(no subject)
Jonas Griffin
NOCCA- Level 1
28 January 2006
Mr. Ronnie’s
The drive-thru window closes for the night though the inside will remain open forever or for twenty-four hours. No one is waiting outside in their car nor inside for a cold doughnut or a scalding coffee in a paper cup. Fog sticks to the fingerprint-smeared windowpane, and the December evening dims. This place doesn’t deserve sophisticated titles like café or restaurant; the only “entrées” are sticky pastries and hamburgers smaller than a palm. It’s a diner without the checkered tiles; it’s a truck stop without the eighteen-wheelers. Above the four plaster walls of the bare diner, swings a winking neon sign. Before vanishing into the murky night, the second n of Mr. Ronnie’s flashed a few vigorous pulses. The front windows purr as city traffic bustles down highway 311.
An iron crucifix is nailed over the service window where Jesus is sleeping despite being endlessly crucified. Next to the crucifix three consecutive red signs scream in white capitals, “CAUTION! COFFE IS SERVED EXTREMELY HOT!” Underneath these signs eight tiers display the grease glossed doughnuts sugar bonded to scratched silver trays. Below each rack a label identifies the kind whether it be glazed, chocolate covered, sprinkled, jelly-filled or powdered; the doughnuts are stacked in strict rows like soldiers at attention. Across from the doughnuts is a counter where the cash register sits almost empty with a few creased bills. Between two sections of counter, is squeezed a glass case with numerous shelves exhibiting more doughnuts with typical pastries. Next to the shining glass of decadence, is an l-shaped stretch of counter that curves and continues to the back wall. In front of the counter bar stools stand with cracked red seats.
A haggard waitress balances a tray of warm éclairs on one hand and unconsciously places them on the second rack for display. Before she arrived from her stark apartment, she slept with cigarettes and tears where the shadows beneath her eyes sagged down to another wrinkle. Her showgirl red lipstick was purchased from a one-dollar cosmetics bucket at a convenient store counter, and her black mascara is already smudged. She hastily applied it in her car before stamping through the rain to work. She walks back to the kitchen; her pepper curls smashed against her scalp.
A man sits alone at the counter with a white mug beneath his nose; he wears a ratty tweed blazer pulled from his closet of coveralls. He stares into his lukewarm coffee that has cooled like the chocolate covered doughnut on his plate. The doughnut was warm when the seventeen year old worker slid it to him, but the man neglected to eat it immediately. He asks the teenager if he could microwave it, and the boy carelessly nods and takes the man’s plate to the kitchen. He waits anxiously- not for the doughnut- and taps his fingers on the linoleum counter to a song he doesn’t know playing from the jukebox in the corner. The boy returns and through a mumbled monotone tells the man that the chocolate would sour if reheated. Perplexed, the man thanks the boy and stares at his cold doughnut glancing at his watch several times between sips of coffee. With drooped shoulders he looks to the door and with a sigh, resigns himself to the fact that she will not be coming.
Two college students shuffle in with black messenger bags slung over their shoulders; the girl sits at the corner of the counter and the guy with a fortnight of stubble sits to her right. His gangly legs wrap around the bar stool- it has a permanent ring of black grime at its base- and swivels a few times before the girl nudges him to stop. He complains about the country tune playing from the jukebox- the same tune that the man pretended to know- and that country music is all Mr. Ronnie’s ever has playing though both feet now bounce to the chorus. The dark haired girl pulls off her bag that’s pinned with a Misfits insignia and laughs at the boy as she sets out her lighter and cigarettes. A faded “Thank you for not smoking” sign hangs on the door, but no one notices it anymore and no employee enforces the rule, not that they ever really did. She twirls her Virginia Slim in her pale, slender fingers and moves her eyes from her coffee cup to the boy to her cigarette to the waitress mopping the white floor and back to the boy. He privately observes a duck taped “ABORTION KILLS CHILDREN” sign propped on the encrusted window ledge also in capitals but blue ones. Instead of an exclamation point three crosses serve as punctuation. Through conversation slivers of professors and parents, she takes drags and exhales a puff of smoke in the boy’s face when he continues prattling on about jazz and Ayn Rand. Ignoring the smoke he ponders his cinnamon doughnut and rubs his chapped lips. The girl taps off the ashes into the glass dish and resettles her shrinking cigarette between two fingers. The boy’s white plate scattered with crumbs is taken by a waitress who grins revealing her gold capped tooth. Her Mr. Ronnie’s logo emblazoned visor is adjusted below her unusually high penciled eyebrows that peak above the red brim. She asks the two if they want anything else and the couple declines. The girl runs her ring finger in the ash heap of the glass tray. The boy protests on his way to the “W.C.”, but her ash-stained fingertip insists to slither through. An Englishman frequented Mr. Ronnie’s often when the place first opened decades and decades ago, and unaccustomed to calling the bathroom a restroom or any other American term, the bloke inquired of that same haggard waitress where the W.C. was, and from the day the men’s restroom was christened the water closet.
It’s 12:15 and Mr. Ronnie’s will not be closing soon. Customers disperse and increase though there is never a crowd- no matter what hour of day. A few lone vagabonds throughout the night trod in and none leave payment, save for the few coins they leave on their coffee soiled napkins. Traffic hushes and Mr. Ronnie’s is still, except for the two waitresses that scrub away at enduring floor and counter stains they know will never disappear. Night no longer dims outside the foggy window but lightens slowly, reluctantly.