It Is One of Those November Mornings

By Craig Loomis

It is a big murky morning that has the sky shifting gray and chunky, like some slab of well-oiled machinery, a silent stirring that feels all wrong, as if something no good is at work.

And sure enough she is not wearing her red cap; she decided to leave it in the backroom, in her locker, on the shelf marked ‘Penny’. As a rule, the management does not tolerate this sort of indiscretion by employees; there are uniforms to be worn, a dress code to abide by, an image to uphold, and so on. But never mind because when the cap-less waitress gives her head a shake, a mass of long brown hair cascades around her shoulders. Meanwhile, the cook, with white apron and hair net, is at the grill, busily turning bacon this way and that. He sees her but says nothing; turning back to his grill, he scrambles eggs with tiny potatoes and readies the toast before glancing at her one more time.

Finally, the morning shift well underway, the manager steps out of his backroom office and at first glance he does not see her because he is looking for a red cap, but given a second chance, he finds her standing at the big window. He holds a cellphone in one hand and a pack of cigarettes in the other, and now decides to rest his arms on the countertop. He says something to the cook and the cook shrugs. The manager moves his cigarettes and cellphone to one hand before taking a step towards her, but then, as if suddenly remembering something, changes his mind and returns to the backroom.

She has been at the window, arms folded, for the longest time, staring out into the harbor through the big restaurant glass, a glass she must wipe clean two or three times every day. And if you were to quietly come up behind her and chance a peek to see what she is looking at, you would see nothing new: bobbing sailboats, the soft flutter of banners, sometimes flags, a glitter of harbor water, pigeons strolling over the cobblestones--nothing that she hasn’t stared at a thousand times before. She winds one finger around and around a curl of brown hair. Even when the two boys giggle, she continues to study the harbor. And now one of the calico harbor cats licks itself before looking up at the restaurant window. She wonders if the cat can really see her and when it goes back to licking itself, she decides it cannot. Stepping out again from his backroom office the manager has returned; and by the way, as manager, he need not wear an apron, nothing like a hair net. He wears no cap. Except for two boys sitting at one of the back tables, grinning into their laptops, and a white-haired man hurriedly writing what can only be a letter on a yellow tablet, sipping coffee that must be cold by now, the restaurant is empty. Having made up his mind, the manager moves in her direction. As he approaches she can see his reflection in the glass and at the right moment turns to face him, hissing, “What?”

THE END

Author Bio: For the last eighteen years, Craig Loomis has been teaching English at the American University of Kuwait in Kuwait City. Over the years, he has had his short fiction published in such literary journals as The Iowa Review, The Colorado Review, The Prague Revue, Sukoon Magazine, The Maryland Review, The Bombay Review, The Absurdist, The Louisville Review, Bazaar, The Rambler, The Los Angeles Review, Five on the Fifth, The Prairie Schooner, and others. His most recent book, “This is a Chair: A Lyrical Tale of Life, Death of Other Curriculum Challenges” was published by Sixty Degrees Publishing. October 2021.