CHAPTER THREE
"And would you like rye toast or white?" Diana asked. It was 12:15 a.m. Five hours and forty-five minutes to go until she could hang up her apron and drive to The Doughnut Bin for a large coffee with hazelnut cream and a chocolate banana muffin. That was always the prettiest time of day—the way the morning hung between night and dawn, in a haze of twinkling streetlights singing their swan song against a sleepy pink sun. The ride home would tickle her senses with the enticing devour-me aromas of her breakfast, which could never be eaten until she was on her living room couch watching Marsha Douglas forecast the weather during the last ten minutes of the six o'clock news. Marsha's petite stature and chiseled facial features always motivated Diana to skip the next day's muffin and never have another one, to get on some sort of special diet program that would make her the kind of woman that fat girls sat on their sofas eating their last muffins to. But the motivation was always short-lived. Since she'd been on the night shift, Diana had eaten her last Doughnut Bin muffin six-hundred-and-fourteen times.
"I don't care. Just make it quick," snarled the sweaty-browed man on the other side of the counter.
While she waited for his order to cook, Diana pretended to clean the opposite end of the counter, which, although already spotless, was an unoccupied area of the diner where she could be alone to fantasize about what it would be like to have Mrs. Bartle's luck—to look up one day from the dirty dishtowel she was using to wipe away other people's accidents and literally bump eyes with the man who would spend the rest of his life making her happy, the man who would love her the way no other soul possibly could, the man who would see through her layers of emptiness, boredom and fat and think she was pretty, the man who would never stop to consider that losing weight would make her prettier. With Diana's luck, she would meet that man—and he'd die freakishly young, leaving her all alone just like her father had done.
"Come on, Dee, this ain't a beauty parlor," interrupted Mick, her boss, who had just caught her using the side of the napkin dispenser as a mirror. "Besides, who you got to impress, huh?" he asked, laughing and whacking her on the butt with a roll of quarters as he made his way to the register.
Diana escaped to the kitchen, wondering what it would be like to check her face without worrying that people would question why a woman so fat even bothered to care what was going on above the shoulders. It would be different if she were thin like Brooke, the new nineteen-year-old waitress who'd probably made more in tips in the three weeks she'd worked there than Diana had in the past three months. If Mick had caught Brooke playing beauty parlor in the napkin dispenser, he would have found it charming, and all in attendance would have been subjected to watching a fifty-three-year-old man blush like a teenage girl as he fiddled with a line like What's a doll like you worried about her looks for?
"Uh, I ordered white toast with this," Mr. Sweaty Brow complained as Diana set his plate down.
"Actually, sir, you told me you didn't care as I long as I made it quick, which is technically not in my control since I don't cook the food. I just take the orders," Diana explained, putting on her best cute and apologetic face. She liked to practice her cuteness on the really burly and unattractive customers, her theory being that these men were just springboards to bounce coquettish tactics off of, and that since she wasn't actually interested in any of them, she had nothing to lose. Apparently this one wasn't biting.
"Yeah, well, then you should learn to take orders correctly," he snapped. "Now either you go get me a couple of slices of white bread, or I ask for the manager!"
"Did someone say 'manager'?" Mick asked, rushing to Diana's side.
"Yeah, I asked the lady for white toast, and here she is telling me it ain't her fault that she gave me rye."
With one look from Mick, Diana could tell that although he had rushed immediately to her side, he wouldn't be standing by it.
"Diana, you know we don't argue with our customers," he reprimanded her, taking Mr. Sweaty Brow's plate in his hands. "I'm sorry, sir. We'll fix this right up for ya."
"I wasn't arguing with him, Mick," Diana protested as she followed her boss through the kitchen doors.
"Dee, I know that," Mick said, setting down the plate he'd been carrying as he turned to face her. And then he placed his hands firmly on her shoulders, looking her square in the eyes like he was about to teach her one of life's great lessons. "I wanna tell you something," he began. "It's a little saying about business that's always helped me. The customer is always right. Can you say that? Repeat after me. The customer . . .is always . . .right."
Diana glared at him, despising the way he talked down to her, especially the way he spoke slowly, like she was some sort of idiot that couldn't process bullshit informtion. "The customer is always right," she muttered through her teeth.
"I can't hear you," Mick taunted.
"I said the customer is always right," she blurted, highly irritated and wishing she were better at hiding it. "Can I take my break now?"
"Yeah, go ahead," Mick conceded. "But there ain't no shortcake left. Try the meringue. It's low fat." Just what every overweight woman craved: diet tips from her condescending male boss, who had absolutely no place giving her any because his stomach was bigger than hers was—and only acceptable, of course, because he was a man.
Diana decided to skip the stale dessert case altogether, opting for the bag of cheese curls she had in her purse instead. However, since she was too ashamed to have anyone know she carried food around in her purse, she ran over to the Quickmart next door, bought a lottery ticket so the guy at the counter wouldn't think she'd come for no reason, and returned with the cheese curls in hand as if she had just purchased them. Naturally, this was a time-consuming cover-up, and when she got back, Mick was already counting down the seconds that remained in her break.
"Eat those up quick. Break's almost over," he said, loudly enough for the kitchen staff to hear. "Oh, and make sure you wipe your mouth real good. That powdery orange cheese stuff sometimes sticks to your face. You don't want to scare away the customers." His laughter echoed in her head with every piece she popped into her mouth, every bite she took, and every bit she swallowed, leaving her to ponder the question that had to be on everybody's mind—how it was that a man so god-damned funny had ended up in the diner business.