It was the day after Donald Wiseman asked
Margret Michaels to marry him, and he couldn’t keep his mind on his Heidelberg
printing press. Time pressed on like a rusty cog, barely moving, and with it
the hulking machine too; it was printing slower than it ever had. He glanced at
the clock every five minutes, but to him, the morning was four months and
twenty days longer than it should be. That was exactly how long it would be
till the wedding.
When the lunch
whistle finally blew at Donald’s work, the entire place emptied in a furious
mass exodus. Precisely one hour later, the whistle would blow again and
management expected every employee to be back at their machine. Donald rushed to Arnold’s Diner to grab a
quick lunch, as did many of his coworkers. Once there he had the choice of
sitting in one of the diner’s tight booths or up to the lunch counter. Being
alone, as well as, among the group flooding in from his work, he chose to sit
at the counter beside whoever happened to be there.
The bleached-blonde
waitress working the counter was Betty. Although they had never spoken outside
of the diner, he knew her because it was her daily task to serve the multitude
of blue-collar workers regularly invading the diner’s lunch counter.
She went down
the line of customers taking one order after another, tearing the order slip
from her pad to hang them on a line stretching across an open window where
Arnold, the cook, shoved hot orders onto a shelf waiting for Betty to serve
them up. Usually, she could work the entire diner by herself, but during the
lunch rush, Betty’s daughter, Bernice, worked the booths. Snapping her gum and
tapping her order pad with her worn pencil, Betty stood by Donald waiting for
his order. “Don’t take all day bub, I gotta get everyone back to work on time.
What do ya want?”
“Just something
fast and easy for me. How about a hot pastrami on rye and a cup of your great
coffee?”
“It don’t
matter to me. If it tickles your fancy then that’s what you get.” She poured
him a cup full of black coffee, scribbled the order and hung it on the line
before moving on to the next guy in the row.
Donald sat at
the counter drinking his coffee as the other customers, even the ones who
ordered after him, finished their burgers and hot plate specials. He watched
new customers place their orders and get their food. His lunch hour was running
out. He called Betty over and complained, “I’ve been here forty minutes, surely
it doesn’t take that long to fix a pastrami on rye.”
“Hold up, bub.
No use getting your panties in a bunch,” Betty said. “I’m sure it'll be out
in a bit.”
It was Donald’s
turn to bellow. “I don’t have a bit, I have to be back on the floor in fifteen
minutes.”
She leaned up
to the window and yelled, “Arnold, that pastrami on rye ready yet?”
The gruff voice
of Arnold screamed back, “What pastrami on rye? You didn’t turn in an order for
a pastrami.”
“Yes, I did. I
hung it up here almost an hour ago.”
Arnold burst
out of the swinging door separating his orderly kitchen from the chaos of the
loud lunchtime rush. Donald had never seen him before because the cook had
always stayed hidden from the public behind the small window where the meals
came out. To Donald’s surprise, Arnold was a round little man with gouts of
bristly grey body hair bulging out from the top of a dingy wife-beater
undershirt which he wore under his cook’s apron. “Betty, you lost your mind or
something. You didn’t turn in an order for any damned pastrami.”
“Now look who’s
got his panties in a bunch. I did too. I hung it on the line with the corned
beef and gravy on toast.”
“The hell you
did. Betty, I’m telling you, you’re losing your mind. That hair bleach has
finally rotted your brain.”
“I am not crazy.
I hung it right here only—” She stopped bellowing and suddenly got a sheepish
look. “Here it is. It fell between the stainless steel tubs where the flatware
is stored.”
Arnold turned
and bolted back to his grill yelling, “Betty, I told you I didn’t get any
damned pastrami order.”
Turning to
Donald she politely said, “Hey bub, I’m sorry about this, but it’s no one’s
fault—truly. It just happened. How about having the coffee on the house and
calling it even?”
He had two
options, make a scene or be polite and leave. He said, “Don’t worry about it,
Betty. It’s okay,” and with that, he left the restaurant—hungry. He got back
into his old Ford Pinto only to find it wouldn’t start. It was a good thing his
father was a mechanic. He called himself a mechanic even though he held an
Associate’s Degree in Automotive Technology. Donald, a slave to his own
ill-fate, would be late to work again. He went back into the restaurant to make
the call. He hoped his boss wouldn’t be too mad, but he knew he would—it was
just how his life went.
Donald returned
to the counter and asked Betty if he could, please, use the phone.
Betty snapped
her gum and said, “Sorry bub, the phone is for employees and emergency use
only.” ***
Arnold hollered
from behind the window. “Betty, give the man the damn phone.”
She reached
under the counter by the cash register and slammed a Southwestern Bell corded
desk phone onto the counter. Sourly she told him, “Five minutes, and no long-distance
calls,” before she returned to serve the herd of workers at her counter.
