Ten months later . . .
“HE’S HERE AGAIN. Table five,” Wanda whispers conspiratorially, jabbing her pen in the air behind us.
Ignoring her, I finish filling a glass with Coke and set it on the tray next to the other two pops. I continue to ignore her and her pointing pen while I add ice to a fourth red plastic cup before squeezing the soda stream and repeating the process.
“Oh, look, a family just sat in my section. Guess you’ll have to take over table five.” She tucks her pen into her teased, brassy blond hair and grins at me. Today’s lipstick is the frosted peach. Against her deeply tan skin, it reminds me of orange sherbet melting in the blaze of the New Mexico sun.
“I’m busy.” I lift the tray and balance it on the open palm of my left hand.
Delaying the moment until I’ll see him, I pretend I don’t know where table five is located. I even take the long way around the small space to avoid putting him in my sight line.
After setting the drinks on the table, I smile at the tops of the men’s heads as they stare down at their screens. They’re regulars and I’m used to them finding their phones more interesting than the humans around them.
Going rogue, my traitor eyes search the sun-filled dining area for a familiar trucker cap squashing a cyclone of dark hair.
“Ready?” I ask, attempting to sound chipper and happy to be taking their breakfast order in a diner inside a convenience store where the faint scent of gasoline mixes with maple syrup.
Just west of this truck stop, the Pecos River snakes through a narrow channel full of shallow muddy water through flat scrubland. Color me unimpressed. Like most things in my life, the reality far underwhelms expectations. I know there are other more scenic sections of the mighty river, but my illusion is still destroyed.
In my head I always imagined the Pecos to be a majestic river winding through the high desert of New Mexico and the far edges of Texas. A deep blue line through the dusty rose and pale silver green banks like a painting.
I blame my dad.
His well-loved copy of Zane Grey’s West of the Pecos sat in the bookcase like a mystical text. The brown lettering on the cream-colored spine barely visible from years of being cracked open for yet another read. My doodles from childhood decorate the title page. It’s one of the few possessions I took with me from my old life.
After I scribble down four breakfast orders, I pick up the drinks tray and follow the same path back to the waitress station next to the kitchen.
Only then, from the safety of distance, do I allow myself to peek at the two-top table in the corner next to the window.
Table five.
First thing I notice is the boring, off-white coffee mug flipped right side up to indicate he’d like coffee. Next to the mug is a neat pyramid of three individual half and half containers. He’s placed the thin paper napkin in his lap, betraying good manners despite his elbows on the table. The sugar canister remains untouched because he doesn’t like his coffee sweet.
Once I’ve itemized everything on the table, I let my eyes wander to him. Today’s trucker hat is from the Albuquerque Isotopes, a minor league baseball team. Below the rim, his dark brows are drawn together as he studies his phone. I’m too far away to see if his irises are gold or green, or some combination of both, today.
Straight nose, slightly too long for his face, but not sharp. High, wide cheekbones create harsh angles on his cheeks where most people are soft. They’re offset by a ridiculous mustache he likes to chew on when he’s thinking. Sometimes he brushes his finger over the absurd facial hair.
I wonder if the texture is like a rough bottle brush or soft like a makeup brush. Running my finger across my upper lip, I fantasize about what it would feel like against my skin.
This is my life now. Daydreaming about kissing some random man’s mustache.
A man who regularly eats at a restaurant inside a gas station convenience store with a gravel parking lot.
A man who wears trucker hats indoors.
A man who has never spoken to me beyond ordering his food or thanking me for bringing said food or the check. Most of the time he doesn’t even do the last two. I could be a robot for all he’s noticed me.
He’s still the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.
Not that it matters.
I’m not looking to fall in love.
There isn’t much of a dating market around here. Majority of our customers are passing here through on their way to somewhere more exciting. Most local men work in the local oil fields, at the border patrol academy, or for one of the big agro businesses. Those guys are the eligible bachelors of the bunch.
I’m leaving out the alien hunters, tinfoil hat wearing, UFO obsessed conspiracy lovers, aka my people. I didn’t choose them, or this life, but it’s mine now.
My body shudders at the memory of my last date with a guy who spent dinner telling me how the Kennedys are all aliens. By the end of the hour, he’d only convinced me to remain celibate.
Mr. Mustachioed drums his fingers on the table while staring at his phone’s screen. I notice the absence of a wedding ring on his left ring finger, and note there’s no tan line or permanent indentation either. Not currently or formerly married. Interesting. How does a handsome, apparently healthy specimen remain single around here? Probably his lack of personality.
I swing by the coffee station and pick up the fresh pot. At his table, I pour enough to fill his cup and still leave room for his pyramid of creamers.
“Ready to order?” I ask the top of his lime green hat.
Tilting his head back, his eyes flicker up from the screen. They’re green today.
His gaze settles on my shoulder before focusing on the television mounted across the room. The long, dark lashes around his green eyes beat together as he blinks. Totally and completely unfair that men have naturally thick, pretty lashes.
“Uh, what’s the special?” he asks, staring at the business channel streaming commodity prices along the bottom.
“Chile relleno with your choice of eggs. I think we still have some corned beef hash. And of course we have pecan pancakes.” I don’t bother to fake my usual friendly enthusiasm. It’s Thursday. By now he should know the specials. Like the TV station, they never change.
“I’ll have the pecan pancakes,” he replies, equally as flat.
“Sure.” I don’t bother writing down his order.
Wanda’s at the register and gives me a sly smile when I approach. “Saw you talking to him.”
“He wanted to know the special. He wasn’t flirting.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t know about that. Maybe he’s shy and just wanted to hear your voice.” She digs around in her hair for her pen.
“Not even you could mistake his obvious lack of interest as quiet pining.” I enter table five’s order in the computer.
Humming, she fluffs her hair. “The quiet ones are always the most interesting.”
I know I don’t want her answer, but I don’t stop myself from asking, “Why? Because they don’t speak and can’t ruin the illusion of being a decent human?”
“I was thinking more about in the bedroom. I dated this man once. He barely spoke five words the entire night but the things he could do with his tongue made up for his silence.”
Closing my eyes, I exhale a breath to find my patience for her stories. Wanda shares in an attempt to be friendly. Or at least that’s the nicest excuse I can make for knowing way too much about her life, especially her sex life. Her stories are fascinating and she can make herself laugh over the simplest encounter.
The woman was born to interact with people. Probably why she makes a lot more in tips than I do. Plus, she’s local. Grew up down the road in Artesia. Wanda knows everyone and I’m pretty sure has worked here longer than I’ve been alive.
I’ll be forever grateful she took me under her wing and showed me around when I first arrived six months ago.
According to her, she knows people who know people who have proof about the infamous alien crash seventy years ago. I’m doubtful. Whenever I’ve asked her to introduce me to these people, it never happens. Instead, I’ve been introduced to more secondary connections who always know someone, but never the actual someone. Frustrated, I’ve given up asking her.
Now I’m another random waitress in a truck stop on a two-lane road in the middle of nowhere USA just east of the not-so-mighty Pecos River.
When I swing through the tables to refill coffee cups and drop off a couple of checks, table five is staring at the TV, furiously typing on his phone. I add coffee to his cup like an invisible ghost. His only acknowledgment is a frown when he lifts the cup and discovers its full.
He makes the same face when I drop off his pancakes and the syrup container. His brow lower as he examines his food that somehow magically appeared in front of him.
A few more regulars arrive, fresh from their early morning rounds of the oil fields. Outside, their white pickup trucks shine like a row of clouds against the bright morning sky. They greet each other, me, Wanda, and even Tony in the kitchen, as if they’ve entered the high school cafeteria.
Loud conversations drown out the droning of the business channel as the guys catch up on gossip.
Only Cranky in his green hat remains silent at his table in the corner.
He folds up his napkin and puts it on his plate, then rests his fork and knife on top. That’s my cue to bring him the check. Knowing he won’t want anything else, I already have it printed and tucked on a black plastic tray in my apron. I don’t bother with the mint we’re supposed to give customers with their bills. He won’t eat it—always leaves them behind.
Silently, I slide the bill on his table and walk away.
He’ll pay in cash and tip twenty-percent.
And never acknowledge my existence.
With a sigh, I plaster on my fake smile and greet my new table.
“What’ll it be, gentlemen?” I ask all friendly and smiley.
As they tell me their orders, I catch movement from the corner.
Mustache stands and pulls his wallet from the back pocket of his faded old Wranglers. He slips a couple of bills out of the worn black leather billfold, the kind my granddad used to carry, and sets them on the tray.
My eyes follow him as he saunters across the room to the double-glass doors leading to the parking lot.
Rather than push through the door with his hand, he turns and rests his back against the glass. For one brief moment our eyes meet across the room.
One second is all it takes for my breath to hitch and my heart to stumble in its rhythm.
Then I blink and the strangest thing happens.
He pauses, giving me a single, slow nod.
My mind is still stuck on the single nod this morning. I’ve worked at the diner for six months and Mustache has been coming here daily for four of them. Sixteen weeks of breakfasts and sometimes lunches almost five days a week. We’re talking at least sixty meals and not once has he ever smiled or nodded before.
He’s obviously a weirdo.
A strange man.
A nut. And I’m a squirrel.
I’m obsessed with his silence.
At first, I tried to engage him same as I would any other customer. Chatting and smiling like a hired princess at a kiddie party. I would know. I’ve had that gig back home. With dark hair and pale skin, I can play at least three classic princesses and not have to wear a wig. I draw the line at clowns. I refuse to be a part of a traumatic childhood memory for some innocent kid.
This time of year there’s not a huge market for princess cosplay in Roswell. The annual UFO festival officially begins next month, but the town is already abuzz with tourists because school’s out and the great American summer road trip tradition has begun.
If it weren’t for the aliens, there wouldn’t be much reason for anyone to visit Roswell for anything more than gas, food, and lodging on the road to anywhere else. Whoever decided to make this town the official center for all things extraterrestrial and conspiratorial is a freaking marketing genius.
Even smarter than the guys who thought up the giant ball of twine or a palace made of corn to lure road warriors off the interstate to their towns. I have a lot of questions about those roadside attractions:
How big of a ball are we talking about? Don’t birds and mice eat the corn cobs? That corn place has to have some major rodent problems.
These are the weird thoughts my mind focuses on.
Like I said before, I’m among my people here.
Sometimes we don’t find our tribe, they choose us.
Growing up, I was told my father disappeared from my life not because he was a deadbeat loser but because an alien race of intergalactic travelers chose him of all people to kidnap as an example of the best humans have to offer. My mom believed this version of events with her whole heart.
It definitely makes for a better story than he ran out on his wife and nine-year-old daughter.
Especially in our small, forgotten town in the middle of nowhere upstate New York without a ball of twine or a corn-covered palace to keep it on the map.
His disappearance made the local paper. Then the national news got a hold of the story and we became semi-famous for a couple of weeks. Longer if you count the grocery store checkout where the National Gossip put its version of events in its front page headlines for months:
“Small Town America Under Attack by Aliens!”
“We ask the probing questions behind a rash of abductions in America’s Heartland”
“Are Christians Being Kidnapped by Demons from Outer Space?”
“Roswell Aliens Return”
“Alien Abduction Diet: Lose 10lbs in a Day”
The articles were filled with interviews of “scientists” and “experts” who spun a fascinating narrative about people being ripped from their cozy beds and taken aboard spaceships where they were pricked, poked, prodded, and probed. Those lucky enough to return shared their nightmare encounters with the esteemed journalists of the National Gossip and other tabloids. According to my mom, some men, like my father, weren’t so fortunate.
These experts came to the house and told my mother he was probably aboard a spaceship, comatose in a pod, speeding his way back to the home planet.
Trust me, I know how crazy this sounds.
Of course she wanted to believe her husband wasn’t a loser scumbag who could leave her. As a kid I used to comfort my mom and reassure her he left because he was a selfish jerkface, not trapped as an alien medical experiment.
Why would the aliens choose him when they could have a noble prize winning physicist or mathematician? Someone useful to their cause?
From what I knew of the man who donated half my DNA, he wasn’t exactly a blue ribbon winner. Other than his good looks. Mom shredded most of his photos, but kept a couple of him with me.
The weird color and fuzzy focus of the images make it difficult to see the details of his face. Tall, dark eyes when not red from a flash, and brown, short hair are what I remember most.
I was nine when he left.
I’m older now than Mom was when she became a single parent.
She always swore he was the funniest, most charming, smartest man she’d ever encountered. When they met, she thought he was perfect.
Evidently, she was wrong.
And had questionable taste in men.
Who leaves their little girl and wife behind with never a phone call or a letter?
Jerk face losers. Not perfect husbands and fathers.
Grandpa swore he was probably in the mob and went into witness protection. Or into the river in New York City with cement boots.
Sometimes when Mom wouldn’t get out of bed for days, he’d get angry enough I worried that if Dad ever came back, Grandpa would kill him and bury him in the woods behind our house.
Maybe he already had.
At my high school graduation, I scanned the crowd for a man with dark hair and sunglasses who didn’t seem to be sitting with anyone. I figured if my dad were in the witness protection program, letters and phone calls could be traced. I knew if he loved me enough he’d risk disguising himself to blend into a crowd.
I did the same thing when I graduated from the local state university. A much bigger crowd would provide better coverage. While the degrees were handed out name by name, I scanned the crowd for a dark haired loner in sunglasses, probably wearing a hat.
When my name was called, I smiled and waved at the audience, hoping to give him a sign I knew he was there without blowing his cover.
Because how could a perfect man disappear on his family?
Had to be the mob.
Or aliens.