Dialogues from the Diner II
“How are you?”
“Good morning,” she replied.
“I’ll have two eggs sunnyside with rye,” I proposed.
“No problem,” she said without an ounce of emotion. Not really unexpected. I tap my
fingers while I wait, thinking about me and her and how things had changed. Usually I
didn’t have to put in an order. Hell, I didn’t even have to pay.
I thought back to the day I sat in front of my laptop listening to Oskar Schuster’s song
Wunder, listening to the gradual progression of the broken left-hand chords as I stared
at an incomplete loading bar at the top of my browser page. Display decision. The
servers were overloaded.
Suddenly the bar filled itself and I stared at the words, speechless at not my future but
ours.
Schuster’s playing his last chords.
She comes back with two eggs sunnyside. White bread.
“Thanks so much,” I say nonchalantly.
“Enjoy.”
As she walks away, I call out, “Hey...” she stops. “I asked for rye.”
She turns around and looks at me with a frown. We both pause, not knowing what to
say.
“You don’t like rye,” she said finally, and walked away.
For reasons I don’t quite know, I pinned a twenty under the plate when I left.
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