Of Man and Animals. Thomas R. Hauff
now. BlackCoffee is still nursing his cup from an hour ago. He just reads the paper though. He’s not here for anything Turly can supply. Well, there was the once. Rye toast. Just the once though. BlackCoffee pretty much just had the coffee.
AmericanOmelette had taken some time today. Usually he scarfed it down pretty fast. Guess on most Mondays he had to get to work. Though it was hard to be certain. He looked like a rusher. Never took his coat off. Today was different. Long weekend perhaps. He had a good number of cups of coffee. Marty was wearing a rut in the linoleum to his table this morning. Course, he was reading something. Maybe he was working already. Turly squinted his eyes, and turned his lips in for a second thinking. Hard to tell.
He swiveled the order ring around and saw nothing. Taking the chance, Turly slipped into his jacket and stepped out the back door into the alley. He let the little wood block stop the door as it tried to close. The cool of the alley washed over his warm face as he fumbled out a pack of cigs. He pulled one, lit it, and took a long draw, looking up the alley at the few cars passing down on the street. Whew! Cold today! He stamped his feet a couple times and drew another breath of nicotine saturated air. As he leaned back into the brick wall, settling in for a nice smoke, he saw DoubleHash’s car pass by the end of the alley. He dropped the cig and stamped it once, re-adjusting his apron. He re-entered the building and made his way to the grill just in time to see DoubleHash bang open the glass door, jostling the “OPEN” sign.
DoubleHash swaggered over to his table and plopped down. He shook his head at Marty and yammered, “Hey honey, I’ll have the usual.” She nodded and turned to Turly with the order. Like he needed to hear it. Ol’ DoubleHash always spoke at the top of his lungs. Seemed to want everyone to know he was there. Once a fellow had looked at him when he bellowed out his order (like he needed to yammer in such a small grill anyway), and DoubleHash had taken a dislike to him. He then pressed him with, “What’re you looking at, pal?” and, “You got some kinda problem?” Turly Breidablick thought there was gonna be some trouble that day. But DoubleHash was content to belittle people. Maybe that was the extent of his bravado.
Marty was a good waitress. She had been doing it long enough to get to know the regulars, and she enjoyed people enough to make the once-in-awhile types feel comfortable. It’s not that she was just pleasant because she’d get a better tip neither. She was just that sort. Friendly. She’d smile, and chat, and just be a regular person with ‘em all. People like that. They like to feel as though they have a friend. Even when they are alone. And Marty was pretty too—at least for a forty-five year old waitress. She was to Turly anyway. Sometimes the night guy would comment on that “piece of nice ass in the morning.” Turly couldn’t really argue; Marty had a nice ass. But he didn’t like Buddy Vashon commenting on it. But it wasn’t Turl’s way to confront. He’d usually just ignore Buddy. Still, Marty did have a nice ass. The point was Marty was a good waitress. Even to the DoubleHash’s of the world with their big mouths and pushy ways. She still smiled at him and kept his coffee poured, and chatted with him. Though sometimes Turly would giggle to himself over what he heard her saying.
Sometimes Marty seemed to just bait ol’ DoubleHash for fun. She never was so obvious that he’d catch on, but Turly could tell. He’d known her for years. Like once, DoubleHash had commented on a businessman who’d stopped for a cup of joe. He wasn’t a regular; looked like he just needed the joe after a hard night of driving. DoubleHash had been sitting at the counter that morning instead of his usual table. He had winked at Marty and said in a voice loud enough for the stranger to hear, “Some men use their wallets when they’re lacking other places.” (The guy had paid for the dollar coffee with a fifty.) Marty hadn’t missed a beat and replied, “Kinda like some guys using their mouths when their brains are slow.” DoubleHash had missed it! Hell, the stranger had missed the whole exchange too, which was probably for the best. But Turly had heard it all and almost dropped his gum when he laughed. He ducked behind the back counter and just guffawed. It wasn’t the statement itself, it was that DoubleHash was so full of himself he had nodded in agreement, and winked a wise “you and me think alike baby” wink at Marty! Turly thought he’d bust a rib laughing over that. And it was all the more funny when Marty came ‘round the corner and kicked him lightly in mock rebuke for leaving the grill! She whispered a stern, “You get to work Turly Breidablick!” But her eyes said, “What an Ass that DoubleHash is!”
DoubleHash kept his mouth mostly shut today. It was ToastandJuice who was interesting. She had the usual for eating, but not for company. Turly had figured her for a college student. One day he had covered for Marty when she was using the toilet ‘cause the other waitress was out. It was a slow day and only the regulars were in. He had filled ToastandJuice’s order and was placing it on the table when he saw her open book. It looked like a biology book and had a picture of a lemming on the open page. He had commented on it and she had told him how lemmings run themselves off cliffs sometimes. Imagine that! An animal gets an idea in its head, and that idea defines the world for it. It keeps that idea even when the idea says, “Run off a cliff!” That’s pretty strange. Course, Turly supposed animals liked to feel comfortable with their ideas just like people. They keep their impressions of things even when they don’t really match with reality. So some lemming thinks the world requires a good cliff jump . . . and off it goes.
Anyway, ToastandJuice came in on Mondays and Fridays and always had the same breakfast with minor variations. She read and ate; usually alone. But this morning she was with a young man. He was wiry, and had dark eyes and hair. Turly thought he was handsome and fitted her very well. He looked like a poet to Turly. Right now they were engaged in a soft but seemingly meaningful conversation. Every now and then she would look around as if trying to see if anyone was watching when they were becoming a bit more insistent. Turly always looked away, acting like he was scraping the grill, or maybe making up a new batch of potatoes.
Maybe the poet was telling ToastandJuice it was over. She didn’t seem angry though . . . just vehement. Perhaps ToastandJuice was dumping Poet. But he too seemed not so much hurt, or angry as just animated. He was a hand talker. He’d wave them up or down, tapping out his points in the air as though he were hitting a blackboard. Turly watched as his left eyelid rose and fell whenever he seemed to be making an important point. ToastandJuice would nod or shake her head depending on her response. She was a quiet one. She did bob her head in time to her speech though. Turly could see her bobbing and weaving as though sparring through some onslaught that Poet had just leveled against her. She would also tap her finger on the table at the end of some brilliant point as though saying, “Look, you have to talk with mouth and hands, but I need one small finger to cement my point in stone!” Turly envied ToastandJuice and her Poet. They clearly knew one another well and felt comfortable even arguing. Now and then they’d fall silent, eat a little (Poet had the eggs and sausage. But he was Poet, not EggsandSausage yet). Then they would chat a little. Then grow intense. It was a cycle. Much like life Turly supposed as he covertly watched them while cleaning his grill, and cooking food.
Time passed and the breakfast crowd gave way to the LateMorningers, those from nine to eleven. They were usually retired folk. They had worked and lived and now were happy to stay in bed late and come out for the breakfast special at ten. Sometimes they’d just go right to lunch which Turly liked to cook best of all. That’s why he was a morning/day man. Buddy Vashon came on at two in the afternoon with the dinner shift. That was a change in counter people too. Marty left, along with Debbie the college kid and Clancy the washer. In came Brendan (another college kid), Shirleen, and Marty’s kid for washing. Turly and Marty were the oldest there. Turly was fifty-two. He was more like the LateMorningers he supposed than the breakfast or lunch crowd. He was beginning to envision retirement from his work, sleeping in past four a.m., and having someone else cook his Monday and Friday breakfast.
LateMorningers were an easy bunch. Well, cranky, but easy if you did your job. They usually had the same things: Prune juice, orange juice, or grapefruit juice; toast or pancakes, or eggs and hash browns. Come to think of it, they pretty much just cut out the good meaty stuff Turly still liked: Ham, sausage, chicken fried steak . . . the meat of meat and potatoes! They probably had to. Most of ‘em probably had heart problems, and were told to eat right by their doctors. In any event, they were easy to please if you did your job right. If you shorted them on enough potatoes, or didn’t get the coffee cup filled,