient, dog-chewed scrunchie, her airs of exhaustion, boredom, sometimes disgust wafting about her as she approached the host stand. Almost as if saying, “This. Again.”

She was a dreaded customer. Not for the usual reasons. She never spoke. She only ever pointed to her meal on the menu, which she only had to do if you had never served her before. Everyone else knew her usual order: the baked scrod, coated in Ritz cracker crumbs.

When you approached, she gave you a look of mild displeasure. As if saying, “You. Again.” Like asking questions to a brick wall, her server’s efforts to charm her over in hopes of a higher tip only got a fleeting smirk in response. It never worked.

She didn’t seem to like the food too much. Most days, she poked the fish with her fork a few times, had a few bites, and pushed it away. Then she gazed out the bay windows at the sea, her stare so fixed it felt impossible to interrupt the moment. There were days when you cleared the plate and she didn’t turn to acknowledge. There was one day when you took it away, then you saw her from a distance ask something to another server. He came back and told you, “She wasn’t finished.”

On her way out, you waited by the exit and said, “Thanks for coming in.” She rolled her eyes. The table hardly needed to be cleared, but for two measly dollar bills left behind on a $25 bill. You didn’t mind it when it was her. Nobody minded.

…In the pizza joint, you see an older waitress. At your table, waiting for your food, you start to journal about Millie, the 72-year old waitress you worked with at your second restaurant job. Tiny, spunky, irresistible Millie—you always smiled when you saw her name on the schedule beside yours. She reminded you of those times when your grandmother pinched your bum on her way out the door at Easter.

It was odd for you to smile, you reflect at the pizza joint, because being on a shift with Millie meant doing more work. She could no longer carry food trays on her own, so she would shoot you a knowing glance, and up the tray would go onto your right shoulder, arm sturdy, stable, firm, balanced; and she tossed commentary your way, like, “You should’ve seen what I could lift back in the day,” or, following from behind, “Careful now, you’re spilling the bisque.”

There was one day when Millie was serving a lone diner and you carried her tray, another older lady, one about her age. When you reached the table with the food, Millie announced, “I’ve brought you a lovely young man with your meal.” The lone diner, more animated than most, rubbed her hands together giddily, to which Millie deviously asked, “What are you going to do with him?” You turn away, cheeks red, a haunting echo of old lady laughter chasing you back into the kitchen…

…Your server at the pizza joint asks what you’re working on. You tell her you’re journaling. She tells you she’s keeping a journal, that she’s a student at the college. You do not tell her about the time your manager somehow discovered that you made the honor roll and a week later made you employee of the month. She then assigned you to run bottles of wine and booze up to the bar from the creepy walk-in cooler out back, beyond those hinterlands where the rest of the servers smoked on their break, a dark menacing corner that only emitted the sounds of dripping and a blaring fan. When you asked the manager why you have to do this, she told you, “You made the honor roll. We never get kids on the honor roll.” You want to tell your server to keep any such accomplishments to herself, but you think that sounds like something an annoying lone diner would say.

…Lone diners come and go. They are always more memorable than their coupled counterparts. You do remember the aloof 25 year-olds who gave you, their 18-year old server, a hard time for carding them, but not their faces. You do remember the family of seven or eight who stopped you five times to ask for five different condiments, and you remember quietly farting as you walked by to ask how everything was.

But the lone diners you remember most.

You remember the sad bachelor uncle at the wedding reception in the restaurant, still eating the entree while the younger partygoers danced–he wordlessly handed you a broken statuette of two Dutch children in lederhosen finery from the table centerpieces, the pair torn asunder, knocked over by a drunk member of the bachelor party. It was unclear if he was gifting it to you or suggesting you should throw it away. You kept it anyway.

You remember the woman sitting alone at breakfast who asked if you were local, only to discover she was the person your parents bought their house from, and later, that your bedroom was once, in fact, her bedroom, and the awkwardness that followed this eerie connection.

You remember seeing a waitress sitting by herself at the bar after her lunch shift, the waitress you imagined was in love with that other waiter, who flirted with each other, and sometimes both of them flirted with you when they were together, like you were some kind of pet to them, and that you were a little bit in love with both of them, though they were both in college and you were a high school sophomore; you remember how you imagined a life for them together. You remember her figure, slumped over the bar, melancholic, brooding at her beer, watching as the waiter walked by, smiling at another woman.

You remember these lone diners’ faces in their solitary moment, that pit of loneliness they temporarily inhabited before wandering off elsewhere, but you cannot remember them ever leaving or imgine where they were going to.

…You sit and ruminate on them as your server drops off the food, checks in at exactly the right increments, clears your table, drops the check, and gives you that optimistic glance, a cover for deep desperation, a glance that begs, please, please, please tip. You leave 20% and walk on out of the frame, something you never see the lone diner do in those paintings.