The Diner

She stared out the window at the trucks neatly lined up on the other side of the railing that separated the diner's parking lot from that of the trucks. She didn't know exactly what kind of business their neighbor was. She'd only been working in the diner for a few months, and she only wondered about the business at times like this, when it was dark out and customers were few. Her mind wandered then.

She couldn't tell if the trucks' headlights were actually on or if the lights from the parking lot hitting them made them appear so. An old movie from her childhood came to mind about trucks coming to life and killing people. They had trapped a group of survivors inside a gas station and kept circling so the people couldn't escape. Or maybe it had been a diner.

“Order up!”

She turned, but Gail was already on it. It was for Gail's customer. The only customer she had on her side was drinking coffee, and she'd already given him a refill two minutes before. She'd only turned out of habit.

Coffee wasn't a bad idea. She didn't really need the caffeine; she wasn't tired. But she was bored. She was feeling fidgety, and spinning the cup on the counter, twirling the spoon would give her hands something to do. She poured herself a cup and grabbed two packets of sugar from the bowl of sweeteners. They were the last two packets.

As she slowly stirred the sugar into the coffee, she stared at the bowl of sweeteners, normally white, pink, and yellow, now just pink and yellow. She should refill it with white. Three white, three pink, and three yellow. That was the minimum she surmised anyone would need, so she tried not to let any of the bowls get below that. This one was off-balance: no white, two yellow, and four pink.

Without taking a sip of coffee, she refilled the bowl of sweeteners, then went down the counter and around to the empty tables and refilled the rest. The evenly wide tricolored stripes in the bowls pleased her. She felt accomplished. She'd done something.

She refilled her customer's coffee and checked his bowl of sweeteners. There were three white, three yellow, and four pink. She took the fourth pink and returned to her perch behind the counter so she could look out the window at the trucks that may or may not have had their headlights on. That may or may not have been like the trucks from that movie that held a group of people hostage in a gas station. Or maybe it had been a diner.