Worlds Seperated

Chapter 2

Tuesday, The 11th

Evening

THE RESTAURANT WAS PROBABLY FILLED WITH EVERY MOBILE member of the community, having quiet family meals. He did not stare or noticeably twist himself to gawk at all the decent folk around. Instead, he sat just quietly and tried to fit in as best he could as a single diner. He turned another page in the book he had picked up from a thrift store the preceding Sunday. The paper was yellow and rough like you find in all old paperbacks. The smell that lifted from each new page was that musty yet fresh smell that bookstores have. These young, unfettered words were seeing light for the first time in a generation comforted him.

He had grabbed this book among others to pass the time and sat down at the table with it to hide his face and make him seem easily passed-by. The prose had captured him. The story of the young, Welsh man enraptured him. The beauty of the land and language and people resonated with his own persuasions. His emotions raged inside of him like a storm he had learned about but never seen. His eyes would have given glimpses of the passion and his breathing would have become heavy, but he replaced his bookmark and laid it gently on the table to gather himself to order.

A chubby waitress slightly younger than Scott approached his table with a large smile and a wide-eyed, exaggerated look that let him know that she was trying to catch up with the world just like he was, or used to be. Her brown hair fell in wavy curls over her shoulder and enshrined the large smile that pushed up her heavily freckled cheeks.

“Saw-ree! I’m just about frazzled this evenin’ tryin’ tuh keep up with all these big orders!”

Scott looked around the tame establishment once again, smiling because of her stress that she created for herself.

“No troubles. . . . I waited . . . and you came just like you said you would. . . . I needed a little practice in patience.” He always spoke with a subdued smirk and pauses long enough to make a person notice them but short enough that he could keep a train of words still connected, a side effect of his planning before action, thought before word.

“I hope I didn’ wear on it too much! Whatcha thinkin’ is ya fancy?” She had either perfected the speech forced upon people to pry money away from customers, or she was genuinely a bright person. Scott’s cynicism said the former, but the small-town location and atmosphere pointed to the latter, and for that he was jealous.

“I’ll just make it easy for you. . . . I’ll have a water and . . . just a cheeseburger.”

“Plain an’ simple, I can manage that! Fries good with that burger?”

“Fries are perfect.”

She spun and headed off toward the kitchen, checking on other tables as she went. He looked after her as she moved so spryly and swaying her hips. More than likely, she dearly loved the knee-length skirt she wore and saved it for busy worknights such as this. Waiting tables made her the focus of the spotlight, and she felt pretty and elegant swishing through the tables. Maybe it was vain, but that feminine spirit was honorable in a respective, equitable sense to the chivalry that men strive for. He replaced the book in front of himself so that it could comfort his nose with its scent of a feeble old librarian as frail as a page standing at the gates of Alexandria in defiance. Had the burning of libraries and their denizens set the world back by ages? Or had they stayed the flood of fire? If they had been filled with stories such as this one, which was injected with life and made his own feelings validated, certainly the former. If they contained other words of malice and unnaturalness, then the latter.

Lifting his eyes from the page that had commanded his attention, he considered the nature of things. How could everything be thought of so thoroughly and without misunderstanding? He swore that things were one thing or another, but they could also be so many things in-between. Could he be simplified to nothing more than an overthinker who became lost and confused in his self-constructed complications? Is consideration supposed to curse its adherents? Was his nonsense that of the onset of insanity? The pinnacle of it? Not thinking the way he did seemed madness to him. He started his reading again. At a new chapter, the bookmark was replaced and the book laid on a remote part of the table that was most likely to be free from any residue. Not long after, the careless, stressed-out waitress came flitting back and laid the basket in front of an unmoving—save for his eyes—Scott with a grandiose effort that was more than simple placement but less than a low bow.

“Hope ya enjoy, made ’specially for ya! If ya need anythin’ else, just call for Jordyn!” The sparkle in her words let Scott know that was her name.

“Like the river?”

“No, more like the burger joint waitress,” she spoke with a giggle and the most expert wink he had ever seen.

“How embarrassing for me, I’ll leave you to your duties, River,” he flashed back after he had recovered from her wink, unable to return the gesture because his eyelids never seemed to want to cooperate.

“Now that’s a pretty name,” she smiled sweetly, an inward smile that forms when one feels desired, and turned away to continue her work, mouthing the word to herself and letting the sounds trickle through her mind.

“It suits you, then,” Scott said low under his breath to lie with all the dead, kind words he had ever thought but had withheld. He whispered it as he watched her move away almost like she was skipping through a field in a fantasy, and he damned any person who would take that gleam away from her. There was only hatred harbored in his heart for whoever would be so careless as to suppress a love for the world and life so childlike and innocent that one cannot even feel contempt for the ignorance of evil. He held a drive to secure its existence because he himself had reveled too deeply in cynicism for too long to ever attain that purity.

The meal was unsurprisingly delicious and made Scott realize that this was true American cuisine, not the encroaching chains that tried to replicate it and spread like disease as much as they made people sick with their poison. This place was about food and feeding; the now-satiated young man could look around and see that. Even if he had not yet found the ability to point out specifics in his theory, he could grasp the feeling. The feeling was rich and welcoming, not sterile and financial.

“Save any room for somethin’ sweet ?” She had returned and put forth a question that he had often heard, but this time it felt personalized for him as her tongue clicked resolutely for the high-note end.

Are you getting off now? Scott thought to himself, but instead said, “I might . . . be able to manage a few more bites, depending on what my choices are.”

“Welllll, we’ve got piiies and cobb-lers. . . .”

“I am definitely interested in the pies.” He stared intently at her as she searched the ceiling for the available menu and droned her words instead of her usual pep in a way that a woman does to feign distraction to conceal her giddiness in regard to the conversation.

“Let’s see,” she said slowly as she tapped her chin and struck a pose, continuing to focus, “we’ve got apple . . . hmm . . . peach—”

“Peach?”

“Yeah, peach, aaaand chocolate,” she finished reading the menu that existed only for her mind as her dreamy, ocean eyes settled back on him, a shipwrecked mariner.

“I’ve heard enough. It’s been so long since I’ve had some chocolate pie. . . . Did the pie sweat?” he asked with raised eyebrows and a voice higher with excitement.

“Sweat? Whatcha mean?” she asked with the sudden appearance of a puzzled look on her face, while an uneasy smile appeared, ready to answer, but also weary of a stranger taking her for just some dumb girl.

“Like . . . the little golden drops of liquid . . . on the meringue. . . . I think it’s sugar.” Scott reeled in his enthusiasm so as to not frighten her and spoke quietly with a face relaxed back into tiredness.

“Ohhhhh,” she perked back up, “our pie sweats profusely. Ya want the sweatiest piece we have?” She smiled knowingly and leaned back toward him from her place where she had drawn back in hesitation.

“That would be lovely, . . . please.” His voice remained low, and his smile was less bright. Her reaction showed him that she had already been hurt. There was nothing undamaged in this world, nothing left untouched by malice or self-focused people perpetuating the world’s evils and shrugging them away when saying that it was “simply how things are now.”

She brought the check and the pie at the same time with a bright smile. The slice was large and delicious, though not as special as one that would be made by a woman of his family. It had a different aura to it, a feeling that matched its home. The way she had said “enjoy” made him think that she liked speaking to him. Scott placed a five-dollar bill under the peppermill and took his check to the counter near the exit.

“How was it, sweetheart?” the elderly woman sitting next to the register asked as she gently took the check from him and brought it near her face to analyze it.

“It was very good.” His arm felt heavy as it pulled itself up and lowered into the inside pocket of his jacket, removing his wallet.

“Well, we sure are glad to have ya. Whereabouts ya from?” Her hands looked fragile as they handled the cash that he handed her from the worn swath of leather.

“Ma’am, . . . I feel at home right here.” Scott’s eyes drifted to a small CD rack that had various country and folk musicians on display. He picked up one of a live performance that had been mentioned once on a lonesome radio station cutting in and out over the rolling hills.

“We’d sure be glad for you to stick around a spell then!” Her face brightened at his answer to her usual question.

“I would . . . if I could. . . . I think I’d like to take one of these too.” He laid the jewel case on the counter and slid it an inch in her direction. She expertly punched some numbers in and his total rose.

“Shame, a new face would be mighty nice ’round here. But I s’pose we all gotta keep on movin’ and ya cain’t stop no matter how nice it seems any place. Not ’til you’re sure it’s home. That’s how I ended up here,” she spoke with a sweet epiphany, her head subtly shaking from old age. Scott was lost, and her eyes gleamed at him. He took a toothpick and set it between his teeth.

Several miles down the road southbound, the second track started on the speakers. Scott was headed out of Texas to a place he had never been before, with a feeling that would not let him alone.