Hash Browns

A brief connection.

He sipped his plain black coffee as he sat alone in the booth. It was an old fashioned diner, the cheap kind with remnants of scrambled eggs encrusted in the vinyl seats and perpetually sticky tables. He didn’t mind; it was no matter.

He leafed through the newspaper in front of him. The waiter puzzled over it as he peered over the man’s shoulder while serving him his slightly cold, but satisfactory meal; the paper appeared to be from the previous month. This as well was no matter to the man, who cared little about the rest of the world. Either way, he had no more room for tragedy.

The woman at the table in front of the man was in her fifties. She wore a denim jacket and ate a plate of hash browns. It was quite early for breakfast, as the sky would still be dark for another three hours, but she had nowhere else to be. She ran her nicotine-stained fingers through her stringy salt-and-pepper hair and sighed a breath of stale bourbon.

The man, his face hidden behind the newspaper, listened intently to the woman. He absorbed every sound she made, reading her mannerisms. When he was sure it was safe, he stole a glance over the paper at her. At that moment, she looked up, and their eyes met. Unable to explain why even to herself, she smiled.

He smiled back, and rose to leave. She returned to her meal, feeling slightly warmed by the experience, but all in all, unchanged.

That was all we can hope for in this numb life, she supposed. A brief moment of eye contact in a room of emptiness at four in the morning. A fleeting connection with another human being; not enough to last, but enough to prove we are human.

She paid for her meal and walked into the cold darkness of the early morning.

Reviews

[charlie]

Such desolation shrouding this scene... Remarkable short story writing.

Well done.

[Aditi]

This is beautiful. The connection between two unknown people is put down so subtly that I had a small smile on my face the whole time I read this. Short, precise and crisp, this is exactly the kind f writing that touches a heart. Kudos, human. This is a masterpiece.