“Would you like some more?”
“Sir, would you like some more?”
I came to as the waitress hovered over me holding a pot of coffee in her right hand. I looked down and saw that my cup was mostly empty. I nodded. She expertly filled my cup with a hand that had performed this task tens of thousands of times before, leaving just enough room for cream should I choose to add some. Her voice was familiar, but her face was not.
I remembered coming here, sitting down, ordering, and pulling out my sketchbook. There had been a different waitress helping me then. It was still dark out, so no more than two or three hours could have slipped by. My burger and fries were room temperature and untouched. The sketchbook page was also empty. There was a burnt out cigarette butt resting between the index and middle fingers of my right hand.
I glanced at the faded, nicotine stained wall clock above the door of the diner and wrote down the time and date in the upper corner of the sketchbook page, closed the cover and pulled out my wallet. The waitress came back and asked if I needed a box for my burger. I shook my head, and left a large tip with instructions to give part of it to the previous waitress. I doubted that my first waitress would see the cash. This happened almost every time I was there and made the servers very reluctant to help me when I first walked in. I didn’t hold it against them.
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