FIFTEEN
Ouroboros
Waffle House, a staple of the American South, is essentially a greasy yellow coffin. It's small. It's boxy. Half the people inside are little more than animated corpses, stuffing their mouths full of hash browns and sausages and the requisite waffles, their bodies bloating and swelling, their hearts dying. Miriam thinks it's awesome. She eats here because it's just one more nail in the ol' pine box; she can hear her arteries clogging, crunchy and crispy like the skin on fried chicken.
The irony, she thinks, is that you can't smoke in here anymore. Now only the Waffle House waitress is the approved death merchant.
Miriam stands outside now. It's spitting rain. Cars drive past. She sees a defunct Circuit City through a haze of smoke, and a little Korean place across the highway sitting next to a Jo Ann Fabrics. In the distance are the yellow lights and dark silhouette of the Charlotte skyline, a neatly arranged picket fence of skyscrapers, hardly the tumbling monstrosity that is New York or Philly.
She feels perched on an edge. Precariously balanced. She doesn't want to think about the future – she so rarely does anymore, usually just letting life carry her along like she's a discarded Styrofoam cup floating on a lazy, crazy river. But it keeps nagging at her. Worrying with little teeth.
She's heard that, in lab studies, rats and monkeys who are given the illusion of choice end up relatively healthy. Even if they only have two choices, a lever that doles out an electric shock and a lever that doles out a different electric shock, they at least feel like they have some say in their outcome, and end up being much happier and more productive. Rats and monkeys who just get the shock arbitrarily, no choice at all, end up anxious, agitated, chewing out fur and biting holes in their little hands and little feet before dying of cancer or heart death.
Miriam feels like she has no control. She wonders how long it will be before she's chewing her own fingers down to the bone.
Of course, it might also be Louis.
He haunts her. He's not even dead, and she sees his ghost. A chance meeting once, and now she sees glimpses of him in places: standing in a crowd, driving a nearby minivan, in the reflection of the smeary Waffle House window –
"Miriam?"
She wheels.
The ghost is talking to her.
"Hey," the ghost of Louis says. Except – normally, the ghost has those Xs of electrical tape over bloody eye sockets. This one, not so much. Real eyes. Warm eyes. Watching.
"You're not a ghost," she says aloud.
He pauses. Pats himself down as if to make sure he's still physically present. "Nope. And neither are you, from the looks of it."
"That's debatable." She feels shaken.
In her head, Louis is dead. It's easier that way. This is harder.
"What are you doing here?" she asks.
He laughs. "Eating."
"I guess that makes sense." She feels embarrassed. A blush rises to her cheeks; that never happens. She tries to think of a witty retort. She can't. She feels unmoored, woefully unprotected. Stripped bare.
"You want to join me?"
She wants to run.
Instead, she says, "I just finished."
"Sure," he says.
And then they stand, sharing silence and the whisper of rain.
"Listen," he finally says. "I think I maybe messed things up back in the truck. I think maybe I gave off the wrong impression, like I was some kind of weirdo. And heck, maybe I am. It's just – I don't meet a lot of nice people. I didn't mean to get strange or act out, and I didn't mean to put you on the spot about going out sometime."
Miriam tries not to laugh, but she laughs. He looks hurt, and she waves him off. "I'm not laughing at you, dude, I'm laughing at me. At the situation. Irony is alive and well. You're the farthest thing from weird. You're a thousand million miles from weird. Trust me. I'm the odd duck. Not you. You're just a guy. A very nice guy. I'm the crazy bitch who had a spaz attack."
"No, I get it – long night, long highway, stressful situations, it's all good." Louis pulls a crumpled receipt from his jeans pocket and fishes out a pen. He presses the receipt up against the Waffle House window and writes something, then gives it to her. "That's my number. My cell; I don't have a landline anymore. I can't pick up another load for a few days – the economy basically fell off the horse and it hurts the little guys like me – but that means I'm still around."
"You're still around," she says. Knife in eye. Slurping sound. Miriam? "Well. I dunno."
"Who's this?" Ashley asks, coming out of the Waffle House, rangy arms crossed, a defensive posture. "Friend of yours?"
"No," she says. "Yes. I dunno. He gave me a ride."
Louis towers over Ashley. He's a pillar, a monolith. Ashley is just a wind-blown blade of grass in his shadow. Doesn't stop him from sticking his chin out and puffing up his chest. The two men stare bullets at each other.
"This your old boyfriend?" Louis asks.
"What? The black-eye boyfriend?" Miriam can't help but laugh. "No. Gods, no."
"Good meeting you, big guy," Ashley says. "We gotta split. See you later."
"Okay," Louis says. "I get it. I'm going to go inside, get a waffle."
Ashley smiles. "Smart way to play it, buddy."
Louis just grunts, and it's like the air has been sucked out of him. He's a big guy, like Ashley said, but suddenly he looks very small. Louis tosses Miriam a sad look over his shoulder, then heads inside. Ashley makes a jerk-off motion with his hand. "Toodle-oo, fucker," he says, laughing.