Jon Pineda

We had nothing but laughter left, and this seemed to anger Cheryl, our waitress, who looked as though she had never laughed a day in her life. She slid Rita’s refill across the table top and walked away. The glass stopped perfectly between the two plates. Not a drop of pink lemonade slipped over the top.

"What was her problem?" I said.

"She doesn’t know you," Rita said.

"She doesn’t know me?" I said, trying not to grit my teeth at her. "She doesn’t know you."

"She knows me," she said and dunked an ice cube with her fingertip. The ice popped up to the top and bobbed. I didn’t answer.

"I said she knows all about me," she said.

"I heard you the first time." The rest of the diner had already emptied out, and with the exception of an elderly man at the counter nursing a cup of coffee, we were the last of the customers for the night.

"And she knows all about you," Rita offered.

"I thought she didn’t know me?"

"I changed my mind," she said. "She knows all about the crazy noise you can make when you pinch your nose, when the air escapes through your eye sockets? She knows about that." She curled her tongue and slid her wet finger into it. The man at the counter had turned around and was watching Rita now. He grinned and went back to the steamy smell of his coffee. I knew what he was thinking. It was a little more hope for getting older.

"And does she know you like to go to motels and smell pillowcases?" I said.

"She knows. Sometimes she gets one of her friends who works at a motel to bring home bags of old pillowcases. You’d be surprised at how different people can smell."

"People smell," I said. An ant crawled between our plates and stopped near Rita’s glass. It looked more like a period at the end of a sentence. I smeared it on the table until it was impossible to tell it had ever existed at all.

"Like berries and flowers," she said and brought her cupped hands under her chin and blinked playfully. She was still talking about the different ways people smell. "Like sweet coffee. Others like cabbage. Like old, mushy cabbage. You know what I’m talking about?"

"Like your hair sometimes," I said.

"Like your breath," she said and stuck out her tongue.

"Like between the folds of your stomach," I said.

"Like your palms," she said.

"I suppose she knows you steal the little shampoos and tiny bars of soap from the bathrooms?"

"She knows all about it and doesn’t care." Rita finished half of the lemonade and slammed the glass down on the table top. It swirled to the edge without spilling over.

Cheryl walked through a pair of flimsy doors that swung open. She was carrying a thick black plastic tub used to bus tables. The milky gray cloth looked like a small cloud in her hand as she rubbed wet circles across the light blue table tops, occasionally stopping every now and then to look directly at us.

"I taught her to do that," Rita whispered.

"Don’t be rude," I said. "She’s looking right at us."

"I taught her to do that."

"What? Bus tables?" I said.

"No," she said. "How to stare."

"You did a good job at it."

"She’s really good, isn’t she?"

"Very professional," I said and patted her hand. Rita finished the rest of the lemonade with two huge swallows. She wiped her mouth with the cuff of her shirt and took a deep breath. The wind was picking up, making the windows rattle.

"At first I tried to teach her your way of staring," she said. "Look at someone like you really care about them, and then don’t say anything to them for hours afterwards. Let the silence say it all."

"It takes years to perfect," I said.

"I know," she said. "We didn’t have years, so I taught her my way. The quick way."

"Your way?"

"The way you stare with this dumbfounded look on your face," she said. "Like someone kicked your teeth in."

I looked over at Cheryl. "I’d say she almost has it," I said. The milky cloud gathered under her hand with each brush across the table. "She needs to look a little more pathetic, though. Teach her to grin and cry at the same time. And maybe talk a lot when she gets nervous. You know how you get all nervous? Teach her to do that."

Rita picked at her fingertips. She chewed on a strand of skin hanging below one of her fingernails. She stopped and looked up at me.

"I’m sorry, were you just talking?" she said.

"Not really," I said. "I was thinking out loud."

"Thinking about what I said earlier?" She rubbed her finger across the small sheet of grease that had settled in her plate. It was the last remnant of a barbecue sandwich. She was sketching tiny hearts in the grease. Rita wanted us to get married, but I was having a hard time with it.

"Did she teach to play with your food?" I said, avoiding her question. Rita was trying to get serious, but I wasn’t going to let her.

"I’m tired," she said.

"I asked you a question."

"I know, and I’m tired."

"So did she teach you or not?"

"Let’s give it up," she said.

"What do you mean?"

"I don’t feel like playing anymore. Am I paying for this one or are you?"

"We’ll both pay," I said and waved Cheryl over.

She dug into her apron pocket and pulled out folded bills. Like a magic trick. I nodded and looked at Rita.

"Did you see that?" I said. "That’s how the pros do it."

"I saw it," she said and drew a big heart on her plate. She laughed, which made me laugh. But Cheryl seemed unaffected by us now.

It was quiet in this place, so quiet that you could hear each click of the buttons Cheryl pressed on the register. So quiet that when the man returned his cup to the counter, you could tell from the hollow sound it made against the counter top that he was finished. He braced himself against the stools beside him and made his way to his feet. It was a slow walk out of the diner and into the rain.

"I never want to get old," Rita said.

"I hate to rain on your parade," I said.

"Shut up and kiss me," she said, grabbing me by the front of the shirt and pulling me to her. Just before Cheryl reached us with the change, Rita pushed me back and laughed.

"You two must be on your honeymoon," Cheryl said. She said the word "honeymoon" as if it was sticky and clung to the back of her teeth. Something she worked to get out of her throat.

"You got it," Rita said. She tapped at the window. Outside, the motel sign across the highway flickered as the breeze picked up. "Right over there is where it’s going to all happen tonight!"

"Well," Cheryl said and bit at her bottom lip.

"It’s a big bed too," Rita said.

"Huge," I said.

"Almost too big," Rita said and stared up at Cheryl. They both smiled at one another.

"Almost too big for just two people," I said. The two women laughed. I said it again.

"We get it already," Rita said. "Don’t be so pushy."

"I’m pushy?" I said.

Cheryl gathered the rest of the dishes and disappeared behind the swinging doors.

"I’m going back there," Rita said and stood up.

"Back to where?"

"Where do you think? Didn’t you pick up on that?" she said and walked over to the swinging doors. She peeked into the translucent plastic squares that served as windows and waved me over.

"Pick up on what?"

"On the way we were laughing," Rita said. "She knew what I was thinking, and I definitely knew what she was thinking."

"So," I said.

"So, doesn’t that mean something anymore?"

"Those days are over," I said.

"Maybe for you," she said and bit a piece of skin from around her fingernail. "Are you with me or not?"

"Those days are over," I said again and watched the doors swing shut.

It was late. The idea of sleeping alone was getting better with each minute. I sat in the empty parking lot. The car speakers were blown. All I could really make of the songs were the bass parts flapping against the split papery shell. Nine songs later, Rita walked out from around the back of the diner.

Her hair smelled like rain and sausage. Like cold grease. I waited for her to sit back in the seat and catch her breath.

"Remember the old man at the counter?" I said.

She nodded and took her compact out from her purse and checked her eyes. "Cut on the light," she said, tapping the dull covering overhead until I switched it on.

"He saw me in the car," I said. "He came over and started telling me how he was married once to a beautiful redhead named Girlie."

Rita grabbed me by the chin and looked right at me. Her pupils were wide, and for a moment, I swear I could have climbed inside her there. Through her eyes, as if the darkness was a kind of doorway to enter into forever.

"And did this Girlie have nice legs?" she said. "Tell me she was someone who broke his heart."

"That’s where I thought it was going," I said. "He said she was the only one for him. One minute they could fight and hate each other, and the next minute, they could fall into a bed and forget they ever had names. I like that."

Rita laughed and closed her compact, slipping the case into the mouth of her purse. "That would be nice," she said.

"Guess what happened to Girlie?" I said.

"I don’t want to know," she said. She rested her head against the window.

"This is the good part," I pushed on her like I was trying to rouse her from a deep sleep.

"I really don’t want to know," she said. She covered both ears when I adjusted the stereo. It was more a thick buzz than anything else. Sometimes I loved her. And sometimes I wanted nothing more than to wake up and smell the empty pillow next to me and know that there was no one else.

"He started crying," I said. "The poor bastard could barely speak. I guess that’s how it is when you really really lose someone."

"Girlie must have been a real bitch," she said and tapped on the light until I cut it off. We passed by the motel and kept going. The sign’s neon was a fuzz of red in the rearview. Ahead, there was only the rain. If we stepped on it, we would make Norfolk by the morning.

"Tell me something, Rita." I tried my hardest to keep the car between the white dashes ticking by, but it was as if the car had a mind of its own. It swerved to one side and then to another. Though it was difficult, I knew it wasn’t impossible to keep it straight and steady. "If the world was this thing you could hold in your hands," I said, checking the speedometer, "what would you do with it?"

JON PINEDA has new work appearing in The Literary Review, 64 Magazine, and Tilting the Continent: An Anthology of Southeast Asian American Writing (New Rivers Press, 2000).  He is a recipient of a 2000 Virginia Commission for the Arts Grant.  His band, Underdog Bandwagon, recently released six singles on mp3.com/underdogbandwagon, and some day they hope to plan a tour starting off somewhere like Peanut City, Virginia and ending up in Walla Walla.