Top ya up, hon?
You sit in the diner and you sip your coffee, alone, waiting for a Denver omelette.
The coffee isn’t strong, it isn’t weak. It isn’t good, it isn’t bad; it’s just coffee. You look out the window. A two-lane county highway runs alongside an elevated, eight-lane interstate highway. Your mind wanders.
The omelette arrives.
The egg is steaming, bright and fluffy baby chick-down yellow; the peppers and onions, sweet and yielding. There are salty shards of ham to let you know you’re alive, and the cheese, the cheese – it melts and flows across your senses, covering your brain like a duvet. With each bite, you are under the omelette’s spell.
And then with each sip of coffee, the spell is broken. Bitter black nothingness brings you back to reality and your gaze back to the highways in the distance.
Top ya up, hon? Did the waitress actually say this? Or is it just what you heard, because you wanted and expected her to say it, because your mind is elsewhere and your own memories are too confused with diner scenes you’ve seen in movies and TV shows? In movies, the diner is a place for pause, deliberation, for setting the scene. A pit stop in the plot. It’s easy to get confused; that’s what diners are for in real life, too.
And isn’t it nice to be called ‘hon’? Sweet as sugar in the shaker. With the apron and the authority, the waitress is your 1960s sitcom mom. You top yourself up with coffee just like you top up your car with gas: to make it through another leg of the journey. The fuel is comfort – comfort in knowing you can keep going. You’ve been fed and watered, you’ve set the scene, you’re ready to go. And somebody called you ‘hon.’
