The next morning, Lydia awoke with a groan. Four and a half hours of sleep, when she had been used to ten, was a more than noticable difference. It felt like there was a weight, a solid force and pressure residing somewhere in the back of her skull. The alarm clock had rung en times before she finally managed to reach it and turn it off, and she slumped back onto her bed when she had succeeded.
Five minutes later she was perilously close to dropping off to sleep again. With a frustrated sort of whimper, Lydia sat up almost painfully and threw her legs over the side of her bed. Her eyes half-focused on a spot halfway across the floor, eyes almost entirely lidded and the darkness of the room appearing almost complete. Through her lashes, she could just barely make out light streaming through the windows, moonlight from above and the glare from the street lamps filtering up from below. Rather than making the room brighter, the touch of light seemed almost to make the darkness more absolute.
For a few more moments Lydia sat on the edge of her bed, skin shivering ocassionally although the air wasn’t truly that cold. Slowly, her mind began to work. ‘I wonder,’ she thought, ‘if you are more sensitive to temperatures when it’s early. That is, when you’ve just woken up. I normally wouldn’t think this was that cold, really. I mean, I would think it was cold, but I always think it’s cold. I wouldn’t mind, that’s what I mean. Right now, though, it’s like the worst thing imaginable. The cold. I’m shivering because of it, even though the heater’s going and it’s much warmer than outside, and because it’s so much warmer than my covers I just want to curl up and go back to sleep. Under my covers, where it’s warm.’
With a silent moan, Lydia realized that if she was conscious enough to think, no matter how disconnected and unimportant the thoughts, she must surely be awake enough to move. Once that thought filtered through her mind, it was followed by the realization that it was past time for her to get out of bed and start getting ready to go to work.
Lydia didn’t bother turning on any light. She knew where everything n the large room was situated, and the little bit of light that filtered through the windows was more than she needed. Sometimes Lydia thought that she’d make an excellent blind person.
A peculiar thought, really, and one that ran across her brain again at 4:10 on a Tuesday morning. After all, her eyes were almost closed already, and the room was almost entirely dark. She only used her eyes for – well, reading, and checking when to cross the street, and working. The blind can do all of that. Really, she might as well be blind already.
Able to think, but not yet conscious enough to analyze her thoughts, Lydia let the concept slde from her weary mind as soon as it entered. She walked across her room slowly, placing her feet delicately on the floor. She’d gotten splinters from the wood once, and had thought about buying rugs back when she first moved in. Now she’d just figured out how to walk so that the wood was nonhazardous, and she stepped carefully towards her clothes.
Four uniforms stood on the rack, and she picked out the one that was closest to her. She owned six coat hangers, actually – there was always one that was never used. She wasn’t quite sure why she had it, except maybe that getting rid of it would actually have been more work than keeping it. When she realized that she was standing besides her closerack, her inside-out closet, as it were, thinking aobut the fact that she had one more coat hanger than she needed, Lydia’s eyes opened almost all the way, incredulous. "Talk about mundane," she whispered, her voice hoarse and somehow harsh in the silence. It was not a pretty sound, and she didn’t speak again, keeping her frustration to herself. But god, how boring! How goddamn boring could a life get, before it just gave up, rolled over, and died?
Lydia grabbed her bra, underwear, and socks, feeling as though she ought to be muttering. It was really quite ironic. She was feeling so bitter because she was tired, and she was tired because she had been out late last night – out eating dinner, with coworkers who seemed to be, well, almost friends. Getting there. Her life was getting more interesting of late than it had been for – a long time – and she was complaining that it was too dull. It made no sense at all.
Lydia did turn on the bathroom light – true, she may well have managed quite well blind, but to shower in the dark would just be weird. Not that she’d ever tried, mind, but it seemed like it would be weird beyond words.
Strange phrase. Beyond words. You’d think most things would be, wouldn’t they? Most worthwhile things, anyway. I suppose ridiculously dull and simple things might be within words.
But math, on one level as dull and simple (one plus one equals two, two plus two equals four, all quite simple and compartamentalized and endlessly, endlessly dull) spiralled up to a level quite beyond words. Not to mention comprehension.
Chuckling would have been peculiar, with noone around to hear her. Lydia’s face remained impassive and slightly exhausted as she glanced at it in the mirror, while her mind was amused by her mild joke. Further bemused by the comparison – the emotionless to her emotions – Lydia felt her lips twirk. Now that she had an audience, even if only herself, expressions became worth the energy it took to move her facial muscles.
With a sigh, Lydia stepped underneath the warm water and turned her back towards the stream. It wasn’t quite hot, soothing against the back of her neck, but it would have been painful against her face. Her eyes slipping closed, Lydia braced one hand against the wet, tiled wall on her right and stood motionless to the sound of the water.

"I’m so so sorry!"
Sally and Marge looked up, bemused at this impassioned outburst. "Ah, the latebird arrives!" Alice said liltingly. She grabbed a plate of food and added it to her tray, departing out the door to the dining room. Lydia looked at her back apologetically. She started talking before Sally could express whatever sentiment was causing her to glare at Alice like the darker girl had insulted her mother.
Lydia was flustered. "Yes, I didn’t mean to – truly I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened, it’s just I was moving slowly this morning, and I stood for forever in the shower, I swear that I think I zoned out, and now I’m late and I’m sorry."
"Relaaaax," Sally drawled. "Do you honestly think we mind that much? For heaven’s sake, what are we, nazis? I may be blond and all, but that’s just unfair."
"Don’t worry," Marge said. "There wasn’t much work to do, and we handled it just fine."
"Even covered for you," Sally said calmly, grabbing four neatly wrapped sets of silverware.
"Covered for me?"
Marge nodded. "Yup, the records say you’re here."
"Records?"
Sally rolled her eyes, but Marge was patient. "Greg’s records."
"Oh. Why?"
"So he can tell who –"
The slow, careful explanation was interupted. "No, why did you cover for me? Why did you … lie?"
"Lie? How low of a word," Sally said with a sniff. "I never lie. I speak mistruths, ocassionally, but that is something different entirely."
Lydia looked up at the taller woman until she couldn’t stand the calm, inquisitive gazeany more.
"Why shouldn’t we? For heaven’s sake, wouldn’t want you getting in trouble for something this small. Now get to work."
"Yes ma’am," Lydia said, her voice ludicrously small and meek.
With a sniff, Sally picked up her tray and with a loud, "coming right up, gentlemen!" she headed out into the dining room.

"So," Sally asked later that morning, nursing her – fourth? Fifth? – cup of coffee, "why were you late?"
Lydia looked up, slightly startled and guilty, and glanced around to see whether there was work that needed to be done. "Marge and Alice can handle it," Sally said dismissively. "Seriously, though. That’s never happened before, I don’t think."
"I was tired," Lydia said.
"Well, any fool could see that much," Sally said impatiently. Lydia blinked in surprise – she hadn’t seen any dark circles in the mirror that morning. "But why are you tired?"
"I was out late last night?"
"Really?" Sally got a gleam in her eye. "Doing what?"
"Eating."
"With who?" The older waitress looked positively predatory now, a vicious gleam in her eye, and her whole face with the excited expression of a cat who has just spotted a particularly plump bit of potential prey.
"Becky and Allison and Molly," Lydia said, slightly confused.
"Oh." Sally relaxed some, disappointed. "Those fools," she said fondly.
"Why did you… oh."
"Ah well. Still, it’s something. Where did you go?"
"A restaurant…" At Sally’s incredulous look, Lydia got defensive. "I’m trying to remember the name! I think it was called something-ette."
"Brownettes, probably. Nice enough. Wait a minute, though – wouldn’t the girls have been working?"
"It was after the dinner crowd left."
"After the dinner crowd left! Honey, we may be a diner that doesn’t do late-nights, but still – people don’t stop eating here until after ten thirty!"
"Well, we left a little before then. Brianna was covering the last few folks, I think."
"Lydia. How late were you out?"
"Um. I got back to my place at 11:30."
"And woke up at four?"
"Yeah."
"Look, I’m practically the poster child for the unhealthy and yet dull lifestyle, but even I get at least six hours of sleep a night. Usually. Somehow, you don’t strike me as the type used to lack of sleep."
"It’s been a while," lydia agreed.
Sally sighed and shook her head. "Child, child, child. You have to take better care of yourself. The way it looks now, you’ll be falling asleep on your coffee date this evening, and trust me, that’s boring." Lydia was blushing furiously now, mostly at the assumption that she’d be down at the coffeehouse, as though that were just an accepted part of life – which in a way she supposed it was.
"What are you, my mother?" Lydia asked, a tiny bit of true aggravation seeping into her joking voice.
"Heavens, no!" Sally’s shocked expression banished all irritation from Lydia’s mind. "A mother! Gods. No, not to mention that I’m much, much too young."
"Oh, I don’t know…" Lydia had a wicked gleam in her eye.
"What!" Sally looked affronted. "No. No, you did not. Tell me that you did not."
Lydia blinked innocently.
"I shall not even dignify that with a response," Sally said loftily, strolling off with her nose high and her heels clicking.

"Seriously, though." It was another quiet moment, when almost all of the breakfast crowd had gone off to work, and it was only the unemployed and elderly, those who could afford to be eating breakfast at eight thirty on a weekday, were still sitting out in the dining room.
"Seriously what?" Lydia asked. Sally appeared to have lost her train of thought.
"Oh! Right. Seriously, though, you do need to take better care of yourself."
"Six hours of sleep a night isn’t a lot."
"It’s more than four!"
"And a half! But that’s beside the point. You need to take better care of yourself, too."
"What, are you my mother now? That’s even more ridiculous."
"Yes, it is. And that’s saying something. But seriously."
"But seriously. And, if you’re going to be going out and eating, you ought to eat somewhere decent."
"Like?"
"Like Café Rivaldo downtown. It’s not quite posh, but excellent."
"Expensive?"
"Sweetie, I’m paying off tens of thousands of dollars of credit card debt. Do you really think I would be going off somewhere and spending fifty bucks on a dinner?"
Lydia just looked.
"Okay, I admit it. I might. But not here. So anyway, I’m working most of the week, but Friday after work you have to let me take you there."
"What, like a date?"
"Silly girl. Why on earth would I be asking you out on a date? No, just a dinner. Where you might actually be able to have a decent conversation and eat some decent food."
"Allison and Beck –"
"Becky and Molly are very nice people, yes yes yes. But really. Come on now, whaddaya say? You deserve a night out, and if that young man of yours asks you somewhere you’d probably freak,"
"Would not!"
"So, you know. Just think about it."
"Think about it?"
"Um, yeah? Thinking, you know, that thing people do with their brains? Well, most people, anyway."
"Are you kidding? Of course I’d like to come."
"Oh. That was easy, then."
Lydia grinned.


"Come on now, you’ve got some free time. Go pay a visit to your boypal."
"Boypal?"
"Siggy?"
"What?"
"as in significant other? Sheesh, have you no imagination?"
"I do! But he isn’t!"
"Right, then, hubby to be?"
"What!?"
"Okay, a bit premature. Fuckbuddy?"
lydia couldn’t even pull together a coherant sentence, instead sticking with the tried and true gasp of shock and smack of horror. Sally caught her wrist before she could do any damage, laughing.
"Fine, fine. Your gentleman friend. Appropriate enough for you?"
Lydia gave a sniff and withdrew her hand.
"Seriously, Lydie, you’ve got time – forty-five minutes, an hour until we’ll need you back here."
"I shouldn’t take that long on a break, though… wait, did you just call me Lydie?"
"Yes. Oh, for heavens sake. What do you think you are, a slave? You already work hours and hours more than you need to. How many hours did you work yesterday, eighteen?"
"What? She worked eighteen hours yesterday?" Marge joined the conversation with consternation on her face.
"No! More like seventeen. Less, if you count all the time we spent talking during the afternoon."
They both ignored her presence. "Yes. Isn’t it ridiculous?"
"Ridiculous! She needs to take better care of herself."
"That’s what I told her!"
"And care less about work. It’s only a job."
"that’s exactly what I told her."
"You did not!"
Sally spared Lydia a glance. "Well, I thought it, anyway."
"And did you hear the child? Less, if you count time spent talking, she said. Honestly, as though she needs to be working every single minutes."
"It’s insane, that’s what it is. And you know what else is insane?"
"What?" Lydia asked. Sally was looking at Marge, waiting for a response from the matron.
"What else is insane?" the older woman finally asked.
"She doesn’ thave anything she needs to be doing right now," Sally said, exaggerated outrage in her voice.
"And?"
"And?"
"And she’s standing around talking to us –"
"more like listening to you," Lydia muttered.
"—when she could be off drinking coffee and talking to a delightful young brunette."
"What’s wrong with the child!" Marge shrieked, more a declaration to the heavens than a question, even a rhetorical one. "What did we do wrong?"
"Um, hello? Honestly, you’re not my mother! Really!"
Once again, Lydia was soundly ignored.
"What do we do, Marge, what do we do?"
Suddenly, two bright eyes were focused on Lydia with the intensity of an interrogator’s flashlight. Lydia shrank under the sudden attention.
She gulped. "You know what, ah, I think I’ll, um, be going now." Marge’s face relaxed and broke into a grin, while Sally simply stood a bit straighter and substituted raised eyebrows for a deathglare.
"Good luck," Marge said upliftingly.
"Knock ‘em out, dollface," Sally said with a smirk as she snagged a half-empty mug and drained the coffee from inside.
Blushing still, Lydia grabbed her coat and walked out of the diner.


"Hi."
"Hi. Um, what would you like?"
"I was. Um. I thought I’d, you know, let you pick again?"
"I’m sorry about last time. That was really rude of me – I came on rather strong, didn’t I? Truly, I’m sorry. I – you can have whatever you want."
"No! Don’t be sorry. I mean, I understand. You were mad. And – well, you know. I don’t really know what I want. So I didn’t mind you picking out for me."
"Oh. Well, in that case…" Todd’s strange bout of insecurity vanished, replaced by a gleaming grin as he looked at Lydia impishly. "What shall I serve you today… oooh, the choices are endless."
Lydia just waited, eyes slightly downcast and her hands buried in her pockets. Two cold quarters still sat there, separate from the other coins. She’d decided to keep them.
Todd turned and looked at the shelves of ingredients and additives, and at the large chalkboard menu above his head.
"You know what," he said, "let’s go with the basic. A latte. A tall latte, single espresso shot and no chocolate. Whaddaya say?"
Lydia honestly did not like coffee. "Sounds fine."
"Excellent, excellent." He started humming to himself as he went around measuring coffee beans. "So," he said conversationally, "how was your day?"
"Hmm? Oh, it was fine. Fine so far. Yours?"
"Oh, going well, going well. No catastrophes so far, you know. That’s always a good measure of a day."
"Yeah. I guess so. I –"
"there have been some pretty funny disasters around here, you know." For a moment, Lydia was almost insulted at the way Todd had just marched right over her comment. Then again, she hadn’t really known what she was going to say – and the fact quickly sunk in that he probably hadn’t heard her. She hadn’t been talking very loudly – barely at all, as a matter of fact. So it wasn’t like it was his fault.
"God, I remember a few years ago when our old coffee machine broke – you see these big things, ridiculously expensive, you know? So although it was getting kind of old, we didn’t really want to replace it. Anyway, I wasn’t here when it happened, but apparently some valves broke or something. There was milk seeping out and steam coming out of a few places. Anyway, it wasn’t really the sort of thing that would have been too bad, except that then this guy, I can’t even remember his name – anyway, he decides to try to fix it. Idiot. The smart thing to do would have been to simply unplug the thing – but then you know that," he said with a grin towards Lydia. She nodded dumbly.
He had grabbed a green-and-white striped mug, just this side of gaudy, and placed it on the counter beside the espresso machine. He took his time while he talked.
"Anyway, he starts fiddling with it – doesn’t have the right tools or anything, doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing. I mean, he says he’s good with machines, but he obviously isn’t, because the next thing you know he’s broken some pipe and there’s water and old coffee grounds and half-steamed milk just everywhere, all over the floor, and the guys covered in it and the other baristas are just shreiking about not sure what to do. Some bimbo grabbed paper towels, like that was really going to help. Anyway, long story short, that machine was dead, the guy was fired, and our floor still has some pretty water- and coffee- stains. Hilarious, huh?"
"Um. Yeah. He was just trying to help, though, wasn’t he?"
"Right, lot of help that was!" Todd laughed, a beautiful deep sound. He turned with a flourish and set the tall mug in front of Lydia. "There you go, milady. Shall we proceed outside?"
"We can stay inside today. I mean, if you don’t mind."
"Eh? Me mind? Of course not. Back over to the corner then, is it?"
"Please."
Todd grinned again, and took Lydia’s elbow. She opened her mouth to tell him that, really, she was quite fine, she didn’t need him to escort her or support her or anything, but he was talking again. "It’s really nice to see you again, you know. I look forward to your visits here – that sounds really formal and cliché, but there you go. It used to make my day, even back before we’d spoken so much as two words to each other. Funny, huh?"
He smiled at Lydia, a smile not a grin, true and heartmeltingly sweet. Lydia couldn’t help herself, and she smiled back and didn’t protest at all when Todd gently pushed her into the booth.
"So," she said, a bit awkward, "How are you?"
Todd sprawled out on his booth, not looking awkward in the slightest. "I’m doing pretty damn well – better now that you’re here, of course." He grinned at Lydia. "Weather’s even half-decent."
Lydia blinked in surprise. She hadn’t really noticed the weather at all that day – too tired on the walk to work, too distracted on the way to the café. She glanced out the window and saw a pure blue sky.
Desperately, her mind worked for something to say. "A bit cold out, isn’t it?"
"Yeah, but I like the cold."
"You like the cold?" Lydia’s voice was slightly incredulous.
"Sure. Why do you think I didn’t mind sitting outside with you? Wouldn’t well have done it if I’d hated the chill, now, would I?"
"I – I suppose not."
"But you don’t, do you?"
"Don’t like the cold? No, no I don’t."
"Ah well. To each his own. Or hers, as it may be." Lydia weakly returned Todd’s smile.
"Why – why do you like the cold, then?"
"Why do I like the cold?" Todd rolled his head on his shoulders, until the shell of his right ear nearly grazed his right shoulder. He pursed his lips and looked off to the distance introspectively. "That could be a very long answer or a very short answer," he said musingly.
"Whichevers easier."
"You’re very accomodating, you know that?" Lydia blinked in surprise. "I quite like it. It’s a nice change of pace."
"oh."
"now, where was I? Right. I like the cold because – you know, it makes you feel alive. The feel of the chill on your arms, on your face, reddening your cheeks – you become hyperaware of what’s around you. It – it makes your senses stronger, if that makes sense. It makes the world around you more real."
Lydia sat quietly, listening and considering. Her coat was off and sitting beside her on her booth, with her gloves and hat atop it, but she kept on her scarf. She played with it while Todd talked. He was on a roll, now.
"The cold – it wakes you up. Keeps you from getting too lazy, keeps you accomplishing things, keeps you active. Heat just makes people lazy and indolent. All you want to do in summer is lay around and do nothing. In the winter, you want to get out and ski or sled or shovel the walk or – okay, maybe not shovel the walk, but you get the picture."
"Yeah."
"The grayness, too – you know how when it’s cold, the sky is gray a lot? Lots of clouds?"
Lydia nodded. Flat grayness, stretching across and encompassing the sky, devouring all evidence of change or variety and making the world seem flat and dull and dead. Lots of gray.
"I like that, too. It makes people stand out a lot more – you know, the variety in the way they dress and talk and think. It takes emphasis off of your surroundings, which don’t really matter that much. Also, it’s constant – persistant. That can be really comforting."
Closing her eyes, Lydia nodded again. Constancy. Comfort.
"The light through the clouds is nice, too – nondiscriminatory. It’s soft, and gentle, and you can’t really tell where it’s coming from. It lights everything equally, not really messing with shadows or patterns the way sharp sunlight does. It’s gentle and sort of – well, I don’t want to say flat, but it sort of is. It makes everything look sort of similar, in a nice way."
Nod.
"I like the way the prickle on your skin reminds you of feeling, and I like the way it fels when you’re active and you work out in the cold and your skin becomes superheated and then cooled by the air. It’s nice. So, you see," Todd said, snapping out of his slightly thoughtful mode to become debonair once more, "there are lots of reasons to like the cold. How about you? Why do you like the warmth?"
Lydia paused, thinking. She could feel the heat of her coffee through the mug, prickling her fingers and palms almost to the point of pain. Why did she like warmth?
"I assume you do like warmth, after all, and not just that you don’t like the cold."
She nodded, still thinking. Why did she like the heat? What was it about the summer, and the sun, and fires and heaters and hot coffee and chocolate and tea?
"Well?"
Looking up, Lydia said softly, "I’m thinking."
"Okay. I can wait."
Lydia looked down again. "I like the heat because…" Her voice was soft, surely too quiet for Todd to hear properly. She looked up at a point just to the right of his head, and spoke more strongly.
"I like the heat because it feels like home."
"Like home? How does it feel like home?"
"It’s… comforting. It wraps you up, like a favorite blanket, like a hug. The cold is… confrontational. It’s always biting and fighting and being harsh and threatening and off-putting and… it’s not nice. It’s not caring. It’s not kind."
"And heat is? Like a hug, you say?"
"Well, yeah."
"I just don’t see it."
"I know. But I do."
Todd was quiet for a moment.
"I mean, hot things can burn you – but unlike a cold day, a hot day is rarely physically painful. Uncomfortable for some people, and in places like the desert the dryness will hurt, but not the heat."
"Eh,"
She continued before Todd could interrupt again.
"Warmth is… kinder. Softer. And it encourages you to stop bustling about and just live in the moment, enjoy touches and sensations."
"Laziness, then"
"If you say so. I’d say… indolence, maybe, but not quite laziness. An appreciation of the world around you."
"Right, well I still prefer the cold."
"I know."
"Don’t you find it uncomfortable?"
"the heat?"
"Yes."
"a little – in the way that curling up under a big blanket with a mug of cocoa and a favorite book is uncomfortable. I mean, it’s too hot, and you sweat, and there’s no comfortable way to read a book while lying down and drinking at the same time, but I don’t mind at all."
"eh, okay."
"Uncomfortable the way –" lydia blushed and stopped. The way sex is uncomfortable, she finished in her head, but she didn’t want to sound like she was propositioning him. ‘Yet,’ some traitorous part of her mind whispered, and her blush deepened.
"well, I guess I understand how you can like the heat. Like I said, to each her own."
"Yeah."
"still, though – why do you sit out in the cold every day?"
"I don’t know." Masochism, she thought wryly.
"Eh. All right. If you honestly don’t want to tell me."
"Really! I don’t quite know. I mean…"
"No, really, it’s okay."
"But –"
"I don’t mind. How are you, by the way? I forgot to ask."
Lydia suppressed an irrational urge to apologize. "I’m fine. A little tired, but fine."
"Tired? You don’t look tired."
"Thank you," Lydia said wryly.
"but I guess you could be tired. Why? Should I be jealous?"
He grinned at her, and Lydia blushed to the tips of her ears. "No – I just worked a really long time yesterday, and then went out for dinner with – with some friends."
"Ah, that’s cool. Where’d you eat?"
"Brownette’s."
"Nice place. Friends from work, I take it?"
"yeah. How did you know?"
"you don’t seem like the type to have many friends from outside of work." Lydia fell silent, but Todd kept talking. "So, we never did get to finish our conversation from yesterday, did we? What with you running off to work and all."
"hmm? Oh. I thought we’d finished."
"not at all" Todd had pulled out a cigarette and cigarette lighter, not noticing Lydia’s wince.
"Um. I hate to ask, but – must you smoke?"
"well, I am addicted," todd said dryly, but he put the pack back.
"I’m sorry, truly."
"It’s okay. I’ll live."
"Um – why weren’t we done?"
"We never got to talking about colleges, really." Bereft of their cigarette, his fingers hooked onto his belt or drummed on the table.
"oh. What was your college like?"
Todd smiled at the opening and launched into a long, but supposedly brief, retelling of his collegiate days. Lydia listened, and nodded and smiled and chuckled in all the right places, and asked questions where Todd paused.

"so, what aobut you?"
"What about me?
"What was college like?"
"Crap."
"You wanna be a bit more specific?"
"No."
"Fine. You don’t have to be so curt about it, though, you know."
"Oh, I’m – I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. It’s just – it really was painful."
"Painful how?"
Lydia looked down at the table, embarassed. "I really don’t want to talk about it."
Todd reached across the table and took her hand, rubbing his thumb in small circles across her skin. "Look, Lydia," he said, his voice soft and lilting on her name, "I just want to understand you. I want to understand what makes you tick. You’re a fascinating girl."
"I’m not a child," she murmured softly.
"Woman," he said with a slightly patronizing laugh. "You’re a fascinating woman."
"Not really."
"Not really a woman?" he asked, laughing again. Lydia flushed a bit.
"not really fascinating."
"Oh, but you are. Let me be the judge of that, hmm? What was so painful about college?"
The rapid change of topics confused Lydia, who blinked for a second, lost. "Oh. Well, I had gone to – to." She licked her lips. "To sort of prove my mother wrong. She’d always told me I wasn’t good enough, wasn’t smart enough. I mean, I know she did it with the best of intentions – she didn’t want me trying to do something to hard for me and then failing painfully. But it still bothered me. Besides, I knew I was a disappointment to her. So I guess I wanted to prove her wrong and make her proud at the same time. It doesn’t make much sense, does it?"
"No, but then what in life does?"
"I – I guess so. So I went into a premed program. It was really, really hard. I’m not really that smart at all, and I don’t like blood or pain or death or any of that. And I never have been good at science, and there were all of these science classes, and so – it was hard. I worked really really hard, but it was still difficult."
"Yeah, school can be like that."
"no! Don’t you see, it wasn’t like that for everybody, just for me!"
"lydia, everybody has problems at school sometime."
"I know – and I’m not saying I’m the only person who had trouble pulling an A in college. I’m not even saying I was the only person who struggled, who well and truly struggled, because a lot of people do, I know. I’m just saying that I was one of those for whom it is well and truly difficult, nigh on impossible. I was getting C’s in my best classes, and having to work my ass off for them. And then it felt like I hadn’t accomplished anything at all."
"I understand."
No, no you don’t, Lydia wanted to say. She took a deep breath and instead said, "So I dropped out. It was hard, and so I dropped out, and that’s all there is to it."
"What about socially? Did you have friends?"
Lydia winced. Her voice harsh, she answered, "Yes, Todd, yes. I had friends once."
"where are they now?"
Her eyes widened. "I don’t know," she said shortly. "We lost touch after I left. I think they were disappointed in my for giving up. That’s what they called it, giving up." There was something dark and potent in Lydia’s eyes.
"Where did you go to?"
"I told you. Europe."
"and you say you aren’t interesting! You go off scampering about Europe, and then claim that you aren’t interesting. Come on, Lydia, what was it like? I’ve never been to Europe. Describe it for me."
"European," Lydia said flatly. Todd laughed like it had been a joke. "It was a place. I kept expecting it to be inherently different somehow, inherently better, but every place I went to, it was just a place. People were still people, same human characteristics, acting and speaking differently, thinking differently, believing different things – but, deep down, viewing the world the same way, treating people the same way. Different scenery, that was all."
"Oh, come on. That’s not a description at all."
"It’s the best I can do. Look, I ought to leave."
"You don’t have to do that."
"I really should."
"Is it because I was asking about Europe? I’ll stop asking about Europe. We can talk about something else. Just – please. Don’t go." He looked into her face with an earnest expression.
Lydia softened. "Okay." She sat back down. "It’s just – I don’t like to talk about that, either."
"Why not?"
She gaped slightly. Todd just looked slightly quizzical.
"Why don’t you want to talk about it?"
"Well, obviously, I don’t want to talk about why, now do I?"
Todd winced. "You don’t have to be sarcastic about it."
"I’m sorry," Lydia said automatically. "It’s just – a bad relationship. That’s all."
"Okay. I imagine you don’t want me to ask for any more details, then?"
"No, no I don’t."
"I can do that. What do you think of the latte?"
"Umm…"

Half an hour of small talk later, Lydia reluctantly stood and started to put on her coat.
"Must you – well, yes. I suppose you do have work."
"And so do you," Lydia teased. "Work which you ought to be doing."
"Bah. You, dear," he said charmingly, "are far more important than anything so mundane as… work." He laced the word with as much disgust as Lydia imagined could possibly be squeezed into any word of the English language.
"Come," he said, in a mock-aristocratic accent, "let me walk you to the door."
Lydia giggled. "Yes, milord."
"I like the ring of that," Todd said as he tucked his arm through hers. ‘This is new,’ Lydia thought befuzzled, smelling the scent of his aftershave and feeling the warmth of his body even through her coat. Was that even possible? Surely she imagined it…
"Don’t get used to it," a part of her said detachedly. Apparently, walking arm in arm was awkward – Lydia could feel herself almost stumble once, and Todd’s body was at an uncomfortable angle – because Todd soon slipped his hand out from Lydia’s arm, stretching it across her back instead. His hand nestled in the curve of her waist as he led her to the door.
"Really," Lydia said with a breathy chuckle, "I could have walked myself to the door myself."
"Ah," Todd said, "but that wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun, now would it?"


When Lydia got to the diner, the lunch crowd had just begun to trickle in. Molly wouldn’t arrive for a few minutes, and while Alice took a call on her cell phone, Sally and Marge were serving the tables that were starting to fill up.
Hanging up her coat, Sally nodded at the dishwasher – had she remembered to that morning? She couldn’t remember. What a silly thing to be thinking about, anyway – and looked around for her pad. It wasn’t in her coat – she only remembered to grab her keys and wallet after she checked for her pad and pen – nor in her uniform, and she couldn’t possibly have put it in her chair –
"Aha!" Quite uncharacteristically, the offending items stood on a counter, randomly thrown. She picked them up and stepped out with a smile to serve an impatient-looking table.
"Hello, my name is Lydia and I will be your waitress today. How may I help you folks?"

"Finally learned the art of small talk," Sally commented fifteen minutes later.
"what?" They were fastening order slips to the clothesline that brought them to the cooks – such a primitive system. Today, lydia loved it.
"Oh, don’t think I didn’t see you. Chatting up to that family. Getting rid of their irritatedness – not to mention irritatingness, but I don’t think any amount of talk could get rid of that – quite skillful for a beginner, really."
"Do you know them?"
"Nah, but they’re all the same. Anyway, nice work. You learn fast, once you decide to learn." Sally gave a cheerful grin to Lydia, before plastering on a saucy smirk and heading out to a table of muscly men.
"I hate this part of the job," she muttered to Lydia.
"Why do you do it then?"
"The job?"
"No, the flirting."
"Well – I dunno. It’s just what I do, I guess."
"I don’t do it, and Greg hasn’t fired me."
"Yeah, well, you’ve been known to work 18 hours in a day," Sally grumbled, all traces of her brief good move gone.
Lydia couldn’t help but chuckle at the exaggerated swing of Sally’s hips.

That afternoon, before Sally left for her other job – "what do you do, anyway?" "oh, nothing exciting. Even more boring than this job, and that’s saying something." "Well, what is it, then?" "Really really boring." "Honestly, Sally, if you keep dodging like that I’ll be forced to think you’re a stripper, or something like that." "No – that would be interesting, you see. And better-paying. I’m not interesting, and I’m not paid peanuts." "You are something else, though. Something else entirely." "Secretary." "What?" "I’m a secretary. Sheesh. Honestly, talk about fitting gender roles." – she grabbed one final cup of coffee and talked to Lydia very briefly.
"So, how went it?"
"How went what?"
"Your chat with loverboy? How was it."
"Oh." Lydia paused to think, just a bit, and Sally treated the brief silence as though it were significant.
"Oh, honey," she said, the southern endearment coming without the false southern accent and sounding quite natural despite. "He’s a bastard, isn’t he."
"What? No, not at all!"
"Yes, he is. If he weren’t, you wouldn’t be looking like that. Damn him. I mean, all the cute ones are, but he seemed so nice."
"He’s not a bastard!"
"In that case, considering that you’re head-over-heels for him, why didn’t you instantly said ‘good! Marvelous! Amazing! Orgasmic!’ or something to that affect, hmm?" Sally put one hand on her hip and cocked her head knowingly.
"I’m not in love with him!"
"You’re in something with him. And he’s a bastard."
Lydia was still shaking her head while Sally gave a last few words of comfort and vanished through the door.

She didn’t pay much attention the rest of the day – when Molly or Alice or Marge or Brianna – even Brianna the curmodgeonly was talking to her now! – or Allison or Greg or that sweet dishwasher or any of the cooks talked to her, as she absentmindedly chatted to the customers, as she served her people and left forty-five minutes sooner than usual, because she realized that she could, that her contract let her leave as soon as Alice and Marge left, even if not quite as soon as Sally – the whole day long, Lydia paid it only half a mind.
As a matter of fact, her mind was a confused swirl of endearments and grins and denials and memories – it had been so long since she’d talked about the past with anyone, and images of subtle grins and dark eyes and the play of sunlight on ancient buildings were popping up in her mind, as well as of harsher voices – all the way home.
It wasn’t until she had reached the side of the house, ready to walk around to the back, that anything knocked her out of her reverie.
"Lydia!" a voice called.
Her steps paused, deciding that the voice must have been a part of a memory. ‘I’m going crazy,’ she thought, ‘hearing my memories now.’
"Lydia!" it said again, with more authority.
Her heart somewhere where her stomach used to be, her stomach feeling like she’d vomited it up, Lydia turned and looked towards the just-opened door of the house.
Broken, her voice answered for her. "Grace?"

"What were your friendds like?"
Lydia shrugged. "They were my friends. What can I say? I liked them well enough, they liked me well enough. There was – let’s see, Laura, and mary, and Bethany, and Tracia – mostly girls. A few guys, geeky boys, charles and Rob. I don’t know. We talked at school hung out after school some time. Nothing fascinating. Really, Todd, my life’s been quite boring. There’s not much to tell you."
"Nobody’s lived a boringh life," Tod said softly . "and if they have, it would be interesting just to know how they mangedi it." There was a glint in his eye that Lydia found vaguely impsoing, although it was quiet and, if dangerous, only in a quiet and peaceful sort of way.
"Well, it wasn’t too difficult for me," Lydia snapped, downing the last of her latte like it were a shot of liquor.
"what was your school like?"
"Not to big, but big eough. Not quite a thousand kids.
"I asked what it was like, not how many students there were."
Lydia thinned her lips. "It was fine. Ugly builging, but then most schools are, aren’t they? The teachers were nice enough. School was a little boring, but I did okay. As and Bs. I think I said that already. There were cliques, of course, but I was=s comfortable with my friends. I went mostly unnoticed."
"Okay, then. And what was it like at home?"
"I told you already, my sisterw as perfect and I wasn’t. I don’t know. We justr – we were sisters . Never had anything against each other, per se, but never close."
"You never had anything agasint each other?"
"No."
"okay. Your mom, then?"
"I still don’t know why you want ot find all this out," lydia muttered, looking down into her empty mug. "Besides, I told you about her and you told me to stop."
"You told me about her from her point of view. I want to hear youirs."
Lydia shrugged. "She worked a lot. Wanted a better life for me and Anne, you know. She wasn’t home too much, was always a little harried when she was -- I mean, she was home every evning, which is plenty, I guess. I don’t know. She was our mom, you know? She cooked us dinner, clothed us, yelled at us, sighed when she signed our report cardsd, criticized our choice in boyfriends and clothes, laughed at our jokes… for heaven’s sak.e What am I supposed to say?"
"Whatever you want. I think you just did."
"Right, then. Are we quite fnished? What was your childhood like, anywy?"
Todd leaned back, grinnng a bit. "This is quite funny, actually. We’re sitting here outside the café sharing our childhood experiences with each other. And you are going ot be gone from work for a really long time, you know."
"I don’t care. Fair is fair – what was it like being you as a kid?"
"Well then." Todd leaned back and settled into his chair as comfortably as he could. "I grew up with my mom and my dad in this great big ancient house that was constantly falling apart. I had three, count them, three older siblings – two brothers and a sister – and thus grew up like little brothers across the glove do, spoiled and bratty." He grinned. "Like I said, the house was constantly falling apart. Dad would try to fix it himself, Mom would try to make him get a carpenter, he’d say we couldn’t afford it, Mom would say yes we could and besides it would cost more to repair after he’d gone and made it as much worse as he inevitably would, they would argue for a while, throw something at each other – seemed to make them happy.
"I hung out with the middle-tier kids – you know, not as popular as the cheerleaders and football players, not as cool as the skateboarders and rockers, and not as uncool as the geeks. I hung out, partied just a little, slept and ate a lot – that was pretty much it for being a teenager.
"So then it was time to graduate from school, and I realized, ‘well, shit, I don’t have a clue what I’m going to do with my life," Todd talked with his eyes looking up at the sky, slipping down to look Lydia in the eyes, as he paused between sentences, wordds, breaths – or as he gave a grin like they were sharing a secret joke. He grinned now, and Lydia didn’t even comment on the expletive. "So," she said with a shrug, "I decided to go to college. I’d always made ggood grades in English, liked writing – never read much on my own, but whatever – so I went ahead and applied to colleges planning to major in English. A lot of students graduating from high school don’t know what they want to do in college, and those that d often have nice, concrete reasons why – so I think I threw the guidance counselors for a loop when I told them that I wanted to major in English because it just, well, I dunno, knda, sort, don’t you think it makes sense? But there you go."
"So I liked it here, and they accepted me, and I went to college and had fun and learned some and graduated, discovered that figuring out what you want to major in is not at all the same as figuring out what you want to do with your life. And now here I am." He grinned again. "There you go, the Life of Todd in a Nutshell. They ought to make a movie out of it."
"Do you think your life was boring?"
"oh, no, not at all. It was a constant adventure, full of exploding pipes and cheating girlfriends and failing grades in geometry and skipping school to go watch matinee showings and getting caught, of learning how to swim and almost drowning and playing in really really bad bands. I mean, sure, it wasn’t loud – and certianly not movie-worthy – but that doesn’t mean it was boring."
Lydia pursed herlips and asked, "What time is it?"
"Three o’clock."
"Shit!" Lydia jumped up, Todd laughed.
"I thought you don’t like cursing."
"I don’t, but – oh god, Greg is going to be pissed. I spent about an hour longer on break than I ought to," Lydia moaned.
A brief expression of concern flashed in Todd’s eyes. "Is there going to be trouble?"
"not serious strouble, Lydia said as she tucked her chair in. "He’ll just glare until he turns blue in the face. It’s nothing, really."
Even though there was still a furrow between Lydia’s eybrows, Todd smiled. "Oh, good. See you tomorrow, then?"
"Probably," lydiia called over her shoulder as she strode away,, legs scissoring quickly.
Slipping a head inot the pocket of his bomber, Todd fingered two cold quarters.


Lydia didn’t run, but her pace as she went back to the diner was speedy to say the least . "Shit," she muttered again, as she tripped over an exposed tree root in the parking lot of the restaurant. Slightly wild-eyed, she only barely refrained from literally bursting into the kitchen.
"So sorry that I took so long," she panted, before realizing that nobody was looking her way. The dishwasher looked up and smiled, and she gave him a distracted nod before hanging her coat on her nail and setting off in search of someone for her to talk to.
It was the quietest part of the diners day, after the lunch crowd and before the dinner folks started trickling in. A few loners and a couple or two sat out in the dining room. In a corner booth was a plethora of pink, where the wiatresses sat chatting in the absence of any real work to do.
Meekly, Lydia travelled over. "I’m sorry that I was gone for so long," she apologized They looked up in surprise.
"What do you mean?"
A distant part of Lydia’s mind noted that they hadn’t even noticed she was gone, but she made herself keep talking anyway. "Well, I went out for coffee but was gone for like an hour and a half,"
"We knew you were gone," Sally interrupted. With a saucy grin, she said, "Figured you were off flirting with that pretty little thing of yours, and guess we werere right." Lydia blushed.
"but why are you apologizin?" Alice asked.
"Well, I – I was gone for longer than the amount of break I have each day and – I don’t’t know, if I’d been needed here – when I left there were still lunch people, and I really ought to have come back to help serve these folkds," she said, vaguely indicating the whole dining room. So. Um. I’m sorry."
"Lydia, dear," Molly said, "You work harder than the lot of us combined."
"hey!" marge protested."
"It’s true,"Sally said, lounging back in her chair all long lets and amused eyes. "I don’t mind admitting it."
"… and then you go off and feel guilty for taking a break for a while? When there’s absolutely nothing going on here?"
"As a matter of fact," Sally said with a smile sneaking behind her lips, "I think we might even need to feel insulted, ladies."
"Why?" Lydia and Alice both asked, simultaneoulsy. Lydia jumped at the sound of the other woman’s voice, but Alice just glanced at Lydia and back at Sally.
"Wellllll," Sally said, "the young upstart wench doesn’t appear to believe that the four of us – four of us, mind you, four fully capable adults and experienced waitresses! – can handle a room with, oh," She cscanned the room, "seven peopl e in it? That is a gross underestimation of our abilities.
"Young upstart wench?" Lydia asked in disbelief.
"That’s what I called you," Sally said with a s smirk.
"I – um, don’t know quite what to say to that…"
"How about, ‘Yes, Sally, You’re right as usual, Sally, I promise never to be so cruel again and always respect the powers fo the superwaitress, and to not feel guilty for going out flirting with guys for too long," Sally said, grinning at Lydia’s blush, "’and maybe a touch of ‘Oh, sitting down and relaxing? Don’t mind if I do!’"
"Speaking of relaxing," Alice said with a stretch, "I might as well be getting home. I’ll see you folks tomorrow."
"See you," Marge said impassively.
"Tomorrow," said Sally, with a gracious nod of her head.
"Yah, talk to you then," Molly said, smiling at Alice.
"Um. Bye," Lydia finally said, when it seemed like it might be her turn.
Alice beamed cheerily at each of them and turned and walked away.
"Chirpy bitch," Lydia said with a growl as she drank more coffee.
"Hey now," Molly said mildly. "She’s not that bad." After a brief bit of awkward standing, Lydia slid in next to Sally in the space that Alice had just vacated.
"Just because she’s cheerful doesn’t mean you have to hate her," Marge spoke, impassively.
"And don’t curse." The other women looked at Lydia, and burst out laughing.
She blushed.
"Lydia, love," Sally said, her low laugh still hiding in her eyes, "You are quite possibly the most random person I have ever met."
"How was that random?" Lydia asked, confused. "You had cursed!"
Molly grinned. Sally kept talking, saying, "Well, not random then. But surprisin ng, certainly."
"I don’t get it."
"That’s okay," Molly said, and Marge finished her thought.
"You don’t have to."
"It doesn’t really matter," Molly continued. Sally was still chuckling.
Lydia hadn’t quite gotten the hang of talking to them, aparticularly when they all seemed to be saying the same thing. It must have shown on her face, because Sally asked, "What’s wrong?"
Laughing, she answered, "Oh, nothing. It’s just d—it’s confusing the way ya’ll talk, finishing each others sentences."
"like an old married menage a trois," Sally said dryly.
"Did you say ya’ll?" Marge asked interestingly.
Looking slihgtly embarassed, Lydia replied, "yeah. I’m from Virginia, sort of, so I picked up just a bit."
"I think it’s sweet," Molly said. "But what had you been about to say?"
"What?"
"D something,"
"Oh. Um."
Sally looked up, recognition and a gleam of triumph in her eyes. She didn’t squeal – you just couldn’t see Sally squealing somehow -- but her voice was as triumphant as if she squealed in glee. "You were going to swear."
"Was not!"
"Were too." Molly collapsed in laughter.l
"Okay," Lydia confessed, blushing, "I was going to curse."
Sally shook her head. "You hypocrite," she said in amusement.
"Hey!"
"’strue," Molly said. "Here you are telling people off for their colorful language," she explained, pausing to sip at her watery lemonade,
"while all the time you are a regular little potty-mouth yourself." Marge finished.
Sally shook her head. "Honestly, I don’t know what we’ll do with you."
Lydia looked from one to another and back again. "You’re doing it again," she said.
"The talking thing?" Molly asked. "Oh, don’t mind us. We’ve just spent so much time in each other’s company."
"Working at this diner for years and years, nothing to do but worm our way inside each others minds." Marge gave an encouraging smile to Lydia, as though to say ‘don’t worry, dear, it won’t be long before you’re this strange too.’ Lydia gulped.
"Some minds stranger and darker than others," Molly said with a pointed look towards Sally.
"It’s a natural symptom of spending too long working in this hellhole, as all life, energy, and joy has been leeched from our bodies, leaving us empty shells that have spent entirely too much time together. We honly have enough pssion, intelligence, and strength for one person these days – really, you can call us Pinky and talk to us like on eperson and have done with it." She gulped down the last of her black coffe and, looking around swiftly, seized Marge’s. "Nothing to do here but ist around and, as Margie put it, ‘work our way’ into eacah others personalities. And souls, even. It’s because of me that every waitress who’s ever worked here is going to hell. They’ve just absorbed a bit much of my sin. I, on the other hand, have stolen all their purity and shall be lounging around on the clouds while theyu squirm in the sulferous zone down under." She gestured broadly with an arm, that grandoise gesture the only sign that it wasn’t an everyday and common occurance for Sally to break out into great statements on sin and souls. "Besides," she continued as she took a sip of her pilfered coffee, "there’s nothing else to do around here but talk to each other."
"There’s always work," Lydia said, supremely amused.
"Bah," Sally answered. "Never touch the stuff myself."
Molly shook her head. "You lazy bitch."
"Lazy liar, more like," Marge corrected. She appeared to be utterly unruffled at the theft of her coffee. "Like we don’t all know that you work just as hard as the rest of us. You just do it in secret out of fear that you’ll be caught."
"Would ruin your reputation, I suppose," Lydia said, caught up in their merry conversation despite herself.
Raising her chin, Sally pretended that she hadn’t heard or deigned to notice a word. Dropping that particular charade, she looked down into her mug with a grimace.
"Some people," she said haughtily, with a clearly false drawl, "are so cruel to their coffee it ought to be criminal." Lydia had the sudden urge to holler ‘Alliteration!’ but she managed to hold it in. Sally swirled Marge’s cup around, looking into it with a scowl, and continued. "Taking perfectly fine brew – or rather, the crappy coffee that we get in here, but still, it’s coffee, and that ought to count for something – Like I say, taking a perfectly fine cup of joe and then loading it – nay, overpowering it – nay, desecrating it with enough milk and sugar to – to—to feed a thirsty and sweet-toothed army of hyperactive five-year-olds. It’s blasphemy, that’s what I say, it’s blasphemy and cruelty and it ought to be outlawed. I mean, this – I daren’t call it coffee – this sludge is absolutely maudlin. It’s nauseating. It’s unbearable. Some people ought to be locked up for crimes against coffeedom. Want some caffeine with your additives? "
"Some people," Marge said, as mild and indomitable as ever, "like it that way. And some people ought to be drinking their own coffee."
"Fine, fine," Sally said with an exasperated and exaggerated roll of her eyes. "I’m leaving." She nudged her entire body up against Lydia’s, who finally realized the intent of the touch. Sally gave one more great push as the smaller woman stood and let the blond-haired waitress by.
Marge reached across the table and pulled her coffe mug back towards her, nursing it between her hands.
"I’m off to fetch more ambrosia," Sally said with a slight unapproving purse of her lips.
"Don’t forget to make it as bitter as you," Molly said with a teasing grin.
Sally sniffed and turned towards the kitchens. As Lydia sat back down, she turned and looked at the darker-haired girl. "You know," she said conversationally, "you shouldn’t listen to these fools. I’m not bitter, not at all." Marge raised one overly-plucked eyebrow. "No," Sally continued, not taking her eyes off Lydia’s upturned face, "I’m truly quite optimistic. Life is shit, but hey, nowhere to go but up, right?" A small smile graced Lydia’s face, and Sally looked slightly satisified. "Besides," she said, the drawl and affected haughtiness back, "I would never be so plebeian a thing as bitter. Never."
"Get out of here, lady Sally." Molly said with a laugh.
"Go fetch your ‘ambrosia,’ your highness," Marge said, so deadpan that the joke was almost ruined.
Lydia didn’t say anything.
She didn’t say much for quite a while, instead sitting, listening and smiling and nodded at Marges’ and Molly’s jokes and teasing banter, replying politely to questions asked of her and quickly deflecting attention away from here.
Later, when Sally came back carrying not only her mug but the entire pot of coffee that she had somehow pried away from Frederico’s watchful eye, Lydia laughed with the other waitresses, but remained mostly quiet. Sliding in beside Lydia so that the smaller girl was nudged towards the wall by Sally’s polyester hip, Sally recounted the thrilling tale of her adventure.
Even later, when Lydia had managed to suppress her discomfort at the idea that well, shouldn’t they, you know, be working?, she started to open up and join the conversation. When Sally, who should have been home long ago, scooted over on the bench to make room for the afternoon aned evening waitresses who were coming in, so that Lydia was pinned betwee the cold wallon one side and Sally’s long thigh on the other, she decided she didn’t mind the sensation and leaned forward and, laughing, threw herself into the talk.

There wasn’t anything going on at home, of course, nothing other than usual, and so after Sally had run off to her second job, wailing something about how she ‘didn’t know it was so late and why didn’t one of you fools TELL me!?,’ and Marge and Alice had left in much more sedate fashions, Lydia was still there, helping the evening waitresses. Although she didn’t make small talk with the customers, sticking to her quiet nod and smile and stock phrase, she didn’t take any more tables than was her duty and she teased Becky about her new haircut when they were both picking up checken parmesan’s for their customers.
When she finally headed home, long after when it was time for her to have eaten, when the sun had quite definitively set, indeed had long vanished over the horizon, when she was so starving thtat it felt like the sides of her stomach had caved in and were trying to devour each other, three pairs of hands grabbed elbows and collars as she tried to unobtrusively sneak out the back door.
"How long have you been here?" Molly asked.
"Um."
"How long?" Whoever had her collar, some redhead that Lydia was quite positive she had never spoken to before tonight, shook her rather more firmly than necessary.
"Um. Since 4:45."
The women squawked in unison.
"And when did you last eat?" Becky had her hands on her hips and a glare in her eye.
"Um. Ten this morning?"
"Twelve hours ago!" The working people had mostly travelled off to bars, and the one waitreess remaining in the diner could handle the rest of the much-diminished crowd by herself – but Lydia still hesitated to leave.
With a huff, she was dragged unceremoniously out the door.
Someone was giving her a lecture, but Lydia wasn’t quite sure who. "… here for twenty hours – twenty hours, do you hear?"
"Not quite," she interrupted, but nobody appeared to hear her.
"Working yourself to death, not eating properly,"
"and when you’ve only just started talking, for heaven’s sake, now just you watch and go and die on us,"
"a lot of hard work put to waste, you know that?"
"I went and talked to Greg about overtime for you." At that, Lydia looked up with shock in her eyes. Molly just shrugged her shoulders and kept going. "He’ll give it to you, of course. Crazy man tired to argue about it with me for a while, but THAT didn’t last long." Lydia almost asked her why she’d gone and done such a thing, but she was interrupted before she could open her mouth.
"Whatever possessed you to be at this damn diner for that long? Have you nothng better to do with your life?"
"I wasn’t working for all of the time," Lydia protested, weakly. Apparently the reason she hadn’t been sure who was giving her a reprimand – more like a rant, to be honeset – was because it was all of them. She gave a laugh.
"What’s so funny?"
"you do it too," she chuckled, collapsing helplessly.
Three pairs of hands held her up.
"You know, I don’t even care what it is we do, or who else does it. You need to get home and sleep."
"Why do you come in so early, anyway?"
"I don’t like working evenings."
"So why’d you work this evening?"
"I liked it."
"You make no sense, you know that?" This was the red-head, who appeared to have a perpetual expression on her face, a combination of consternation and amusement.
"You’re something else, Lydia."
"You know," Becky said, "I don’t think I’d even know your name if it weren’t on your nametag. I don’t think you introduced yourself properly when you first started working here." Here tone, so much more serious than any way any of the other women had been talking, was sudden.
Lydia stopped walking altogether and turned around. Four hands released pink cloth.
The redhead still had one fist on her hip, and Becky crossed her freed left hand with her right across her chest. Molly stood and watched with her head cocked.
"Hello," Lydia said quietly, her back straight and supporting itself. Her shirt was ludicrously wrinkled, and her hair was a mess, and there was a bit of exhaustion hiding behind the -- whatever it was – in her eyes, but she looked Becky straight in the face and held out her hand. "I’m Lydia. It’s very nice to meet you."
Becky’s face softened into a smile, and she held out her own hand. "Hi. I’m Becky. It’s nice to meet you too."
They smiled at each other until Molly interrupted. "Lydia, what are you going to do now?"
"Go home. Sleep."
"Good idea."
"What about dinner?" The redhaired woman looked shocked.
"I’ll snag some chinese, if it’s open. Or something. I don’t know. I usually get Chinese."
"How boring! You can’t do that. Let’s all go eat together somewhere."
"She needs her sleep!"
"Well, she’ll get sleep afterwards."
"Come on, Allison, you weren’t up at four this morning. She must be exhausted."
"She doesn’t look that tired to me. Come on, it’ll be fun. Don’t you want to get to know her?"
"When she’s conscious enough to be able to hold a conversation, yes!"
"Well, she is."
"She’ll be exhausted tomorrow!"
Lydia watched, bemused, as Molly and Allison argued over her evening plans. Becky looked over at her, amusement dancing in her usually cool eyes.
"Look," the taller woman said, interupted Molly and Allison, "why don’t you ask her?"
Shamefacedly, the other waitresses turned towards Lydia, who suddenly blushed and buried her hands deeper in the pockets of her coat.
"Sorry, Lydia," Molly said.
"Sorry. I forgot," Allison said, with an apologetic sort of grin.
"um. It’s okay," Lydia said, looking down at the ground.
"Well?" Becky asked.
"Um. Let’s – let’s go eat, I suppose."
"You need sleep!" Molly protested.
"you heard the woman," Allison said gleefully, "it’s time for food! And not this crappy diner stuff, real food. What are we waiting for?"
"I’ll be fine," Lydia said to Molly. "Really."
"We’ll compromise," Becky said, with an almost imperceptible roll of her eyes, when Molly looked unconvinced. "Eat somewhere quick."
"Brownette’s!" Allison appeared to be constantly excited about something. "Brownette’s is quick, and really really good, and close by! Let’s go!"
"I still think you need sleep," Molly muttered, but she followed the redhead.
Becky just shook her head and walked after them.
Lydia stood where she was for a few more seconds, then let out a delighted laugh. The last tendrils of her laugh still escaping from her mouth, she scampered after the three women, a small army of bundled pink trotting off through the night.

...you don’t have to tell your entire life story. That would indeed be rather long. However, I don’t know anything about you – I don’t know where you came from, how you got here, what happened in the middle, anything. So, what’s your story? If you had to sum up everything that’s happened to you in your life so far, what would you say?”
Lydia looked into her nearly empty coffee mug. “Wow,” she said. “Thats – that’s a big request.”
“Yes.”
“I – “ she looked up and into his face. She had been going to complain that she knew nothing about him, either – but then from the very beginning he’d been willing to tell more. Their first conversation – had it been their first conversation? Had it been so soon before? – even then he had instantly and gladly told where he went to school, what he studied, where he was from – and somehow, Lydia felt that if she hasked Todd the same question he was now asking her, he would have no hesitance in answering.
She moved to set her mug down – but decided she needed soemthing for her hands to do, Lydia pulled it back up.
“Okay,” she said. “Okay. I’m from Virginia.”
She paused. Todd looked at her, not questioningly or accusationally but just... looking. She breathed in and kept going. “I grew up in a fairly small town with my mom, my older sister, and a kid brother. Well, I didn’t actually grow up with a kid brother. He kinda came along towards the end. Anyway, we lived in – Jacobstown? You’ve probably never heard of it. It’s not actually all that small, it’s the county seat, it has a nine-screen movie theater and a decent-sized mall, it’s where all the country folk come in to shop, but we didn’t live in a big city. Not like this.” Lydia looked around her, at the gray landscape that culd be anywhere, USA, and realized that it wasn’t all that different from this, exactly. She moved to take a sip of cold latte, but didn’t actually drink any of it.
“So. That’s where I lived. I wasn’t born there, I was born somewhere in Washington – the state, you know, not the district – but apparently after my dad dumped her my mom moved across the country. Just packed up her bags and left, decided to start a new life somewhere where nobody knew her, somewhere she wasn’t – maybe she just wanted to leave, too. I mean, I don’t know. She’d travelled, but she’d lived in one place her entire life.”
“So yeah. She drove across the country, her, a six-year-old kid, and a squalling toddler. It must have been hell.”
Lydia paused. She didn’t look introspective or lost so much as ... stumped. What was it that came next in the story? What was I going to say? What was the name of that guy on tv, the one man – it was the kind of look that would be immediately followed by “Damn, I don’t remember.”
Todd moved in. “Was it hard for her, starting over?”
“I don’t know, I can’t remember,” Lydia said wryly. “Yes. Yes it was. Back in Washington – her family had been pretty well-off, her husband too. Not rich, you know, but a very comfortable middle class. Suddenly, all she had were the child support payments. Her family didn’t quite disown her after the divorce – actually, it wasn’t the divorce that they didn’t like, it was the fact that she was moving away. ‘Waltons should stick together,’ they thought. I think their theory was that if they just waited long enough, Mom would give in to the world and come crawling back to them.
“It didn’t work. My mom – she’s stubborn, stubborn as hell. Tell her not to do a thing and s she’ll go ahead and do it, damn the consequences. All her parents managed to do was make her more convinced that she just had to succeed, had to succeed on her own and with us kids.” Lydia paused and took a sip of her drink, now cold enough that the sweetness seemed overdone and the spice clashed rather than harmonizing.
“Did it work, then?”
“Hmm? Oh, yes, I suppose so. I mean, she kept us clothed and fed and schooled, gave us morals and work ethics, made sure to teach us lessons about the follies and evils of mankind. Particularly the men,” Lydia said with a twirk of her lips. Todd’s eyebrows climbed.
“Anyway. That was my childhood.”
“It was?” Todd sounded confused. “I thought that was your mother’s story.”
“Oh.” Lydia paused. “Well, it’s practically the same thing.”
‘No! No, it’s not. What was it like for you, growing up? What did you experience?”
“Oh. It’s hard to say.”
Todd waited. “Well, you were the one living it, weren’t you?” he asked, when he could be patient no longer.
“I – okay then. I went to elementary school, middle school, high school. The usual. I had some friends, I did some extracurricular activities. Um. Academic team, actually – God, that’s so geeky – a little bit of drama, civic service and volunteering type things. A/B student. Um, graduated, moved on, went to college at Virginia Tech. Premed program. Dropped out after two years, scampered off to Europe for a while – ran away, as my mothere says. Came back, wandered around a bit. Settled here. That’s all, really.”
“No,” todd said.
“What?”
“No, that’s not all.”
Lydia felt faintly annoyed. “Well, I should think I would know best. It is my life, after all.”
“But see, You didn’t tell me why. Or how. What was it like?”
“I don’t understand.” Lydia looked down, stubborn.
“Yes you do. For heaven’s sake, I – look, you don’t have to answer.” Todd turned away.
Lydia looked up quickly. “I want to! It’s just –“
”It’s simple. Just – who are you?”
“Right. Simple.”
Todd relaxed at that, letting out a light chuckle and a grin. “Okay, so maybe simple is the wrong word. Basic, then. It’s basic.”
“Right. Basic. Just who I am and why and how and what happened to make it that way.”
Todd rolled his eyes, slightly less relaxed again, but not qutie irritated. “Whatever. Not basic then. You know what –“
He was interrupted before he could finish the thought.
“Right, then. It was – my older sister was good at everything. Everything. She was smart, funny, popular, pretty, outgoing – she could make friendslike anybody’s business.”
“Isn’t the phrase nobody’s business?”
“Ah, but it was everybody’s business.”
“If you say so.”
“She was – she was perfect.” Lydia paused. Here was where Todd was supposed to jump in with a ‘no, no she wasn’t – nobody’s perfect!’ so that Lydia could sigh in annoyance. He didn’t, though – just looked at her with huge hazel eyes and waited.
Lydia shrugged. “I wasn’t,” she said.

Lydia stared for a few moments, just taking in Todd – his expression, the slight anger in the set of his shoulders, the way his hair fell around his face, that goddamned dog collar, his expression – oh god, what was he thinking? His face was flat and set, something smoldering behind his eyes while his hands worked politely and his voice rasped.
"Today, you have something new."
Diana poked her head around the doorframe into the kitchen, her curiosity winning over her respect and desire to avoid being caught in the middle. Lydia looked up, her eyes not angry, but rather pleading – what do I do? Diana left.
Todd was adjusting something on the espresso machine.
"So. Um. What am I having?" God, she thought, I sound like an idiot.
"Do you even like coffee?"
"No – no, not really." This is ridiculous. Normal people don’t go into a coffeeshop and order coffee every day and then admit that they don’t like coffee. I should have told him I do like coffee. Shit, but I’m bad at this.
"what do you like, then?"
Lydia interrupted her miental self-flaggelation long enough to hear the question, but not enough to comprehend.
"What?"
"What do you like? Things that are rich, delicate, sweet, salty, sour, spicy, subtle, heady, fruity, chocolatey, crisp, cool, hot, bitter – what?"
"Oh. I – I honestly don’t know. Um." Lydia was thinking dumbfoundedly that she thought only people in books used those kinds of words to describe food. I mean, it was just food.
"You’re trying to tell me that you have no idea what kind of things you like?"
"Um. Yes?" Lydia thought itw as the wrong answer, but that was what she was saying, wasn’t it?
"I don’t believe you."
"what?"
"I don’t believ e you. You have dislikes. You know what you don’t like. You don’t like grease, and you don’t like coffee. What do you like?"
"Oh. Well, I – I guess I do like chocolate."
"Why?"
"Because – well, I – um. It’s sweet."
Todd grunted.
"And I like chinese food."
"Why?"
"Because – because it has this flavor that just stays in your mouth after you eat just a little bit, and it’s – I don’t know. I don’t know the words."
Todd grunted. The grunts did not sound encouraging, and Lydia was trying hard not to panic. When she panicked these days, she took deep breaths – but onceshe had been known to babble during times of stress and speaking incoherantly did not seem like it would be the proper way to win Todd over.
"I – I like. Wow this is stupid. But I like milk."
"Okay," Todd said. "Do you like spicy things?"
"Spicy things? Like jalepeno peppers?"
"Something like that, yes."
"n – no, I don’t, not really, but I mean I don’t eat them much and so I don’t know I could – " Lydia stopped herself with a jerk, like a woman tripping and grabbing at nothing to keep from falling over.
"How about spiced things?"
"Spiced things? What’s the difference?"
"Gingerbread."
"I – I’ve never had gingerbread. I’m sorry, but" Todd looked at her with exasperation in his eyes. Wasn’t apologizing always good.
"What about spiced things? Like gingerbread?"
Lydia licked her lips, nervous. "I – I like ginger snaps," she finally offered, quietly and gingerly.
"Right, then," Todd said, and kept adjusting the machine. Thirty seconds later, a blue mug sat on the counter in front of Lydia letting off a smell entirely different than that of her mocha lattes.
"What –"
"I have no idea if you like it or not. Apparently, you have no idea if you’ll like it or not. However, every day that you come in here from now forward you’re going to try something different until you find something that you like, because what you’re doing now is just stupid.
"Oh. Th- thank you." He just called me stupid, she thought. He just made me a new drink. He just said ‘every day from now forward –‘
"What – um, what is it?" she asked to distract herself.
"Chai latte," he answered curtly, untying the small apron around his hips. "It’s tea," he explained as her perplexed glance didn’t lighten.
"Oh. How – how much?"
Todd turned and gave Lydia a look of such disgust that she didn’t dare ask again.
I think he just bought you a drink, the little voice in her head managed to get in, before lydia grit her teeth and made it shut up.
Just then, reaching out to take her mug, she realized that todd had come out from behind the counter. Turning in surprise, she saw him a few feet away, between her and the door.
"Are you coming?" he asked curtly, coldly, almost harshly. There was something like vulnerability in his eyes.
Wordless, Lydia nodded, wrapping long fingers around her dark blue mug and following todd out the door.

Outside, he settled into a chair turned away from the café and out towards the sttreet, his face in profile to lydia. She carefully set the mug down before sitting down, because that was what she did now, and sat down and turned her chair parallel to his, because that was what they did now. In silence, they looked out at their corner of the world.
It was afternoon now, the fog long gone, but the sky was still a long, unvarying field of white and the light was, indeed, flat.
Although it wasn’t really that the light was flat, Lydia thought almost giddily, as that everything the light touched suddenly lost all pretense of dimension and emotion. The entire view became like a bad drawing from a third-rate artist on the back alleyways of a city, from the kind of artist selling mundane landscapes and unspectacular portraits, pulling on a cigarette with their eyes closed. The smoke wrapped around the pictures, so that when you brought the cheap paper home you would still be able to scent desperation on it. The world was captured in pencil on blank parchment, and imaybe the sunlight was the artist and maybe the sun was the cigarette. Lydia realized she was distracting herself, stalling for time, and that there was one reason she came here.
Taking a deep breath, she decided she needed to steal her nerves – and that it was rude enough to sit here in silence, not doing what she came to do and just apologizing, but that also she had not drunk any of the drink Todd had mixed just for her. Hesitantly, she raised the mug to her nose, smelling spices and getting a bit of steamed milk on the end of her nose. Touching her lips to the porcelain, she decided that it wasn’t really as hot as it could be and took a sip.
It had smelled rich and heady, powerfully spicy. It tasted so, a little bit – but much more than that, it was sweet. It was almost sickly sweet really, twining around inside her tongue like strings of honey, mixing with the taste of spices exotic and mundane – cinnamon, and nutmeg, and some far less recognizable. It was… peculiar.
"It’good!" Lydia exclaimed in surprise.
Todd glanced over, something satisfied in his eyes. "You like it thin?"
Lydia paused. "I think so," hse said hesitatnly.
The pride vanished. Todd turned back to his study of the empty storefront and the gray sky.
"I mean," lydia said, desperate to fix whatever it was she had done wrong. "It’s different, I mean… but it tastes really good. Spicy, and sweet, and milky, and rich, all at the same time. I – I thik I do like it."
"todd made a movement of his head that could almost be a nod, if you looked hard enough , and of his lips that could almost be a pursing, if you were picky enough, and made a small sound that was like the baby cousin of a grunt.
They sat in silence for a few more moments, Lydia too occupiede with slowly and carefully imagining this new drink to notice quite what Todd was doing, todd listening to grently slurping and likcking noises and looking off into the distance, impassive.
Finally Lydiajk set down her drink, a third drunk, and turned in her chair so that she was facing Todd’s side.
"Look," she said, "I – I. Um. It’s like – I mean," Todd had turned to look at her now, his face blank, and she stumbled futilely over her words.
"Shit," she finished.
Todd just looked at her.
"I’m sorry, it’s just – I’m really bad at this."
Todd looked at her flatly. "What’s this?"
"I – I don’t know. Conversations. Communication. Talking. Apologizing, asking, begging, guessing, figuring things out. Social interactions. Re-" She stopped.
"What were you going to say?"
"Nothing." Lydia looked down and blushed.
Todd kept looking at her. It was growing quite disconcerting, really.
Taking a deep breath, Lydia decided that forging ahead would almost certainly be better than sitting and waiting in this.. .this… this purgatory. "I – really why I came by today, that is, other than always coming here, because I came on purpose today, if that makes sense, but look, I’m babbling again – I came to say sorry." Her mouth still open to start her next sentence, Lydia paused, and then fell still.
Still looking at her, Todd waited. His eyes were soft, somehow, but the rest of his face stiff and cold. "For what?" he said finally, on a quiet, cool note.
"For –" Lydia took a deep breath. "Shit. Honestly, I am bad at this, I swear that – just give me a second." She closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. "Right. I’m sorry for being a cold frigid bitch and pushing you away and I want to build up your self-eseteem again but I sure as hel don’t know how and I’m sorry for that and that wasn’t what I want to say at all, that was what Sally told me to say and it came out instead and. Shit."
The eyes across from her were now filled with shock and a little bit of fear,as well as what looked to Lydia a lot like disgust.
She quickly fought back tears and, looking at the table, started to speak again. This time, her words were quiet, calm, and measured, despite the slight waver in her voice – stark contrast to the sentences she’d spoken before, where the words tumbled ovfer each other and piled up in giant sticky clumps behind her teeth.
"I’m sorry. It’s been a long time since I’ve dealt with people, truly dealt with them if I ever have, mind. And I’m not very good at it. I didn’t mean to sound like I was pushing you away, not at all, because I don’t want to – I don’t want to at all. I just – I am curious, and I truly don’t understand why anyone would want to be around me. that’s not an excuse," she said a little m ore quickly, eyes flitting up to glance at Todds before falling back to the table, "or a plea for pity, but just an explanation as to why I would ask something so – so – rude. And possibly unanswerable. I’m sorry that I appleared doubtful of any of your answers, and they – I – well. I really do what to – to be with you, to be around you more, and – and get to know you. And I hope, I truly do hope that I didn’t do anything to convince you otherwise. I behaved badly, and – well. I’m sorry."
"You’ve said that several times," Todd said dryly towards the ceiling.
"I’m sorry."
"Stop saying that!" His voice held no more anger.
"I’m – well. Right."
He almost chuckled. Almost.
"Look – it’s my fault to. I overreacted."
"No!" Lydia sat straight up, looking into Todd’s eyes, which had snapped downwards at the sound of her chair shifting beneath her. "No, it’s not, and no, you didn’t – not at all. I shouldn’t have said any of the things I said, and you were marvelous – you said so yourself, you were surprised you weren’t doing anything worse than cursing."
Todd grunted. "I said that when I was upset. It doesn’t count."
"I don’t see why things said when – when you’re upset, I don’t see why they shouldn’t count."
"Entirely too emotional."
"Wouldn’t that be good, though?"
"I don’t see how." There was a slight bitterness in Todd’s voice now.
"But look, usually people have such difficulty getting their emotions across – look at me right now, I’m a mess. But when you’re upset, and angry or sad or frustrated or whatever makes you lose your self-control, suddenly it becomes very easy to let somebody else know your emotions – everything about your emotions."
"But should they? How can knowing your emotions help them?"
The sandy-haired girl across from a slightly-less-angry Todd fell quiet, then looked up, something burning behind her eyes.
"I think it’s important."
"To let others see your emotions – all of your emotions, no matter how ugly or unimportant?" He mocked slightly, gently.
"Yes," she said firmly, chin raising.
Todd rolled his eyes and almost answered flippantly, before looking at the determined set of her head. He paused, not moving for several seconds.
"Lydia," he said slowly, and her chin dropped and stared at him as he said her name again. "Lydia, how long has it been since you’ve let other people see your emotions?"
Her chin dropped and she looked away. Slowly, like approaching a frightened cat or a dream, Todd’s hand crept across the cold glass surface of the table. It was discolored, white stains on the textured glass surface, and his fingertips rose and fell with the shape of the glass as they travelled closer to Lydia’s slightly cooling cup.
Gently, he laid his hand on top of hers. Her body stiffened, but her fingers shifted to the side and bent so that he could cover her whole, slim hand in his and tuck the tips of his fingers under her palm.
She still didn’t look at him. Todd didn’t move.
"Do you realize," Lydia said after a while, speakking out towards the road, "Just how cliché this is?"
"Who gives a damn?" Todd asked.
Lydia snorted. "Who indeed," she asked, eyes slowly followig an invisible conversationalist from the storefront, across the street, and to a point somewhere behind todd’s left shoulder. Finally, her invisible partner seemed to vanish entirely as she focused on Todd once more.
"Who indeed."


Lydia finally pulled her hand out, gently, so that she could grip her mug with both her hands. The latte was cooling now, but if she drank it in almost-gulps she could still feel tendrils of warmth.
"you know," she siad, filling the silence, "this actually was pretty good."
"You liked it, then?" Todd asked, his eyes smiling if his mouth did not. "Good."
"yeah, Yeah, I did like it. It was really nice of you to get it for me."
"mmm." Todd watched her for a long time, as she worked on what remained of her drink. Lydia’s eyes skipped about, looking at the sidewalk, the road, the dull sky, the tabletop, at Todd, and then quickly back out to somewhere, anywhere else.
Todd’s eyes simply travelled from Lydia’s face to her hands, and then back up again. Once, surreptitiously, he looked at his watch. Another time he looked at the door of the café as the door jingled, and two couples walked out – and he glanced in the same direction once for no apparent reason at all. His eyes quickly returned to Lydia.
"So," Todd said finally. "What’s your story?"
Lydia started slightly in surprise. "My – my story?"
"Sure."
"um – what do you mean by that?"
"I mean exactly what I said. What’s your story?"
"my life story?"
"Pretty much."
"that would –" Lydia laughed. "That would take rather a while, don’t you think?"
"Bah,m," Todd said. "Time iks a construct invented by the government in an attempt to keep us all under control." Lydia just looked at him, providing no gratifying shocked or annoyed look on her face.
"We have jobs, you know," she said sternly.
"Bah," Todd said as he slouched down even further.
"Look," Lydia said reasonably, "there is simply no way I could tell my entire life story and get back to work in a reasonable amount of time. Nobody couldl. Lives are long. A lot of stuff happens. Telling a life story would have to take days – weeks even."
"Years," Lydia added, "if you told it in realtime.
Todd looked wry. "You’re right then, you’re right. However,," he said, leaning forawrd a bit with a slight trace of a smirk about him, "you left out on emajor option. Actually, you left all your major options, not really pickiing up on anything like that. Sheesh. I mean, Obviously I didn’t mean for a blow-by-blow recount of your entire life in realtime – speaking of which, do you honestly believe you could do that?"
"Me?" Lydia asked. "Yeah. I mean, I proably could. I’ve got a really good memory. "
"Wow," Todd said. "I definitely couldn’t – not in a million years. But that’s hardly the point.
He took a deep breath. "So you can’t tell the whole story, and no, you

“So,” Todd said while he worked avidly on his fish, “How are you? What’s up in your life? What’s different in the planet?”
“Doing okay, not much at all, nothing that I can tell.”
“Ex iting,” Todd said around a mmouthful of grease.
Lydia chuckled slightly. “Yeah, well, this mis me we’re talking about, after all.”
“You know,” Todd said, pasuin gin his eating to lay one elbow on the table and wave his four arorund in the air, “One of these days I’m just going to steal you away and take you, I don’t know, skydiving or something.”
“A kidnapping, then?”
“No, not at all! Well, okay. Maybe a bit of a kidfnapping. But for your own good!”
“How sweet,” Lydia said wryly. Todd just sniffed.
“Yes, yes it is. You’re right, it is sweet, and you ought to be grateful to have asucyh a sweet, kind, varing, selfless, generous, marvelous,”
“Modest.” Lydia ingerjected.
“Well, yes.” Todd said with another sniff. “IT goes without saying. “Damned difficult to keep being my marvelous, modest self, too – all my excellent traists keep perking up and saying ‘Todd! Todd! Look at us! Be conceited, Todd, you deserve the fun!’ It’s terribly hard to rexist them sometimes”
“You deserve a metal, Lydia muttered under her btreath.
“What’s that you say?” Todd asked.
Lydia opened her mouth to say, “Nothing,” but with a pause and a light shrug she instead went on to say, “I said, ‘You deserve a medal.’”
“Damn right I do. A nmice big shiny one. Possibly more than one.” Todd’s voice and fave were both deadpan, but his eyes twinkled merrily Lydia smiled just a bit.
The conversation having winded down to some sort of clos,e they sat in silence for a wwhile. Lydia moved her milkshake around, ocassionally pulling her spoon out of the creamy half-liquid and licking it off. She caught Todd watching her the third time she did it, and with an almighty blush she went back to aimlessly pushing the conbents of her metal cup around.
Todd blushed, too, and with a small cough carried on with his limpp salad.
The silence was companionable at first, but then Lydia started licking dry lips and glancing at the floor, and todd paid much more atttention to his food than was strictly necessary. Several times, while the other wasn’t watching, one of them opened their mouths to restart the conversation, but paused before they made a sound.
“So,” Lydia finally said, “How’s the food?”
“Bah,” Todd said nonchalantly. “It’s edible. ‘Sall that matters at the moment.”
“Almost comforting in a way, actually,” he continued when Lydia did nothing but nod. “I mean, diner food – you know what to expect, you know? No parsley garnishes, no fancy fruit combinations, no organic food kick – just grease, plain and simple.”
“And this is... good?”
“Well, in a way.” Todd was still chomping down on his food, speaking between mouthfuls. “See, I usually like to feed myself pretty healthily. Working at a nice liberal coffee shop, you know, all of that forward-thinking-ness sorta rubs off on you. I don’t eat much meat,” chomp, “mostly vegan organic, actually,” chomp, “Because it’s better for the planet and for my body and all that, you know? And I mean, although I see the moral,” chomp, “the moral reasoning behind complete and absolute veganism, it just isn’t my thing.” Chomp chomp.
“Anyway,” he swallowed and went on, “sometimes it’s nice for some variety, you know?”
“I don’t know,” Lydia said, somehow managing to interrupt hesitantly. “Constancy can be – constancy can be really nice sometimes. I mean, it’s just as soothing as variety is.”
“Ah, but see, it’s not the variety of the diner food that’s soothing. The variety is just like a bonus. What’s really soothing about diner food is its utter lack of variety – the fact that whereever you go, whatever you order, it will be the same. Hippie food, you know, isn’t like that at alll. Falafel,” he said wryly, “comes in all shapes, sizes, and qualities. With fish like this,” he said, waving around a laden fork, “you know what you’re going to get. I wasn’t expecting anything crisp, or fresh, but nor did I fear that it would be overly spicy or entirely too dry. You see?”
“No, not really.”
“Hmm. Well, it’s like this. There’s this ritual, this tradition – the way things always are, right?” Chomp.
“Okay.”
“And what this is,” chomp,
“Yes?”
“I’m working on it,” Todd mumbled around his mouthful of fish. “This tradition is the fact that diner food will always be greasy, bad for you, heavy in the stomach, and soothing in its fat and salt and sugar. I, for one, always feel more sated after a meal of badly fried chicken and mashed potatoes than even the best tofu.”
“Okay. A tradition.”
“Right. But see, if you did it every day – ate only diner food each and every day – the tradition would grow worse than monotonous. You see?”
There was a pause. “I... I suppose so.”
“Right then. So this tradition, this comforting tradition exists, but I usually ignore it. I eat my veggie food and I love it.”
“But –“
”But,” Todd said triumphantly, “this diner food exists, for me to come back to. No matter what I do, what I eat, how long I stay away – when I decide I really need some, classic American comfort food will pull through and be its same, greasy, unhealthy, salty, heavy, rich, overcooked, soggy, and marvelously soothing self.”
Pause. “Okaaaaay.”
“I mean, this food would still be a little soothing on its own – but also very disgusting, in a way. But when you consider the fact that it will always be there, waiting – well, it’s like. God this is going to sound silly.”
“Well, say it anyway.”
“It’s like coming home. That’s really cliche – but you know, you can leave and come back and its still there, the same as always. You don’t necessarily want to stay, but you need to remind yourself that it’s there – you need to visit for a while.”
“So,” Lydia said consideringly. “You’re...”
“Visiting!” Todd finished around a full mouth.
Lydia nodded slowly. “That’s really quite interesting,” she murmured half to herself.
“No, not really,” Todd said, oblivious to the fact that she hadn’t truly been talking to him. “A speech on my fondness for comfort food – interesting. Sweetie, you need to live a more interesting life.”
“What?”
“A more interesitng life – you know, one where more things happen, where –“
”No, not that.” Lydia was smiling now, a slight ‘I know something you don’t know’ smile. “You called me ‘sweetie,’” she said.
The man across from her blushed bright red, fiddling with his fork. “Um. Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Lydia said with a laugh. “Different, and surprising, but okay.”
“It jsut came out, and. –“
”Honest!” she emphasized, truly laughing now. “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. I quite like it, actually.”
“Really?” Todd asked, his eyes almost childlishly wide.
This time it was Lydia who blushed. “Um... maybe.”
“Okay then,” and with an irrepressible grin, the sweetie-er dug back into the last vestiges of his food.
Lydia was looking at him with a confused expression between her eyebrows. “You do this a lot,” she said in a soft, bewildered voice.
“Do what?” Todd looked up with suprise in his eyes. “Eat at diners? Call women – see, not girl this time – call women sweetie? Date fascinating girls I hardly know? Smile? Because no, we covered that, no, not really, only occasionally, and–“
”Confuse me,” Lydia interrupted gently.
“Oh.”
The tables were turned now, and Lydia smiled at Todd’s befuzzled expression.
“Well... it’s entirely unintentional, I’m sure.”
“I’ll forgive you anyway,” she said breezily, causing him to blink in surprise.
“Wait... you want to be confused?”
“I didn’t say that. Did I?”
“I think you might have, in a round about way.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Oh. Well, do you want to be confused?”
“No! Confusion is bad. It leaves you... confused.”
Well, yes. It is confusion, after all.”
“Um. Yeah. Why are we talking about this, anyway?”
“I think you started it. Anyway, why do you mind confusion so much?”
“I just do.”
Todd waited.
“Things stop making sense.”
He waited some more, but Lydia had stopped.
“Well, yes, I suppose that is bad.”
Lydia sighed and changed the subject. “So were you raised on, um, comfort food?”
“Ah, yes,” Todd said consideringly, “the ever-present food topic. When in doubt, talk about food.”
Lydia ignored his wryness and waited.
“Sort of. Not really. I was more raised on tv dinners. You?”
“I – the same, I guess. I can’t really remember.”
“You can’t remember what you ate growing up?”
“No, not really. I don’t think about it much.”
“Wow.”
“What?”
“I just – I guess I’m just surprised that somebody can completely forget something that important about themselves.”
“Is food that important?”
“Well, maybe not food – but your childhood, certainly.”
“Mmmm,” Lydia said.
Have we talked about your family yet?” Todd asked.”
“No.”
“Ah – should we?”
“Probably not.”
“Okay then. I mean – sh-shoot, how, do I say this – I want to know, because I want to know more about you, but I don’t want to know until you want to tell me. Does that made any sense?”
“I suppose so.”
She sighed and bit her lip, looking at the table. Todd put his fork down on his almost eempty plate, looking at Lydia in what could only be considered trepidation.
“But why do you want to know more about me?”
Knocking his elbows down on the table, Todd shook his head. “This again. We really have a recurring theme going here, don’t we?”
Lydia just looked at him.
“Right. Why? Why? Why why why... that’s hard to answer, you know? I mean, who can say. It’s hard to look inside your own head and truly know what’s going on.”
“I guess so.”
“I know so.



—--------------------
“But still.”
“But still what?”
“Still!”
“Yes. Sure. Still.”
“God. Why do you want to know things about me?”
“It’s what friends do.”
Silence.
“Because I like you.”
Silence.
“Because I want to know why you do the things you do – why you make yourself unhappy when you don’t have to. Because I want to know how to help you stop doing that.”
Lydia winced.
“Maybe I want to make you happy. I don’t know.”
Lydia looked away.
“Shit. What do you want me to say? I mean, shit, if none of that is good enough for you...”
“You’re cursing.”
“You’ve cursed!”
“You startled me then.”
“I confused you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you’re startling me now. And confusing me. Among other things, all of which add up to the fact that I believe that I have every right to say ‘shit,’ and that I am in fact quite impressed that some mild cursing is all that I’m doing.”
“I’m making you mad,” Lydia said with shame and a bitter pleasure.
“Yes. No. I don’t know. Fuck.”
He ran a hand through his hair, leaning back against the chair and looking anywhere but at her.
Finally he stood. “Look,” he said, “Lunch was good. It was nice talking to you, and I’ll see you at the coffee shop some time, and I’m sorry if I did something wrong. And probably even if I didn’t. Fuck. I’m leaving now.”
His voice was slightly disjointed and hoarse, and he walked quickly away as Lydia stared at the table in front of her. She realized he’d forgotten all about the quarters.
Her milkshake was melting.

“What was that?”
Dull - voiced, “what was what?”
“That! He just – left!”
“What did you do to him?”
“Let me talk to the girl – what did you do? What did you say?”
“I can talk to her too!”
“Two of us will just confuse her.”
“She looks pretty damn confused already.”
“But do we want to be making it worse?”
“I think that would be pretty damn hard.”
“Maybe so.”
“Lydia, dear, what did you say to him?”
Emotionless. “I asked him why he wanted to know things about me.”
“What?”
Flat. “You know. Why he was talking to me. Wasting his time.”
“You. Asked. A man. Why. He. Was. Wasting his time with you???”
Not quite emotionlesss, not any more. “Not in so many words, but yes.”
“My god.”
“Idiot!”
“Child, be nice. The girl just doesn’t have much experience. She needs coaching, that’s all. I’m sure she’ll be fine at this once she gets used to it.”
Uncaring, but asking anyway – “What’s ‘this?’”
“Relationships.”
Head snapping up, eyes glaring – angry now, all trace of calm obliterated. “What?”
“She said ‘relationships.’”
Very carefully, “I. Am. NOT. In. A relationship.”
“If you say so, dear.”
“I’m not as nice as Marge. You’re just wrong. But you’ll come round.”
Disgustedly. “My god.”
“You know, you’re really good at alienating people, you know that? I mean, there you are having a charming chat with a good-looking, nice guy, and then you go and say something stupid and make him storm out of the diner looking as though the world had collapsed around his ears. You normally ignore us, and avoid people like the plague, and when we come over and try to help you, you barely talk to us and then act like you’re the queen of england. “My god,” you say, like you can judge us, like you have any right whatsoever, which you don’t, you know? You’re no better than we are. Are you really that arrogant? ‘My god,’ you say, like we’re some kind of pond scum. You have no right, no idea–“
”Sally, dear, calm down.”
“No, no I won’t. What’s your problem?”
A little sadly, “I don’t know.”
“Oh? You don’t know? That’s not good enough. Do you honestly think that ‘oh, look at me, I’m sad’ tone of voice is going to get you pity? Because it isn’t, you little bitch, it”
Marge’s hand flew suddenly up and struck Sally’s cheek, hard. “You listen to me. You are going to go out into that diner and clean tables. You aren’t going to take orders, because you’d bite the customer’s heads clean off – trade places with the bus boy for a while. He can handle it. He’d be a waiter if Greg weren’t such a prick. You’ll let Estevan take your orders for you and you’ll clean his tables for him until you’re calm enough that you don’t have to concentrate to keep from breaking the plates, and then you will come back and apologize to both of us. Do you understand?”
“I don’t have to.”
“No, but you will.”
An ugly twist to her mouth, Sally turned and left. Resignedly, Marge turned to Lydia.
“Come on, child, let’s go sit at a table.”
Hesitantly, “Actually, could – could we sit in that corner? Behind the bar?”
“Not as comfortable over there.”
Lydia’s face drooped a little.
“Fine, fine. I’ll never understand you, you know that?”
Lydia had no answer. Marge just sighed and snagged a spare chair.

“Why was Sally mad at me?”
Marge planted her elbows on her knees and looked at her clasped hands. “Why... it’s complicated . You aren’t the easiest person to get along with, you know.”
“But – but I stay out of everybody’s way!”
“Exactly.” Marge soudned grim. “I mean, that works fine if nobody around you has nay interest in every talking to you. At all. But I do hope you haven’t lived your whole life around people like that – and I sometimes wonder just when you got the impression that everybody thinks that way.”
In the background, Lydia could hear Sally slamming plates down on top of each other and muttering curses. Estevan was taking orders in his almost elegant accent, the customers looking at him with distrust but ordering from him just the same.
“But if I’m not a bother, how can I –“
”A bother? What is this about a bother? It’s not question of being a bother. It’s a question of – look, when you try to reach out to someone and you’re continually rebuffed, it starts to hurt.”
Lydia’s eyes were wide and her voice slow, hesitant. “Trying to reach out?”
“Yes, Lydia,” Marge said, exasperatedly. “People want to talk to you. You look like a nice girl, they try to make small talk, and you look off into the distance and ignore them, inserting little ‘yes’ and ‘mm-hmms’ here and here, and saying ‘please’ and ‘if you will’ all the time until people think you’re being sarcastic, mocking them for not being polite enough,”
“What!”
Marge ignored the interuption. “And it gets old. It gets old pretty damn quick, pardon my language. And so when Sally and I actually talked to you today – talked to you, as in a conversation, where you even spoke every now and again! It wasn’t a great conversation, and we spent most of the time filling our silence between ourselves – but don’t you see? A month after you’d started working here we’d all given up on you. We’d decided that it was just useless, that you’d always think you were that much better than us,”
“What!”
“And so we just stopped. But you know, suddenly you didn’t know what to do, for once, and you were talking, for once, and for once other people had the chance to help you and it was fun, and we started to think ‘well, maybe she’ll come round, maybe now she’ll open up to us’ We’re companionable people here, I for one like to talk to people – and Sally, you know how Sally is. It hurts to be shut out.”
“But I —“
”And so then when all of a sudden you drive another person away, and all we want is to help, and all of a sudden you jump back to talking in pointless little words in rare sentences and not saying anything important to us, and not wanting our help though heaven knows you need it, and then talking to us in a disgusted tone of voice – you heard what Sally said, she thought you were talking to us like we were pond scum.”
Lydia would have been close to tears if she hadn’t felt so numb. “I – I never,”
“Now, I don’t think that’s what you were thinking. It’s what you were doing, but I don’t think it’s what you were thinking. I can’t say what you were thinking about, but I would sure like to think it wasn’t that.”
Lydia couldn’t do more than shake her head.
“So do you see? Her outburst- it was rude, and unwarrented, but understandable, do you see?”
The girl nodded.
“She’ll apologize. I suggest you be civil to her when she does. No, wait – you’re always civil. I suggest you be nice.”
“Okay,” Lydia whispered, sounding broken.
As marge stood, grunting, Lydia glanced up from her just-touching knees.
“Mar – Marge,” she coughed out.
“What?” asked the older woman, not looking at her.
“Thank – thank you. And I’m sorry, honest I am.”
“Apology accepted.” Looking wry, the waitress looked at Lydia – “honest I am, eh? I haven’t heard that one in years.”
Lydia blushed and looked down as Marge walked off towards a table where Sally was slamming plates together with only slightly less force than she had been earlier.
Five minutes later, Lydia stood from her chair and started taking orders.

It was a quiet moment, after most of the lunch crowd had gone, and soon Lydia didn’t have a half-decent excuse to be pottering about working. Taking a deep breath, she crossed the diner.
Outside the doors, Sally was standing in the cold without a coat. Lydia shiverred at the chill, but the weather had warmed up just a bit and, rubbing her arms, she managed to stay outside.
Sally didn’t acknowledge her presence, just blew out smoke with her face set.
Lydia took a deep breath at the same moment that Sally’s lips tightened just a bit.
“I’m sorry,” they said simultaneously, and jumped.
Lydia gave a short, nervous giggle that silenced quickly as Sally just drew on her cigarette.
“I am sorry,” the younger girl said, glancing down at the ground.
The blonde grunted, and blew out the smoke in one long, dusty tendril. Lydia had to focus to keep her nostrils from automatically flaring.
Studying her cigarette carefully, Sally finally answered. “Me too.”
There was a silence.
“I shouldn’t –“ they both began at the same time, glancing at each other. Lydia risked a small smile – because it was really quite silly – and this time Sally at least gave a snort of recognition.
“I’ll go first,” Lydia managed to say. She took another deep breath, closing her eyes, and tasting smoke. “I shouldn’t have been so rude or cold when you were trying to help me. I should have been more open and easy to talk to the entire time that I’ve been working here – for the past decade or so,a ctually. I should have recognized your overtures as friendly, and not pushed you away, and I certainly shouldn’t have done it in so rude a manner. I’m sorry that I was short, and that I can be cold. I’ll try to stop, but I can make no guarantees. I’ll – I’ll try.” Lydia said all of this deliberately, and yet she was terrified at the fact that she didn’t think she could have stopped if she wanted to. The conversation was far, far beyond her control.
Thinking back, she realized just how much she had said, and blanched.
Sally was looking at her speculatively.
“Apology accepted,” she said coolly. She took another drag on her cigarette. “And I shouldn’t have yelled at you.”
Lydia waited, but there didn’t appear to be any more. Sally turned back out and looked at the street once more.
Lydia felt that there ought to be something more to be said – but what, she didn’t know. She was still in shock over just how much she had said not thirty seconds ago.
Still, oughtn’t it to be Sally’s turn now? Wasn’t that how this worked?
Sally seemed to disagree.
Finally, though, the silence grew too much – the older waitress still had an inch and a half of cigarette, and Lydia simply couldn’t bring herself to go inside. The blonde sighed, and asked, “So. Why’d you ask him something stupid like that?”
Lydia wilted. “I don’t know. I’m just – I’m an idiot, I guess. I honestly don’t know.”
“You’re an idiot all right,” Sally said unsympathetically but not unkindly. “Look, he likes you. Don’t question it. That’s my advice, anyway.”
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth?”
“Something like that, yeah.”
That stood companionably in the cold. Sally sighed.
“Look, he’s a good-looking kid. I wish you good luck and all that jazz. Now, it’s really really damned cold out here, and this cigarette doesn’t help nearly as much as you might think it would, being flame and all, so could we go back inside?”
Lydia nodded till her neck was sore, and walked ahead of Sally, who was extinguishing her cigarette on the outer wall of the diner, into the encompassing warmth within the restaurant.


Lydia broke with tradition that evening, stopping by the library on her way home from school.
She flitted about the shelves – religious nonfiction, fantasy, science fiction, science, biography, juvenile, bad romances, back-issues of unknown zines – and picked up a book, flipped through a few pages, and set it down with a sigh.
The right book at the right time can pull you out of your life, take you someplace else entirely. It can be a strange experience, confining and liberating at the same time. It can be beautiful – but always, it’s surreal.
Sometimes it’s temporary and powerful, and hour or two where you do not hear or see the real world around you, but then when it’s over you flaot out and look at the fibers of the couch next ot your head and you can see the colors and the weave. You look at the colors and the weave and the way all the trhreads fit together iand it works, it just works ,and you don’t bother counting threads because you know they’re there and that’s enough. And then you get up and make a cup of tea.
Other times, it’s slightly weaker – noises from the real world filtering in, sights scatching your eye when the headiihgts of a car hit the wall across fromyou, and the movement inturrupts the flow of your story, just for a bit. But when it’s over, and you turn your head, you don’t remember to notice the colors of the fabric – that is, you see them and maybe some distant corner of your brain registers the color but it forgets it right away, because it doesn’t matter,. And you count the fibbers because otherwise you wouldn’t know they’re their. You wouldn’t see the individual threads unless you count them, and that would be a loss.
And after a long time staring at nothing and seeing something else entirely, you stand up and you make a cup of tea. But you don’t make if tofr you, and when you’ve drunk it youi can’t say what type of tea it was you just drank, earl gray or chai or chamomile.
You don’t ask, and you don’t wonder at the fact that you don’t ask.
And sometimes – sometimes you read a book, you flip through the pages and all you can think about are fibers and threads, the nature of the world around you – the stains on the ceiling and creaks of the house and the quiet corners of your brain, and the words on the page very futilely try to make an impact on you. They fail, going along quietly, speaking in a hum that sinks to the background as you realize that you really want some earl gray tea, because it fits so well with the shifting of the moonlight and the headlights nad the settling of the house, and that really green and dusty red threads look quite good together. But they’d look better with gray in there, and if you were drinking earl gray tea. When you’ve reached the end of a page, you can’t remember what it is you’ve read and you’ve no desire to repeat it over again.
None of the books spoke to Lydia.


Tuesday morning, the weather was crappy once more. Lydia gave a sigh, wishing that it were spring again – except that in the spring, when it was still chilly in the mornings and much too hot in the afternoons, and you never really knew what to wear – at least in November a sweater was always a safe bet – and it was muddy and the plants were just starting to grow in a way that was quite, pitiful really – in the spring, Lydia would wish it were fall. In the summer, hot and sticky, she would wish it were the winter, cool and crisp – in the winter, gray and cold and mushy, she would wish it were the summer, with the hot dry attic and the soothing thunderstorms.
Grumpily, without nearly enough wryness, all things considered, Lydia considered the irony of it all. Honestly – human beings and the desire for what they don’t have. Or rather, Lydia Greenwald and her desire for the opposite of what she owned.
Human nature, she supposed – if you ever were satisfied with what you had, there’d be no reason to forge ahead, to improve, to progress, to create, to change, to destory, to kill, to steal... it made life damned uncomfortable, though.
Does anybody truly have a favorite season, Lydia wondered. Does anybody truly have a favorite anything? Well, yes, yes they must. Or, Lydia mused, they say they do. Her sister’s favorite season had been summer, her mother’s, fall – her brothers, for better or for worst, always winter, and Brian – he had loved spring.
Lydia wished it was spring, and found herself hating herself for that thought.
Desire. Wishfulness. Discomfort, longing – a desire for change, progress, distruction. Dissatisfaction.
Lydia thought she had left all this behind a long, long time ago.

It wasn’t quite raining – just wet, and generally unpleasant. It wasn’t frigidly cold out, either, for which Lydia was grateful – but with the grayness, everywhere, and a slight bit of early-morning fog, the whole world seemed flat. Somewhere between one and two dimensional – because it couldn’t be one-dimensional, that would just be silly, but somehow even two was more than this day deserved. It was like the dark gray sky bent over onto itself and became the dark-gray and black ground, grew upwards into dark gray buildings, and wrapped within itself as pale gray fog. The only variety was in the pools of yellowish light from the streetlamps, illuminating the swirl of the fog and the utter flatness of the ground.
It was dark out before five in the morning, starless and bleak – maybe when the sun came out the world would grow a new dimensoin, or another two and a half, but Lyda wouldn’t be surpised if it didn’t. All the light did was eliminate the vairety found in the streetlamps, and replace it with the slightest hint of color in the buildings. The sky became the pale gray of the vanishing fog, and the entire world was lit by a scarily constant, unchanging, very very flat light. It was amazing how light could be flat– wasn’t light truly one-dimensional? All it did was move in a straight line – but with so many straight lines bouncing one way and then another, off of things and making curves through the bends, you would thing that light would always bring shape, never erase it.
Lydia found herself remembering diagrams from eighth-grade science, of light bouncing off of curved mirrors, the straight lines bending sharply and going off in an entirely new direction, and what started off parallel, ten straight lines travelling together, to the same destination, at the self-same speed, suddenly breaking apart. Surely the beams had planned on being together for eternity, because that’s the way it is for light, isn’t it? Left alone, it would travel in that straight line at that constant speed forever, and the four beams would travel the universe at a blinding speed, everything around them an exquisite blur but one constant, or rather nine constants – the beams beside them, laughing with.
Left alone, the light would travel together forever, but when is it ever left alone? The light hits the mirror, curved in like somebody gave a neat punch to the fabric of spacetime, and the ones on the corners feel it first. Light travels 1.18028527 × 10^10 inches per second, which is very very fast – and with this mirror, the difference between the outer edge and the middle of the bowl maybe two inches, how many thousands of a second would it take for the careful plans of the light to be destoryed? How many millionths of a second?
The ones on the outside realize it first, feeling in dull panic – because light has no eyes, but his is silly, light has no feelings either – feeling in dull panic the impact of the glass, of the silver, and though the light travelled through lightyears of nothing and even through the madness of the atmosphere, tiny molecules of air disturbing the beams until they realized in shock that in only a few eons the lightbeam second from the right would become a stranger, because they were no longer travelling quite parallel – although it had survived all this, suddenly the lightbeam finds that glass and silver are impervious.
Shocked, the two outer beams turn inwards, rebound through their companions while the others, too, discover this strange truth. How must it feel to be the lightbeams in the middle, to feel the passage of your friends so close to be your other selves, to feel them pass through you and to know that next you’ll meet this strange new twist to reality? How long would you have to await this moment? A billionth of a second, less?
Shocked, the lightbeams scatter, a brief moment of mathematically organized chaos as they pass through each other – do they say their last goodbyes? – and suddenly shoot off in new directions, spreading out like the rays children draw around their suns. They travel new places, in new blurs with no constancy near them, now, just strangers laughing and dancing through their vision while they travel until they are absorbed or devoured or expired. They make friends and lose them in a billionth of a second and maybe in the chaos they forget their past.
But how must it feel, Lydia wondered, to be the middle beam – the one that hit the middle of the theoretical and perfect mirror dead on, where there is no curve to throw off the bounce - the one that is sent straight backwards, along the path they once all travelled together – the one that can’t forget, because they travel backwards through memories– possibly through time – seeing again the familiarly reversed chaos that they’d all seen together.
Lydia growled, actually growled, when she realized she had been thinking about the emotions of lightbeams.
Honestly.

Still, she thought dispassionately as she glanced at the dead landscape around her. It’s funny to call light flat. She’d seen a piece of art once – an exhibit, actually. It was made up entirely of string, of black thread, pinned to the walls and floor of this room. Somehow, the threads never touched, though there must have been hundreds of them going off in all directions. At first it looked like chaos, just an exploded string factory – but soon you realized, walking around and through the spaces that had been left, just big enough to fit a person, that there were patterns. The straight lines, the perfectly straight lines that were never parallel – the arrangement of them had patterns and repeated elements. The straight lines, the perfectly straight lines, worked together to build curves – each turning just a centiment, moved to the left and to the right just a bit, rotating at just a different point, until soon the lines were working together to create dna spirals are gentle bowls and planes and mountains and ripples.
At first Lydia suspected that they weren’t straight, weren’t perfectly straight, because they looked so gentle and soft and ... curving... but rather than asking the guards standing along the walls she followed a string from top to bottom, looking at it and realizeing that it didn’t bend, not once. She followed another bwith her eyes, and another, and she stood there for hours just tracing all the lines with her sight.
They made her leave when the museum closed, with only one spot left unanalyzed.
Lydia thought there should have been a space there – she saw, now, how by taking out these strings and moving these up and those over there would be a curved space left there, just human-sized, gently arching over where the head would be and bending down around sides.
It would fit a person there, trapped by a thousand tiny strings, each so easily broken, bent, sent off-course; easily stretched through were they parallel, easily broken were they alone, easily ignored were they somewhere else – but here, around the soul trapped in the spiders webs, inescapable.
Inescapable and almost invisible in the dark.
Those straight lines, each only one-dimensional, created something of a thousand dimensions – as though each string carried its own reality, and they built together instead of apart.
Lydia shook the memory clear from her head. The light wasn’t flat, she supposed, any more than it was straight, or curved, or bright or dull. It was dead.
She almost laughed as she looked at the dark around her and realized she had been thinking about the hypothetical flatness of a nonexistent light. It was not yet sunrise, and for all she knew the clouds would lift and the sun bring more reality to the world.
She closed her eyes and turned her eyes to the ground and stopped thinking as she walked to work.

Darkness surrounded the pools of light from the streetlamps, deep and somewhat forboding – and not for the first time, Lydia wondered why she felt so comfortable, so... so safe. She wasn’t even a foot and a half tall, she weighed less than 115 pounds, she had no self-defensive skills, she was female, she had absolutely nothing going for her that would prevent in the slightest her being mugged, robbed, raped, kidnaped, or who knows what else.
And yet. Maybe it was her quiet nature, maybe she just exuded something saying ‘don’t bother, I’m not worth it,’ maybe she had a personal guardian angel, maybe she was just lucky, maybe the statistics were wrong, maybe she was right in her irrational lack of fear – but for all the dark mornings spent walking to work, and before that, all the dark nights spent walking around cities, and before that, the dark nights on backcountry roads, and before that, dark late evenings in a fairly quiet neighborhood – she had never once been afraid. Well, she had been afraid – afraid of going home, of getting lost, of not finding anywhere pleasant to sleep, or anybody pleasant to sleep with, of having to choose which place to sleep, afraid of the consequences of coming home dead drunk, or slightly drunk, or hell, just plain happy – but never afraid of being mugged, or raped, or robbed, or kidnaped, or who knew what else.
It had never happened, either. She had passed shady men in dark jackets in dark alleyways, and given them polite nods and walked on and they had grunted or nodded back or ignored her or occasionally told her to avoid Rightleaf alleyway until tomorrow morning, for which she nodded her quiet thanks and turned right instead of left.
It had worried friends, long ago – worried family even longer before. It had never worried Lydia.
Guardian angel, she decided, keeping me from physical harm. And then me, keeping me from emotional fear. For once, we’re working together.
It was dark around her, and flat. Lydia skirted the golden pools of light wchich showed the shifting of the fog, as though the early morning were alive, soft and warm and three-or-four dimensional: or maybe just three, as time didn’t seem to be anywhere at four in the mornig.
Traffic lights genially blinked, yellow, yellow, yellow, and they spoke of time’s passage. Lydia ignored them and focused on the quiet of the houses, and then of the street, and of the scraggly trees that didn’t shift, for there was no wind, and on the bleak stillness of the windowsless factoreis.
The merry windows of the diner were almost an abomination when Lydia first saw them.
She closed her eyes against the sight and stood, for just another moment, in the dark flat timeless world outside of the building – the building of light and people and noise.

Lydia wished to God, if there had ever been a God, that there had been a good book to read on Monday night.

The diner was the same as always when she walked in, busy and not quite loud, not yet, but in the kitchen yawning cooks with hangovers and too much caffiene were overcooking bacon and undercooking biscuits, waitresses were fixing makeup and downing black coffee, and the place smelled of fat and flour and a tiny tint of cigarette smoke, overlaid with sweat and a bit of gas, presumably from the stovetops.
Lydia nodded at the dishwasher, and the single cook who looked up at her presence, and as she transferred her keys and id and money she nodded at the waitresses, and then paused as she realized she was supposed to do something else now.
She wasn’t very good at this. She wasn’t sure she ever had been, though she supposed it was possible. How would you know, really?
She crossed the room with purpose, heading towards the clump of pink, now, instead of the open door behind it.
“Hi,” he said, and Sally, Marge, and Alice looked up at her.
Marge beamed. “Hello.”
Sally gave a nod and a small smile, burying her nose in her thick black coffee.
“Um. Hi,” said Alice, brown eyes confused. She was young, Lydia’s age, and plainer than Lydia but with a beaming smile and enough make-up and a round enough bottom than the men she served more than forgave her for it. She always spoke before she thought, as far as Lydia could tell, but of course Lydia couldn’t tell very much because she didn’t watch quite enough to be able to tell.
“How are you, then?” asked Alice, in a voice slightly bewildered and very curious.
“Ah, okay. I’m okay.” Lydia thought this was the standard response, but it took a moment before she realized what was missing. “And you?”
“I’m fine,” said Alice, still looking at Lydia with something akin to suspicion. Suddenly a grin stretched across half her face – the left half, as she gave a lopsided smile that didn’t quite seem to be expressing joy. “To what do we owe the honor?”
“What?”
“God I hate mornings,” Sally interrupted, pointedly not looking at Alice but managing to glare just the same. “So goddamn early. If it weren’t for the money, I wouldn’t wake up ‘till ten, ever.”
“You could work the evening shift,” Alice suggested blithely. Lydia had been thinking the same thing, but wasn’t sure if she should say it. Hearing Alice, she decided she ought have and felt a twisting in her stomach. She had been wrong. God, but she was bad at this.
Such a silly thing to feel bad about, too. What did it matter? There was another problem, right there. How could she be expected to handle this if it all seemed to matter much more to her than it truly ought to.
She realized Marge was glaring at Alice.
“I need the afternoons for my other job,” Sally drawled out in a very pointed manner.
It took a few seconds for Lydia to realize the implications of that.
“And the other job for the money,” Sally continued ruthlessly.
“To pay my bills, you see. To keep from going bankrupt.”
Alice was trying not to look horrified.
“Because of debt, you see.” There was a gleam in Sally’s eye, midway between triumph and predatoriality.
The slightly chubby brunette was blushing up to her hairline, giving her foundation a strange appearance. “Oh. Sorry.”
“Whatever for?” Sally asked, in a knowing, slightly superior voice.
Lydia didn’t feel relieved to discover that she’d been right, after all, in not mentioning it. After all, now she felt afraid to ever open her mouth and say anything, and it didn’t seem like that would be a good way to have a conversation.
After all, right now what she wanted to ask was what the debt was for, and that would be so absolutely the wrong thing to say that it was funny, really, and it made her want to laugh because she couldn’t think of anything else to say, but if she broke into hilarious laughter they would think she was laughing at them, which was wrong, but she couldn’t say what she was really laughing at and it would be so bad that it was funny, really, and it was funny how hard it was getting to hold back hysterical laughter and –
Lydia gave herself a powerful mental slap.
“That the reason for all the coffee, then?” she asked in a slightly croaky voice.
Startled, all three women looked at her. Lydia felt like dying, or sinking into the floor, or possibly both.
“Because you don’t like the mornings,” she finished pitifully.
“Nah,” Sally said, taking a big gulp of what looked like mud, “The coffee is just to keep me awake. The cigs and the complaining, those are because I don’t like the mornings.”
“Ah.”
“Honestly, though, I don’t see how you can do these mornings without caffeine in your system. Unless maybe you drink a pot at home, because I never see you drink any here.”
“I don’t really like coffee,” Lydia answered, wondering why it was only her and Sally talking. Was that the way it was supposed to be.
Alice laughed, a slightly harsh giggle. “Dear, nobody likes coffee – not at first, anyway.”
“It’s like all the other drugs in reverse. You hate it till you need it.” Sally sounded authoritative.
Lydia just blinked.
Marge scolded. “Sally, don’t be filling the minds of young impressionable, good souls with thoughts of drugs.”
Laughing again, Alice said, “Oh, she couldn’t fill my mind much fuller than it already is. I could have told you that most drugs you love ‘till you’re hooked. And a little beyond, actually.”
Marge sighed.
“I wouldn’t know,” Lydia said in a little voice, and the three looked at her again, Marge slightly triumphant. “After all,” she continued, “I never got hooked.”
After a moment, Alice collapsed into giggles as though it were the funniest thing she’d heard in years. Sally smiled into her mug, and Marge just shook her head slowly, a slight grin peeking out of the corners of her mouth.
Lydia blinked. That was funny? Well, funny was good. Even if it was unintentional.
Maybe.
Lydia decided that she could just look deadpan. Maybe if she just looked deadpan, all the time, they wouldn’t know whether she was joking or not – and that it wouldn’t matter that she didn’t, either.
Besides, deadpan humor was good. Lydia had always had a fondness for straight faces.
The thought that she could be funny, though – life was strange.
Somebody was talking. “... and if it weren’t for the coffee, I know for a fact that there is absolutely no way I would ever be able to stay awake ‘till noon if it weren’t for this damn coffee. Honestly, Alice, you make the worst coffee on the planet.”
Alice sniffed and looked at Sally with an expression that contained malice only as mocking as the blonde’s tone of voice. Lydia thought she knew how much it was a joke – mostly a joke – but it wasn’t quite possible to say. Marge just shook her head. ‘She seems rather fond of that,’ Lydia thought. “Well, you drink enough of it.”
“It’s all there is!” Sally said, her expression looking comically desperate. “Without my coffee, I would just collapse into a snoring heap on the middle of the dining room floor!”
“And then all the men would take the opportunity and look up your skirt, and just think how awkward that would be,” Lydia said without thinking.
“Might improve business, actually,” Marge said, sounding contemplative. Lydia was just glad that somebody else was talking before she had the chance to blush.
At Sally’s incredulous glance, Marge grinned cheekily.
“You just need to learn how to sleep,” Lydia said.
Sally raised one eyebrow elegantly while Alice planted her fists on her hips, and Marge just waited.
“See, I’ve always had a tendency to sleepwalk,” and Marge rolled her eyes, already anticipating what was coming, “And so after that, it only took a few years to figure out how to sleep-waitress.” Alice raised both her eyebrows, a ‘is that it?’ expression.
“Among other things,” Lydia said, her voice wry but her face expressionless.
Alice looked at her in confusion, Marge just blinked, but Sally broke out into laughter, throaty and enthusiastic.
“Good lord, Lydia, I don’t even know how that was dirty, but you managed to make sure it was.
Lydia just shrugged, while Alice finally broke into a giggle and Marge shook her head slowly back and forth.
“Let’s get back to work, shall we?” Lydia suggested.

When Lydia stopped at nine for her mid-morning meal, Alice came over and hung out near her while she ate.
“Don’t you leave soon?” Lydia asked while she pulled at her bacon.
“Yeah, I just figured I’d talk to you before I left.”
“Mmmkay. Why do you work so early, anyway?”
Alice shrugged. “Best job I could get. I dunno. I get to catch all the evening soaps, too. Anyway – why’d you suddenly start talking to people?”
Lydia gave a sideways little smile. “Why, huh? I’m starting to hate ‘why’ questions.”
Alice just raises her eyebrows.
“I dunno,” Lydia says, moving her food around with her fork.
“It’s just – well, Sally and Marge talked to me. And I realized that I was actually being kinda rude.
“Kinda,” alice snorted.
“I never meant to!” lydia protested. “As a matter of fact, I was trying to be polite. Keep from intruding where I wasn’t wanted. I just – I don’t know. I”m shy now, I guess.”
“Now?” Alice asks, apparently a lot sharper than she looked.
“Yeah. Now.”
“Is there a story behind that?”
“Isn’t it time for you to go?”
Alice waved a hand dismissively. “Daytime soaps can wait,” she said.
Lydia sighed. “I don’t know. I guess I just lost my nerve.”
“Oh, come on,” Alice said, pulling up a chair and grinning like a cat in a milk barn. She almost bounced in anticipation. “Tlel me the story,” she insisted.
“There really is no story.”
“There has to be a story.”
Lydia ground her teeth slightly. “I never was very outgoing to start out with.”
“But presumably you talked to some people. And you talk now like you aren’t afraid to. Sometimes. So?”
“I don’t know. Things happen,” Lydia said tersely.
Alice cocked her head to the side and half-lowered her eyelids, tilting her head back. Lydia decided it was really obnoxious.
She tried to keep eating.
“Come on!” Alice insisted. “I want to hear the story.”
Lydia snapped, very very quietly. “Look,” she said, putting down her fork, “There was a bad relationship and it hurt. Among other things. So I withdrew a bit, and then I got used to it. That’s all.” Her eyes looked imposing, but Alice didn’t notice.
“Ooooh!” she said, bouncing again. “Relationship woes. Tell tell tell.”
Lydia took a deep breath, prepared to say something that was definitely not the story – really, truly not the story – most definitely, wihtout a doubt not the story – because there was no way, no way on earth she was about to tell this creature the story – there couldn’t be a way, could there? – and just as Lydia realized she honestly had no idea what she was about to start saying, Sally said,
“Oy! Alice, go home and live Lydia alone so she can eat and get back to work! We need her, and you’re distracting her!”
Alice pouted, and Lydia closed her eyes in relief.
“Fine,” Alice said, and then winked at Lydia. “We’ll talk about this later.”
Lydia nodded, unable to conjure up the strength to disagree.
“Thanks,” she said to Sally.
Sally snorted in reply.

In the afternoon, Lydia realized that she probably ought to go to the coffeeshop.
And apologize.
Damn.
With a thump, she threw herself into her chair and moaned into her hands, bending over with her knees on her elbows and her fingers over her eyes.
“Why, why – dammit, more whys – why am I so bad at this? Why do I have to do this anyway? If I don’t go back then maybe he’ll just forget about me. Shit. Dammit, I just cursed – dammit, I just cursed again, that’s like four times in the past thirty seconds. Fuck. I don’t – apology’s talking, awkwarndness – I didn’t mean to! Maybe he doesn’t want an apology. Maybe he doesn’t want to talk to me just yet. Maybe he doesn’t want to talk to me ever. How can I apolgize to him if I don’t know what I did? What did I do? Why did I do what I did, why why why am I so bad at this, was it always like this? Fuck. Dammit, why am I nervous – why why fuck why’s, I officially hate the word why, and oh dear lord I’m talking to myself. Only crazy people talk to themselves. I’m officially going crazy. I have to go apologize to him. Fuck. What on erath did I do? What am I going to do? Fuck him, I don’t know what to do!”
“That would be a bit premature, I think.”
Lydia sat up with a start. “What??”
Sally grinned. She lounged against the wall of the diner, and Lydia irrationally thought that Sally really needed to be holding a cigarette.
Smirking, the blonde said “You can, of course, but I didn’t think you were that kind of girl.”
Lydia blushed up to her hairline and looked down.
“What did you do, you ask?” Sally reclined against the wall, putting back her head and baring her throat, one long heel hooked over the baseboard, and Lydia once again thought dumbly that she needed a cigarette.
“You pushed him away, dear.”
“How?” Lydia had finally found her voice.
Sally rolled her eyes, but looked down at Lydia fondly. “You asked him why he was hanging out with you, right?”
“Um. Something like that, yeah.”
“And what did he say back?”
“I- I don’t remember.”
“Sure you do. Come on now.”
“He said... umm, because we’re friends – and then because he liked me – and then a lot of stuff about how I don’t make myself happy and he wants to know why and –“
Lydia paused, and Sally waited.
“And he wants to know how to make me happy.”
“And what did you say?”
“Lydia looked down, ashamed. “Nothing, really.”
“And he said?”
“He said, she said,” Lydia said with a demented chuckle. Sally glared at her. “He said,” and her voice dropped. “He said, ‘If none of that is good enough for you, then what would be?’ I think.”
“Ah. And what did you say after that?”
“I. Um. Well. He had cursed, you see.”
“Oh my god.”
“So I just told him that he’d cursed, and I didn’t like it. That was all!”
“Damn right that was all. I imagine that then he threw a little fit and left?”
“Something along those lines, yeah.
“You are something else, you know that, Lydia?”
Lydia looked down again. Sally sighed and turned, on hand on her hip and one shoulder pushing into the wall. She looked down at Lydia with a maternal expression on her face.
“Do you have any idea what you did?”
“No.” Yes.
“How like a man...” Sally sounded amused, but Lydia just looked up helplessly.
“All right. You ask him a question that sounds like you’re trying to get rid of him.”
“But-“
Lydia raised the hand on her hip, putting her palm out in a ‘Calm down, shut up, wait’ gesture. “Let me talk. You ask him a question that sounds like you’re trying to get rid of him, and then when he answers, you don’t reply. He thinks he has to tell you the right reason or else you’ll leave, or not accept him, or somethin.g So he does his damnedest – to tell the truth, apparently. Some guys would just do their damnedest to say what they thought they wanted you to say, but he sounds like he was spouting off truth and not cliches.
“So he bares his soul like this, and what do you do? You criticize the words he used! I mean, shit, girl, what impression are you trying to give the guy?”
Lydia scrunched down in her chair, as though she were trying to hide.
“Look, I’m not trying to be critical, I’m trying to help.”
“I know,” Lydia said in a very small voice.
“It’s just – you made it sound like you didn’t want him, but didn’t even care enough to tell him so. That’s harsh, you know? And I know that you didn’t mean it like that, and he probably knows that you didn’t mean it like that, but it’s hard to believe something like that for too long. If he did, he’d have to be unbearably cocky and not worth dating any way.” There was a memory in Sally’s eyes, but when Lydia glanced up she thought that it wasn’t right to ask about it – not right now, anyway.
“You need to apologize for acting like such a frigid bitch, and then you need to convince him that you really do want him. Which you do.”
“I, I think so.”
“It wasn’t a question. Any idiot could tell just from watching you – except you, of course, because you are an idiot who can’t watch you. Which is a major problem in relationships, as far as I can tell. Anyway, you need to conquer his self-doubt and nagging voice of low self-esteem. You understand?”
“Your mission, should you choose to accept it...” Lydia managed to force out.
Sally laughed a little, a low sound.
“Oh, you’ll accept it all right. Look, just go talk to him, okay? How bad could it be?”
Lydia looked up incredulously. “Bad,” she said solemnly, eyes wide.
“Okay,” Sally conceded, “It could be bad. Go do it anyway.”
“What if - -what if I screw up?”
“Then you screw up,” Sally said solidly. “Shit happens. Except for when it doesn’t, in which case life is damned boring. Now, get out of here before I kick you out.”
“Yes. Yes, I will. God, why am I scared, Sally?”
Sally sighed, shaking her head and rolling her eyes. She put a hand on the wall and ran the other through her hair, looking at Lydia in exasperation. “Because you’re human and you want him and you’re afraid that you’ll screw up.”
“What if I screw up??”
“I already said. You screw up. It hurts. You get over it. Leave.”
“Leaving.”
Lydia half-ran to the door, and Sally leaned against the wall, watching her.
With a sigh, she dropped into the chair, automatically adjusting her skirt and crossing her legs at the ankle.
“God, I need a cigarette.”

On the way to the café, Lydia mumbled to herself, not consciously noticing the cold. “Oh god. I know I’m going to screw this up. Why am I even bothering to come? I’ll only make things worse, I know it. Oh, god. Shit. Now I’m cursing. I need to stop cursing.”
Luckily, there was, as usual, almost nobody out on the streets. Lydia wouldn’t have noticed if there had been, but still the fact ought to have been somewhat comforting.
“Okay. Apolgize for being a frigid bitch, and convince him that you do want him. Easy. I – I can do this.”
She stood and stared at the door for a few seconds before finally pushing it open.
“Right. I can do this. Easy.”
The black-haired girl – Diana, that was her name – stood behind the counter, serving somebody. Lydia stared dumbfoundedly. This sure wasn’t supposed to happen.
After looking at the counter for a few moments, Lydia finally, slowly walked over. The man in front of her had taken his order, and glanced at Lydia with a slight bit of interest as he crossed to his table carrying his mug. Lydia didn’t stop to wonder why.
Diana smiled at her. “The usual, then?”
With a snap, Lydia pulled her mind and her face back together. “Oh! Oh – um, yes please. Blue mug, if you will.”
“Of course, of course,” Diana said cheerfully as she started taking mugs off the rack. “ It may take a few moments, I’m afraid.”
Lydia glanced at the shelves and saw that the closest blue mug was tucked far back on the shelf. “I’m sorry to be a bother,” she said guiltily.
“No bother at all,” Diana answered, still cheerful despite the growing pile of mugs on the table.
As the porcelain chinked, Lydia worked up her nerve. It took a few seconds, drawing in breaths and letting them out again, but she finally managed to say, quietly and haltingly, “Where’s Todd?”
“Back in the kitchen – oof, finally! One double mocha latte in a blue mug, coming right up. Would you like me to call him for you?”
Lydia had just opened her mouth to say something – what, she wasn’t quite sure – when somebody else answered instead.
“No,” Todd said from the doorway into the kitchen. He was scowling slightly and leaning into the door, wearing a brown dog collar that matched his shirt, and why was Lydia thinking about his clothes? She ought to be thinking about other things, like what the fuck did she do now?
“No,” Todd continued, “you don’t need to call me, and no, she most certainly is not getting a double mocha latte.”
Lydia just stared, dumfounded. Diana raised her eyebrows and said simply, “In that case, I’ll get out of the way.”