An empty booth alone should tell the tale. That’s all I can think to myself as you stare at me so…so normally. An empty booth alone should tell you everything there is to know. That’s all it takes as I look across this regular table, metal framed, at this regular diner, the one I’ve been to only once before, toward you, a regular waitress. That isn’t true though, is it? An empty booth alone could never tell such a tale. If that were the case, I wouldn’t have to sit here as I am with such disdain. I wouldn’t have to glance down at this, this very special table, riddled with pictures of postcards under the laminate, the same table we sat at the first and only time. I remember as if it were yesterday how we tried to find all of the places each of us had been while we waited on our food. We would relive the stories in the years to come, little did we know then. The sight of an empty booth would be the only bother to an otherwise ordinary experience…and I wouldn’t be seething quite so at the sight of this, this familiar diner where my wife and I had our first date, carrying on just as it always has. The smell of breakfast foods and coffee, exactly as I remember them, wouldn’t overwhelm me as I realize the scent of her perfume is absent. The laughs and smiles of patrons wouldn’t have been made aware to me, and I wouldn’t have to wonder if I’ll ever feel that way again, happy. The hustle of waitresses and cooks, the chaos of the food service industry, I suppose, wouldn’t seem quite so irreverent to me if you had never asked me how I’m doing today. Does the empty booth not tell you all you need to know? No…I suppose that’s too much responsibility to give to any one thing. How, after all, could such a thing explain the love we shared, the life we made, the life she saved in me? How could you then look at me and see the pain of such a loss? She isn’t here, and she never will be again…but you have a job to do. You have student loans to pay off…or children who need clothes for school…maybe you just lost someone as well. Maybe you have a life outside of this diner, and maybe you are like me in some ways. Maybe you can’t pay attention to every detail about every ungrateful customer you serve. Maybe that’s a good thing. It’s an impossibility to maintain such interest and attentiveness in everyone you meet. Even I sit here only supposing things which might be true for you…but I won’t venture to ask. I don’t care. That’s the truth of it. Any of these thoughts I’ve had about you could be true, or none of them could be. Either way, you have a job to do, and that job requires that you ask how I’m doing today, so I’ll oblige.

“Just fine,” I say, with a grin, albeit forced, and on we go with our day.