The Last Thing We Took Off the Diner Menu

Just before noon on the last Tuesday, I stood on a milk crate and rubbed MEATLOAF off the board with the side of my hand. The chalk came away white at first, then pink. I’d used the pink chalk on Tuesdays because nobody could find the white when we bought the board.

“Leave the price up,” said Donna from her booth. “I like looking at a number that hasn’t gone up.”

“It went up twice.”

“Then I’ve been looking at the wrong number.”

I climbed down and washed my hands. I’d made six portions, which was four too many, but my hands knew how to make six. When I tried to make less, I wound up with an extra egg cracked in a cup and no good use for it.

Donna took the second booth from the door, the one where the vinyl seat made a sound like a duck when you slid out. For fourteen years I’d put water down at eleven forty, because she’d be there by eleven forty-two. Sometimes I knew what day it was because she came in.

She used to work at the county records office. After she retired, I figured I’d see her less. She kept coming in with the same brown purse, even on the day she told me she didn’t have anything left in it that needed a key.

The people buying the building had measured the counter on Monday. They were putting in an office, and the stools would come out. I’d been looking forward to taking a Tuesday off until I saw one of them hold the end of his tape against the place where I put my elbows.

I set the plate in front of Donna. She picked up her fork and put it back.

“Gravy all right?” I asked.

“I never liked the meatloaf,” she said, sliding her plate toward the empty seat across from her.

I laughed, because it sounded like a good line and I didn’t know what else it could be.

“Too much onion,” she said. “My sister liked it.”

I knew she had a sister in Ardell. She’d told me when her sister went into assisted living, but she hadn’t told me they used to come to the diner together.

“She sat there,” Donna said, nodding across the table. “Before you bought the place, she used to order meatloaf and I’d get pie. We’d swap a bite and spend the rest of lunch trying to convince each other we’d ordered better.”

“You could have ordered pie all these years.”

“I could have done a lot of things.” She dragged a finger through the condensation under her glass. “What I wanted was for somebody to say, ‘See you Tuesday,’ and mean there was going to be a Tuesday.”

The kitchen timer went off. I’d set it to remind me to put the clean towels in the dryer. They were already in the dryer. I reached behind the counter and shut it off.

“How come you never sat down?” she asked.

“I was working.”

Donna looked around. The place was empty except for us. The two stools nearest the register were already upside down. I’d put them up that morning because their legs caught the broom.

“I guess I’m between jobs,” I said.

I brought a second fork and sat across from her. The bench made the duck sound going in, too, which I’d somehow never heard. Donna slid the plate another inch toward me.

I tried the meatloaf. There was too much onion.

“There’s apple pie,” I said.

“I know. You’ve been telling me since 2012.”

I brought one slice and two clean forks. She ate the crust first and left me the soft end, the way her sister used to, she said. I told her that was the part I liked best. “Well,” she said, “you’re both wrong about pie.”

We stayed in the booth until the light from the front windows reached the sugar jar. On her way out she asked what time I got up when I didn’t have to open the diner.

“I don’t know yet.”

“There’s a bench outside the library,” she said. “I bring a thermos on Tuesdays. Eleven forty-two is fine.”

I said I could be there a little early.

The next Tuesday, I got there first.