The Waitress

The waitress waddled over to the boys carrying their eggs and bacon and pancakes. Each step was slow, painful, and her knees trembled slightly. They were at the table, singing to each other some popular song, one of them leaning back against the wall with his legs stretched out across the booth's seat. The other playing with his phone.

"Here y'are boys, two breakfast smileys. Can I getcha more coffee?" she asked the one on the phone.

"Nope. Thanks." he said, looking down at the plate.

She turned and began walking back towards the obnoxious women who'd been there almost an hour now.

"Hey," said the one who was practically lying down now, "You all right?"

"About what you'd think," she said, wanting to move on.

"You look like you're havin' a rough night," he said, smiling. He was open and inviting, and she was, after all having a bad night.

"You know how it is," she motioned with her head towards the women, "some folks just can't make up their minds. Do this, do that, get this, we didn't ask for that. It get's pretty old fast."

"Hey, well, don't worry about them. You can only do what ya can. Should we go beat 'em up for ya?"

She smiled and laughed a little bit. He was very handsome, and forty years younger than she.

"Oh God no, I can't ask yinz to fight customers," she said, smiling back in a way she thought of as flirtatiously.

"Well," he said, "You let us know what we can do for ya."

She kept smiling back at him.

"Well, she said, I guess I'm just pretty tired. It's been a hard year, y'know?"

"Oh yeah?" he said, picking at his eggs. The other played with his phone and now and then cut into a pancake.

"Yeah, I've been lookin' forward to my health benefits and now they're sayin' they wanna shut it down. So I have to go to a meeting and everything. And since my husband died in the fire--my house burned down a few years back--I don't really have anyone to help me out with it. So I been a little worried about that. It's pretty stressful I guess, you know what I mean?"

She was saying this at him, but he was picking at his eggs and his bacon now, and she could see he hadn't really been paying any attention at all.