The Only Thing by Heather VanHartesveldt

In the center of my town, between a gas station and a salon that offered dollar haircuts, was Burgundy’s. A crappy, run-down diner that had been serving the same ten people every day since forever. Unfortunately for me, it was also the place where I worked.

Some people liked the smell of grease from the fryers and the chime the cash register made each time it was paid. Some waitresses here even seemed to like the people. I was not one of them.

Each time Donald, a regular who was always rude and always awkward, called me over to his table, it took everything in me not to pour his usual sweet tea on his head. He was so picky about everything, complaining about the crispness of his lettuce or the cleanliness of his fork. Today was no different.

I had already gotten a lecture from my boss, Lisa, about being polite, which wasn’t like her since she usually didn’t care what I said. She understood what it was like to have to deal with complicated people.

“Rose,” she had said earlier as she tipped the phone near the register away from her mouth while she took an order. “Behave.”

I walked over to Donald’s booth, the one by the window right in front of the red letters that from the inside spelled Burgundy’s backwards. Donald looked up at me from his plate of onion rings with a typical frown on his face. The glasses perched on his nose were thick, and from where I stood, I could see what looked like an inch of glass in his wire frames. They were clean, though, with not even a visible speck of splattered ketchup or table salt on them.

“Yes?” I asked him, tapping my foot on the ground.

Next to me, I heard the enthusiastic voice of my best friend Emily. She was talking to her table of people, laughing as if what they were saying was the funniest thing she had ever heard. I really don’t know how we’re friends since she’s so different than me, and just at the sound of her happy banter, I instantly rolled my eyes.

“My onion rings are a little soggy,” Donald told me as he pushed his glasses further up his nose.

“Well, you’ve had them sitting in ketchup for ten minutes,” I said, raising my eyebrows at him just before he glanced down at his plate again.

“I’d like some new ones. Make them crispier.”

He handed me over the plate, and I just stared at it for a little bit as it rested in his hands. I felt someone poke me in the back and knew it was Emily telling me to take the plate as she walked past me. I took it from him, and he watched me as I walked toward the kitchen.

“Donald wants new onion rings,” I told Lisa, who was standing in the kitchen near the cooks. She was talking their ears off while they tried to do their jobs as best to the standards of people like Donald.

She rolled her eyes and took the plate from me, setting it down on the aluminum countertop.

“That man,” she scoffed.

I pushed past the swinging doors leading out of the kitchen and stayed near the coffee machines so I wouldn’t have to attend to any of my customers while I waited for the rings. At the counter, drinking coffee and glancing at a newspaper, was Noah. He was dressed in his police uniform since he had just got off of the night shift, and no one was sitting around him. I guess they didn’t want to talk about life with the cop over coffee.

“How’s Donald today?” he asked me when I pretended to be busy wiping the counters off.

He looked across the diner at Donald, knowing exactly how he was. Noah always heard my disgruntled rants about him. When he turned back to look at me, I noticed how the florescent lighting of the diner made the top of his shaved head shine.

“Can’t you arrest him for being annoying?” I asked him.

“‘Fraid not,” he said.

Lisa rang the bell that rested on the counter and pushed a new plate of onion rings over to me. When I turned to grab them off of the counter, she made a long, drawn-out gesture for me that resembled deep breathing. Overreacting wasn’t an option this morning, apparently.

I took them after sending Noah a look and went back to Donald. He was getting up from his table, talking loudly on a high-tech cell phone, and he shook his head at me, indicating he had to leave. He kept talking to whoever it was on that phone. He even stopped near the door, projecting more of his work conversation onto the innocent bystanders in the diner as he plucked a gumball from the machine by the exit. I stood by the now-empty table with the hot plate of food in my hand as he left, disappearing behind the front left corner of the building.

The crisp, twenty-dollar bill he left on the table, like the one he left every day as my tip, was the only thing keeping me from hating him.