A quote: “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” ~~ Edith Wharton
I’ll start with a story …
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He’d tell mom that the house was too chaotic for writing and he’d grab one of the endless pile of lined-yellow pads and head to the diner.
His space was always saved for him, sliding on a stool, pad slapped down on the stainless steel counter and a cup of coffee – hot and black – waiting.
He’d write diligently for an hour in the morning. Pack the pad and head to his office just a block away. Then another hour writing before heading home.
Mom would have us fed, bathed, and quietly engaged when he came home. Supper ready for the two of them. They ate in the kitchen with quiet voices.
I asked him once, if he needed it so quiet how come he wrote at the diner. “Because it’s easy to ignore strangers,” and shooed me off to bed.
All those pads and all those years. He never shared with us, but Mom must have known. We’d ask and she’d just smile. “He’s happy with it, that’s all that matters.”
I came back late to the house after mom’s funeral to find him at the fireplace, feeding it one pad at a time. Tears rolled down his face, “It kept us happy. Now it no longer matters.”
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license
David Tye says: Every workday she rode the bus, and every workday it took her past the Winter Garden theater on Broadway. Sometimes the bus stopped in front of the theater, catching the light on West 51st Street. The musical “42nd Street” opened at the Winter Garden in the fall of 1980, and she scored a prime role as understudy to Tammy Grimes. It was, she thought at the time, the beginning of it all.
Now it was but a cruel reminder that, although the dream never died in her, it died all around her. All she had remaining was her never-ending gig at Ellen’s Stardust Diner. She had never intended to make a career at Ellen’s, not then but eventually.
He came in every morning before work, with his yellow pad and sharp pencils. She called him “the producer,” always seated at the far end of the stainless steel counter with a cup of coffee, hot and black. He didn’t speak much, but always said “good morning” and “good day.” This routine went on for many years, until one day he stopped coming.
Would he ever think of her, she wondered. For if he didn’t, was it then true that she didn’t matter to anyone, anyone at all?
Sheila Garrett says: I hate coffee. It used to make me queasy. Now, since I’ve had Heaven’s Brand everything else tastes like… Anyway I watch the cup steam in front of me.
It’s the young man I’m here for. Twenty-two, brown hair, intense brown eyes. He’s staring at the blonde waitress, the one with short, curly hair.
Finally she heads back to the bathrooms and he follows her. He is smart, he waits until she’s coming back, comes up behind her and pushes her out the back door before he pins her to the wall. My coin is already by the coffee cup.
He ought to know better, it’s three hundred years since Armageddon, and he’s twelfth generation. He’s been warned twice already. He should know how things work now.
He’s already got one hand over her mouth, the other under her skirt. I pull him away from her. I nod towards the door, but she stays. She’s older than she looks, like a lot of people now.
“Landon Rey, I charge you with assault and attempted rape. How do you plead?”
“Not guilty.” He says.
“Additional charge of lying is noted. Let the record be amended. Do you have any last words?” I’m glowing white hot now.
“You can’t do this. I didn’t do anything.”
I touch him and he turns to white fire before vanishing.
The waitress nods and goes back inside. I head back to the office to finish my paperwork.
Cameron says: It’s a nice café in what folks from my college would derisively call “flyover country.” Yeah, whatever. The folks have been nice to me and the coffee is pretty good.
I see the man walk in after a few minutes. He looks like every negative stereotype of a businessman; perfect hair, gleaming teeth and the kind of suit that says “I’m better than you.”
He sits down with the owner and I’m half-listening to the conversation. Apparently, there are companies that want to move in and modernize the area. I move over as I hear him say dire things about how much it will cost to fix things.
I give him a break down on the expenses before he can try arguing with me. As he sputters indignantly, I coldly finish with “And I’ve already paid it.”
“Who the hell are you?” he asks.
I hand him my business card and he gets very pale. I point at the door. “Walk away while you can.” The man staggers out with a look of defeat. The owner looks over at me.
“You could have told him that sooner,” he said.
“That would ruin the surprise, grandpa. Can I have another coffee?”
“What this place needs is a good tearoom.”
I blinked, stunned at what she’d just said. We’d been transported across light-years as eaaily as we might fly from LAX to Sidney, to settle a planet to hold a line in a war older than the Declaration of Independence, and Sherri wanted to establish a tearoom.
But she was insistent: bring a little refinement to this brawling frontier town, and it would raise the general cultural level of the whole region. I had my doubts, given I was the one with the degree and she just had her nose in her Jane Austen books, but I was willing to give it a shot.
The obstacles showed up in surprising places. Setting up the building meant hiring some strong dudes to pull out and connect the three prefab modules the Kitties produced — standard food establishment, ready to go — and customizing them to look less like a bar or diner. Even tea service was a matter of getting time on a 3D printer that could run a close approximation of porcelain, and a pattern scan of a traditional tea set design.
But getting tea proved a lot harder than either of us expected. Not just issues of wartime rationing and transport being needed for military materiel and operations. It’s the same reason coffee and chocolate are so hard to come by — caffeine, theobromine and tannins are all toxic to the Kitties and a lot of their sepoy species.
We finally figured out an herbal tea mix that tasted enough like the real thing without having any dangerous toxins for other species. So we were able to open at last. I was fully expecting to lose our shirts, but we actually had a line on opening day.
Sure, we had our ups and downs, some days we were so busy we left money on the table and days we hardly got a customer. But I’m hearing that someone else is starting their own tearoom a few towns over. More Japanese style than English, but it’s still a good sign.
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