The temperature inside the Waffle House was uncontrollable. Well, there was some control; the manager could turn the knob to cold or hot or off. How cold or hot exactly was not specified. Mary never felt comfortable.
Waitresses weren’t allowed to wear jackets on the restaurant’s floor, however, so she used the beverages – which she technically wasn’t supposed to drink on the floor, either – to adjust to her environment. A hot coffee when she was freezing. A cold lemonade when she was burning up.
Mary sometimes wished that she was like people in places that had harsh climates, like Iceland or the Serengeti, whose bodies naturally adjusted. They seemed so in sync with their environment. Mary had trouble adjusting to anything. She was always imagining things that had no connection to her surroundings and trying her best to compensate for her inflexibility.
She might have looked like she was taking notes during a lecture or writing a customer’s order on her notepad, but inside her mind was an episode about grizzly bears in the Rocky Mountains on Nat Geo or a memorable essay from her last anthropology class on voodoo in Haiti. Mary was excellent at being there without actually being there.
John interrupted her controlled daydreams.
She had been waiting for about two months when she was moved to the afternoon shift. Whether it was in recognition for her outstanding work ethic or inability to work under the extreme high pressure of the morning shift, she didn’t know, but she appreciated the general calm on her new work hours. And she appreciated that most of her customers were regulars. John was her favorite.
He visited the restaurant every single day. Before he arrived, she sometimes re-enacted their first conversation together in her head.
“Hello. Do you know what you’ll be having today?”
John was hunched over the menu and seemed to jump when she spoke, as if she didn’t know she was there. She ignored the jump and laid out his silverware on a paper napkin.
“I, uh… need a minute. I’ll have a coffee.”
“Cream?”
“Yes, ma'am.”
And he flashed his smile full of sunshine that didn’t strike her then, but made her grin to herself as she washed the dishes now.
She brought him the cup of coffee, which had warmed wonderfully her freezing fingers.
“I’ll have two eggs sunny side up with grits.”
“Bacon or sausage?”
“Bacon.”
He gave her the menu and she placed it back on his table, behind the napkin dispenser, and began to walk away. He called after her.
“You know, most waitresses take the menu with them when I hand it over.”
“I don’t know why.” She glimpsed a laugh she knew he was inadvertently letting out. “I don’t have any need for it.”
He brooded there twiddling his thumbs while the cook did his magic. She was polishing silverware near his table. He was the only customer in the place.
“How long have you been working here?
She noticed then that he had a newspaper folded under his left thigh.
"I’ve been working here two months, but this is my first day on the afternoon shift.”
There was an awkward moment where he was silent, staring out the window at the highway, and she wondered if he expected her to say something. She didn’t know what to say. She usually didn’t talk to the customers.
She decided to warm up his coffee mug with the coffee pot instead.
“Do you live around here?”
“Yes, I go to school in town. At the college.”
She brought his plates of hot food, asked if he needed anything else, then went back to her silverware. She assumed that he would want to read his newspaper now that he had his food. He didn’t.
“What do you do?”
“I’m a farmer. I grow corn.”
“You look too young to be a farmer.”
“Would it shock you that I have two boys?”
“No, it wouldn’t. You just… look too young to be a farmer.”
She jaunted away then, pretending she needed to refill all of the ketchup bottles, but really just saving herself from explaining such a stupid remark.
She poured herself a lemonade and wondered if the heat was turned on.
Although she still inhabited countless hours in her own mind working over the statistics of immigration from the Philippines or the food habits of Siberians, she devoted many moments to the curve of his tattered ball cap, his long spindly legs covered in faded jeans, and the moment he once said, “I like your hair,” and looked away embarrassed at the cars racing down the highway, oblivious to her self-consciously tucking a few strands of her red hair behind an ear.
One day, John arrived earlier than usual.
“You’re here early.”
He didn’t murmur anything, just hunched over his menu.
“How are your boys?” Mary poured him a cup of freshly-ground coffee and stood three creamers beside the spoon. “You gonna have the usual?”
He peered up at her finally and nodded. He handed her the menu and she tucked it behind the napkin holder.
“You think you’re going to be busy today?”
“Hard to tell,” she mumbled, before yelling, “Order!” at the cook. “Pull one bacon. Mark order over light. Thank you!”
He perched without reading his newspaper, like he normally did, but one of his long, skinny legs shook nervously under the two-person table. Mary went back to cutting a chocolate pie and plating the slices on a table near him.
“You want to go out some time?”
She continued pulling the plastic wrap over the chocolate pie slices, assuming she misheard him.
“What?”
“Do you want to go out sometime… with me?”
She glanced back at the cook, to judge if she was slowly becoming the subject of Waffle House gossip, but he was wearing his over-sized headphones while cracking eggs.
“Sure.” She avoided his eyes, but detected his nod in her peripheral vision.
“Good.” He finally started to cream his coffee.
The cook called, “Pick up!” and she rushed to the plates. “When?”
“What?”
“When do you want to take me out?”
“Oh.” He looked as if he hadn’t actually thought of it. “Tonight?”
“Okay,” she agreed, as nonchalantly as possible. And then she spent the rest of his time at the Waffle House at the far end of the restaurant, trying to appear unconcerned, despite the fact that her face was flushed, her heart was banging, and she never, ever completely ignored him like that.
Eventually, she poured herself a lemonade, suddenly hot even though she had been nursing a coffee before John’s arrival.
When he left, she did her best to daydream as she always did, to allow it to fill up with musings on the Dead Sea Scrolls and a book she had started the night before but would probably never finish, but instead her mind was drawn back to her date with John that evening.
She wondered where they would go tonight. What should she wear? Would he say many nice things to her like he had before about her hair? Was this the beginning of the relationship she yearned for when she was lonely on Friday nights?
Her usual ability to still work semi-productively around her internal absent-mindedness had completely vanished. She only took ten dollars home in tips.
John picked her up at 7:30 after she called in a favor to Tracy, a waitress always looking to pick up extra shifts. She had tried to practice theoretical conversations with her reflection in the mirror, full of effortless flirting, charming remarks, and absolute ease with her ambiance.
She smiled nervously, pressing her lips together so tightly that they looked redder when she opened them. John gave her that sunshine smile but his side of her truck, but she was disappointed he smelled like he hadn’t washed after a day at the farm.
Noticing they were headed into town, she asked where they were headed. “Olive Garden,” was his reply.
“Olive Garden,” she thought. “Uck…” But she smiled anyways.
At the restaurant, they settled in a stiff silence, reading the menu. She noticed the wait staff at the Olive Garden seemed to recognize him. Was he a regular here too? She considered it adorable that he was a regular at the Waffle House, but now the idea of him just going to the same exact restaurants every day seemed rather… boring.
She searched for something to say. She asked about his farm. She asked about his sons. He answered her questions then looked unsmiling away. What had once seemed like a mysterious, handsome farmer with a great smile was now turning into a boring, inarticulate stranger.
She couldn’t believe she found someone who loved to be inside their head more than she did. Or maybe he was just dumb? There wasn’t really a way to tell.
While they were eating, she found herself starting to think about the show she had recorded for tonight on monks in China when he finally asked her a question. She had almost forgotten he was there.
“What are you studying in college?”
“Oh.” She placed her fork down. “I’m undecided.”
“Why did you go to college if you haven’t decided what to study?”
Her practice conversations in the mirror flashed in her mind briefly.
“Mostly you take general classes the first couple of years. I hope by the time I finish those I’ll have a major to declare.”
She picked up her fork, not liking their conversation, but adding, “I’m thinking of majoring in Geography.”
“Well, I didn’t go to college.” He struck her as incredulously proud of it. “And I don’t know what you would do with a geography degree. Probably be stuck waiting tables again.”
She continued to eat her food, wondering if they served coffee at Olive Garden. She glanced as covertly as possible at his plate, to see if he was almost done eating.
On the way home, she stared out the window, no longer feeling uneasy because she didn’t expect anything interesting from him anymore. She wished again that he would have at least changed his shirt.
Before dusk, Mary rode her bicycle along her favorite trail in the woods behind her apartment. The sun shone dimly through the summer leaves overhead, which she would have loved to gaze at if the many tree roots didn’t threaten to project her like a fiery canon.
Reaching the wooden plank deck over the river, she stopped to peer over the edge at a place where the water rushed ferociously. No turtles were sun bathing on the smooth rocks this late.
Why had she thought John was so great? When she relived their interactions at the Waffle House, she couldn’t remember what had made her swoon. Rather than taking note of John as he was, she allowed her imagination lead her into a fantasy of what she wanted him to be. She thought she was actually reacting to her environment this time, but, instead, she was just responding to a new daydream.
Suddenly, a small turtle appeared on one of the moss-covered rocks still bathing in the dying sunlight. The turtle couldn’t have been more than a couple days old, tiny enough to easily fit in the palm on her hand.
“Hey, little guy.”
The turtle found a comfortable spot in the midst of the rushing waters, opened his toothless mouth, and closed his alien eyes. She realized he was going to take a nap in the warmth of the sun with the spraying of river water hitting his small legs.
By the end of her next shift, she stared out the western window at the empty highway, drinking a glass of lemonade, and knew she would never see the farmer again.