The tables were sticky. It didn’t matter where one would move. Pull out a chair… it was sticky too. Dim lighting didn’t hide it. Even the missing bulbs at some of the booths failed to conceal the tacky syrupy sheen over everything. Even the waitresses seemed to have it. I wondered if, bumping into one of them, I’d have to pull my loose shirttail from her as though it’d been caught in taffy. The booth-backs were straight as boards, since that’s what they were – boards covered with a janitorial grey vinyl, like smooth icing on maple cake, punctuated only by a column of tufted buttons on each side. One had to lean forward – towards the slime – as soon as one sat down. Like the thickly caked makeup on a faded southern belle, someone had tried to liven it all up with a plastic garland arond each of the suspended lights, which were in fact suspended over the black treadmarked tables only by their black electrical cords from the black foam ceiling panels. There were the usual pufferies: a smoke plastic rack of 1-inch jelly tubs on each table, a shaker of white sugar, some sweet and low packets, salt, pepper. There wasn’t a napkin in sight. Not anywhere. Nothing with which to create a sanitary spot. There was perhaps one ashtray on every fifth table in the designated smoking area, so designated by the occasional stray ash or butt. It is as though any possibility of sensory pleasure had deserted along with any hope of hygiene. One waitress with swampy black hair and a lazy eye which it was difficult not to watch stood resting with arms crossed over the back of one booth. Another sat on a stool at the counter, holding two yellowy fingers to her mouth in which was a half-spent slim brown cigarette, staring vacantly from sunken black spots that could almost have been eyes. I didn’t look at the carpet, fearing it might be the one thing that remained alive after the holocaust that was this diner. The pie cooler chugged away. Something made an occasional shuffling sound through the window to the kitchen. Olivia Newton John crooned, barely audible, over the ceiling speakers – “You have to believe it is magic.” And it was. Black magic, with eye of newt no doubt today’s special.
