An Outsider's Perspective

Chapter 2 - Coffee is the Lubricant of Life

I've got a mouth on me. That's one other thing you should know if you don't already. Vulgarity and I are cousins. We're related. It's something some people just have to get used to. I don't believe in being afraid of using words — I do think I take it too far a lot of the time, especially when I'm pissed — but in general I don't give a damn.

And this leads me to coffee. Dear God and angels in Heaven, I love that damn stuff so much. But it has to be good coffee. Nothing I hate more than a craptastic cup of boiled brown water. Well, you can imagine, I tried the town's coffee out, got my routine in, figured out where the best cup was in that damn town. Luke's Diner. I didn't even need to go a city block. Over my time in that small town, I could have filled fifty Dumpsters with the large Luke's To-Go cups. Man, what a waste. Let me tell you one thing that'll save our environment and make Luke some money: investing in those hokey trendy reusable travel mugs. Of course, every time I told Luke this, he sort of grunted at me and went off with the magical coffee pot to go fill some more cups. Is it wrong to feel separation anxiety when the server would walk away with the pot? Even though you already have a full mug and the pot was staying in the same vicinity as you?

Now, as I said earlier, our friendly neighborhood diner guy was in a bit of a . . . permanent dark cloud of self-loathing and anger. I probably drank two pools full of his damn coffee before he even remembered what my name was or if I had even been in that dirty diner before. You'd think the one bitch in that town that gave him a piece of her mind on a daily basis would probably stick in his memory, and of course, this just bolstered my curiosity about his entire situation. I mean, the guy intrigued the heck out of me. He was grumpier than me, had a town full of people that looked at him like a brother, had a booming business, the best coffee I ever had (not that I ever saw him drink it) and lots of really horny single women falling into his path. Of course, at the time, I was also thinking of what he would do if he was stoned . . . like that'd ever happen.

That's a place I go every once in a while. What the hell would Harry Potter do if he was stoned? Wouldn't it be cool to be fucked up with Johnny Depp? Harry Potter and Johnny Depp, in the same room, stoned, sharing stories. Who the heck wouldn't want to see that? Now Luke Danes, the man that was a stone wall, I fantasize about getting him loosened up on some weed, a few beers, getting him to spill his guts. Although you never know what kind of drunk some guy is going to be. He could be a horny drunk or an angry drunk. Last thing you want to do is get alone in a room with a strong guy you hardly know and find out he's an angry drunk. Reminds me of my dad sober. I still get a shiver when I think about how my father couldn't control his temper. My mom told me once to never marry an Italian man. I can only assume that's why.

Anyway, my bitchy badass self started to grace the diner twice daily, for the coffee. To-go at first, but I realized getting up early with the paper for breakfast at Luke's would soon become another ritual of mine. I befriended the cute waitress, Lane, and her husband Zack — I know, what the fuck, right? She's younger than I am. I also had some banter going with Cesar, learning about his women. My conversations with Luke went like this:

Luke, standing over me, pad and pen in hand, avoiding any sort of eye contact, says, "What can I get ya?"

"Hi Luke, I'm good, how are you?" I'm staring up at him, the perkiest smile on my face that I can muster. Here you can see I am trying to be as out of character as possible. All I get is a blank stare from the proprietor, but he does look me in the eye with this I-don't-want-to-fucking-talk stare.

"Sigh . . .," I say. " . . ." and then I order.

Patty told me that Luke is usually better. Although he's been grumpy his entire life, he was only this bad when Lorelai dumped him the first time. Yikes, what the fuck did she do to him? I've got a pretty one-sided perspective at this point and I know it, but it's fun to pick on the "slutty woman" sometimes. It's just so weird, thinking about it. Those days in the diner when the owner blows me off and the rest of his customers, I have this weird empty feeling inside. Like I was there, like that weird broken-up energy is still lingering in his diner.

I try to put myself in his shoes. I am a bodacious diner owner chick. I like to wear tight-fitting flannel shirts and jeans. I don't wear ball caps though, sorry. I live above my diner. My diner is my life. I don't really have family around except my wackadoodle brother, his wife and their kid. Don't see them often. I was in total love with this man who lives in my town, owns the inn. We were engaged. Somehow he did something so terrible, we fought so rough one night, that we couldn't fix it. It ends, I am still in love, but so unbelievably hurt I cannot reconcile. I would feel like my mind was unraveling, like I was close to insanity. This man came into my diner for eight years before I got the guts to ask him out, to assault him with kisses. He's sat in every chair in my diner, in every stool at the counter, he's eaten on every surface, tried and made fun of every thing I serve, worshipped the very coffee I serve, drank from every mug.

One day I found her name carved into a menu, Lorelai, with hearts and circles and doodles around it. Drawn so small you can hardly find it. And then I see it on another and I realize it's on every menu. You can still feel the impression the pen made on the laminated pages. I wonder if Luke knows they're there. I feel sad when I rub my finger over it. I wonder if he comes down here and does that himself. I was actually sitting in the diner one morning, mindlessly rubbing my thumb over Lorelai's scrawl, when Luke shouted at me, knocking me out of my reverie. I was so embarrassed, I got a to-go cup and hightailed it outta there.

Lorelai to me is dead. It's beginning to be easier in my mind to imagine that he buried her, that he's broken up over losing her like that. I imagine that maybe he wants to think that way too, that not seeing her at all, he's mourning her. But the gnawing thought that she lives three blocks away, in the arms of the one man he hates most in the world . . . Fuck, even thinking about it, I feel the screws in my brain starting to loosen.

I don't think I intended for this story of mine to get all over my timeline. I guess I did fancy myself a Susanna Kasen, Girl, Interrupted, a bit, but I didn't plan to do serious time jumps. Stream of consciousness suits this narrative better. I'll do it like Margaret Atwood and Handmaid's Tale. I like that better. You know I met Margaret Atwood once? She is one heck of a gal, little old lady with one damn noble voice and opinion. I wish I could have been the brain that thought up Oryx & Crake. That little old lady, short statured, pure white hair . . . some crazy shit must go down in that head of hers.

I must get back to our current timeline. Once the new job wonder wore off — I think I'd been in the Hollow for like a month — I started to drift back down into the old me. I'm blank most of the time, I'm blah. I don't get depressed, I just get . . . empty. I took to taking a coffee to the park — it was warm enough — sipping and thinking, between 7:30 a.m. and 8 a.m. before I opened shop, after I had breakfast at the diner. Usually I just thought, God I love coffee, internally over and over again.

"It's good coffee."

I jump, startled out of my internal dialogue of coffee worship.

"Uh, yeah," I say sleepily, a small childish smile playing on my features. I'm too tired to play cool. Looking over, I see a woman with dark brown hair and blue eyes smiling at me. Wow, she's beautiful. I think I'm staring too much. I do that on accident all the time; women think I'm checking them out. I can appreciate a beautiful woman.

"Good morning," she said. She leaned back into the bench, her hands shoved into the front pocket of her hoodie. Oh, I think, she has nice jeans . . . and there I go staring again.

"Good . . . bench . . .," I say, not sure how to converse anymore, trying not to look creepy, overanalyzing in my head. "It's from this seedy diner back there. Some ornery old dude who doesn't like coffee makes it. Go figure."

She lets out a nice high-pitched "Ha!" and then adds, "Not from around here?" with a smile playing on her face.

Of course she knows about the diner, idiot. Why am I trying to impress this stranger? Gah. "No . . . moved in like a month ago. I run the new computer store."

"Ahhh! Um . . . Lexy, right?" she asks, raising her shoulders, her head turned towards me. She squints in question when she says my name.

"Yeah, you got it. Small town. I should be used to it by now."

"Hah, well, a month isn't that long."

"Oh, I grew up in a hol — er . . . place like this." Why the hell am I not being an ass? This is usually where, if the ass hasn't kicked in yet, it kicks in.

"Oh?" she asks inquisitively. Maybe I am that interesting?

"Small town Massachusetts . . . well, a town called Lenox. You might have heard of it. Ethan Frome . . . Tanglewood." I hear myself, gah. I cannot hide the hatred and disgust for the word Tanglewood. It always pissed me off to no end that people didn't know my town's name but they'd been to fucking Tanglewood.

She laughs at me again. "My mother has mentioned Tanglewood a few times . . . there's a snooty spa there too —"

"Ah, yes. Canyon Ranch."

"Humm," she responds and scrunches up her nose. Taking in a deep breath, she smiles at me again, stands and says, "Well, it was nice to meet you, Lexy. My name is Lorelai. See ya around!"

Oh good grief.