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.