The Fine China

He shook a little bell that sat next to the salt and pepper shakers on the goldflake table. Sat by the window, the large glass overlooking a gravel lot pitted with mud puddles. Trucks idled and a tall woman went from cab to cab walking like a bleached praying mantis lithely on gold glittery heels. A semblance of life as usual. A modern Norman Rockwell girl. His hair was wet from the rain and he brushed it back. Getting long, he thought. She liked it short. He tapped the table. He cupped his hand to his mouth to smell his breath then looked for a mint. He’d been to the restroom twice, already. They’d think he was on dope if he went again. He was wearing his best jacket and sweater. His favorite worn jeans. Her favorites were his favorites, he realized. Things she complimented him while wearing. Everything else was packed in the car with his son’s turtle that would outlive him. He couldn't remember the turtle's name. He sunk his hands down in his raincoat pockets like sandbags, sure she wouldn’t show. A cup of black coffee sat on a saucer in front of him. He had put five dollars in the jukebox. Loaded it up with their favorite songs. Bob Dylan was at the counter drinking a cup of coffee and eating an omelet saying, I want you so bad. She wouldn’t show.

The waitress smiled. Thin and cracked out. Her teeth were black and broken. Her skin was pocked like the gravel lot. But her reflection in the glass was pretty as he stared out into the rain at the highway. The praying mantis was devoured by a truck. To be regurgitated and devoured again. He told the waitress he was waiting on someone when she asked if he was ready to order. Didn’t make eye contact. He was never good at it. She was missing all the good songs, goddamnit, he thought. He looked for her car, not sure what she drove anymore. The man at the counter turned the volume of the TV up which clashed with the music. He scowled at the music lover, as he was referred. No one had played the jukebox for months except to play the national anthem now and then. There was another terrorist attack somewhere. All the news stations were there. Thousands more dead. There had been seventeen in the past year. He had survived the second one. He didn’t feel a thing anymore. He rehearsed what he would say. We gotta get out of this place. The Animals were talking in the parking lot, smoking cigarettes in a circle. Let’s pack the Jeep and go to the woods. We can buy a cabin. There is a lake. There is a dog at the shelter we can pick up on the way, waiting for us. We can start over and be happy. We'll have everything but the fine china. He wrote that down on his arm thinking it was clever. The fine china. His things were in two bags. His books in four boxes. They could buy enough food on the way to last the winter. Nothing could touch them there. He could see his breath on the window. Christmas lights flickered behind him. Snakes of silver and green garland. Bruce Springsteen had a tuna melt. Someone cut a six inch valley through the middle of his soul. The song is too short. It needs another verse. He thought to tell Bruce just that, but he let him eat his tuna melt peace.

He wondered why there were little bells on the tables, thought it to do with Christmas for a minute then realized they were on all the tables in Casablanca. The diner was called, Rick’s. It was a silver trailer. Mustn’t be a coincidence. Sam hung his umbrella on the coat tree, saying to a prettier waitress, “You must remember this, a kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh.” As time goes by, she replied hopelessly.

She was thirty seven minutes late. He asked himself if he really expected her to show. No. But she had asked him to meet here. He hadn’t heard from her in months. He asked himself if he might have mixed up the time and place. Was it Rick’s? Was it Saturday morning at ten? Maybe she overslept. Maybe she was gone. People were dying like flies. Maybe she had killed herself. Maybe he was dreaming. Then he saw her. She pulled in and his hands got clammy. His stomach clenched and he doubted he would have the ability to speak. He took a drink of coffee. Smiled at the waitress reassuringly, as though she had been worried, too. They were all watching the television. Harry Nilsson was finishing his "jump into the fire" chili.

The cowbells on the door clanged as she walked in and everyone’s attention was stolen briefly from the TV. They smiled at her. She could always capture the attention of a room, despite the bleakness of the atmosphere, or the mood of its occupants. No matter what the latest death toll was on TV. It is what people still appreciated. A beautiful woman, like a flower, like a rainbow. Something not to forget. A reminder of how things were. For a second they forgot about the news until the reporters spoke louder. He cried too many teardrops for one heart to be crying. 96 tears. As she walked in, he fidgeted, brushed his hair back and thought about the mint. She wasn’t wearing anything he had ever seen before, plain clothes. A sweater and jeans. A light jacket. She looked thinner and more beautiful than in his dreams. He regretted the song choice. He wasn’t crying anymore. He didn’t want anyone to cry anymore.

The waitress didn’t give them time to say hello. They smiled at each other. The waitress smiled, too, regrettably. Pad and pen in hand. Her smile exposed her black shattered shards of glass teeth. A walking carcass of broken dreams.

“Please, give us a minute.” The laminated menu quivered in his hands.

She glanced at the TV, not looking at the menu at all. “The world is ending.”

He didn’t reply. He could see wrinkles on her face. She was wearing no make-up.

She pushed him a pamphlet. “I am worried about your soul, Tom.”

He paused. “My soul?”

“Yes. Have you considered giving yourself to Jesus Christ?”

“Are you here to sell me God?”

“I am not selling anything. Salvation is free.”

He didn’t reply.

“Please, Tom.”

“I love you,” he blurted. It came out wrong. Desperate. And it hung there like a fat duck to be shot.

She didn’t reply. She looked away. The waitress came back. She ordered scrambled eggs and toast. He ordered the same. The waitress poured her a coffee which she cupped in her hands to warm them. Her lips were chapped. She bit her bottom.

“I don’t want to talk about the past,” she said looking to her left at the TV as though magnetically drawn. “Do you believe what they are doing?” she asked without looking away. “Our government can’t protect us. Only the Lord can protect us now. What happens to our earthly bodies means nothing, really.”

“When did you become so religious?”

She didn’t reply. She was staring at the TV. Peter Frampton was reporting from Washington DC. The White House was in flames. I want you to show me the way, he said. She didn’t have to answer. He knew. Everyone changed. Everyone but him. He looked through the pamphlet. It screamed cult. He heard of them. Give up your possessions, whatever you have to give, whatever you own, and live in the safety of a Christian community, a compound. Everyone was Jesus Christ all of a sudden with some fine biblical name like David, or Noah, or Luke. They were getting rich and laid. They were all building a fucking arc. She looked back at him.

“It doesn’t matter what you have to give. You could come and live with us. If you want. Or you can find your own community.”

“Or you can come and live with me. In the woods. There are cabins for sale where they can’t find us. I have the money.”

She didn’t reply.

She’s like a rainbow, Mick called out to the waitress through a window in the wall to the kitchen. Their order was up. She didn’t hear the music. None of them heard the music but for him. The waitress brought the food and went away. She left two napkins and syrup.

“Soon,” she said, “Two people won’t be able to eat like this. Just order anything from a menu and sit here and watch TV. They are going to put us in the dark ages. People are going to starve. There won’t be places like this. There won’t be freedom.”

He looked at her sadly. She was as beautiful as always, maybe even more so, he thought. But she wasn’t the same person. Her mind was cut like Bruce’s soul. They finished their meals. Maybe I’m amazed, Paul McCartney said to the waitress looking at his bill at a table behind theirs, handing her a credit card. “Soon there will be no credit cards,” she went on. “Cash only signs everywhere. People will be murdered for their meat, leather.” A piece of his heart that wasn’t already broken shattered.

The praying mantis slinked out of a truck and fixed her skirt, standing there looking around. She came in and ordered fried bologna for lunch. From a distance she looked like an ugly Janis Joplin, thin from drugs. No one turned to look at her, but she had purpose, and she had money, and she was alive, which was good enough. Everyone had lost someone. Everyone will lose someone again if they had anyone left to lose. We are all made of porcelain.

“Soon,” the girl said putting on her jacket, “people are going to have to redefine their purpose. I got to go, Tom. I got to go! Please, please, find God.” It was all straight from the pamphlet, from David Koresh, Jr., or the second coming of the reverend Jim Jones. Some opportune asshole. She would be someone’s eighth wife. Birth a few babies and forget the ones she had. He smiled, defeated. Left cash on the table and walked out with her, cowbells behind them. A song played that played when they made love in his car after a Halloween Party years ago when there was nothing to worry about. She didn’t hear it. He thought of her feet on the dashboard. Her thin legs in black stockings. Her costume. Her hips in his hands. Jesus Christ she felt so good. Her car was packed full and he held the pamphlet in his hand. “You can come,” she said hesitantly. “They will accept you, if you make your avowal to Jesus Christ and agree to the rules.”

“I don’t think that is the avowal they have in mind. And I am not ready to give up what I have or submit to any rules.”

She looked baffled. Four jets flew overhead to somewhere, invisible in the gray clouds. A military invasion was expected so planes were shifted often. The citizens were armed, shoot to kill, the crazies took over the world. Those who were once relegated to secret clubs and basement bunkers and VFWs. Militias of mad fucking men. The roar of the jet engines made her twitch anxious like a mouse. He wanted to hold her but he was stuck. It would make him hurt worse, he knew, when she pulled away.

“I really miss the kids,” he said through heavy eyes.

She exhaled softly and swallowed as though in meditation. With eyes closed, she said passively, “They are fine, Tom. They are with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

“Yeah.”

Her eyes were still closed. “It wasn’t your fault, Thomas.”

She slipped in the car and closed the door. A sympathetic smile appeared shattered on her porcelain face. She rolled the window down and he gave her back the pamphlet. The radio in her car played news, loudly, more death tolls, more information, more public service announcements, and panic. There were no music channels. “You sure you don’t want to go with me to a cabin? I will let you chose which.”

She shook her head defiantly. “I don’t want to live in the past anymore.”

“Okay,” he sighed. “Well, don’t drink the Kool-Aid.”

“Please find God.” She shook her head and drove away. Goodbye in taillights. In the sound of tires on a wet road.

He limped away and sat in his car. That didn’t go so well, he thought. He took a couple pain pills for his leg. Chased them with a drink. He wiped the tears from his eyes and turned on the CD player. BJ Thomas sat next to him, hooked on a feeling. He stopped at the dog shelter and paid $30 to pick out a dog. They make you pay to look so you will take home something. He stood there looking into the dog’s kennel. Dog 4307. The dog calmly sat and looked back. It was a Border Collie-mix. “Your name is God,” he said to the dog. “Thus, I have found God.” He put God on a leash and they walked out. They drove to the grocery store and then found a cabin in the woods. If the terrorists win, he will never know until they come. George Harrison refuses to say anything other than Something or All Things Must Pass.  He had stolen the bell from the diner and put it on his table. And sometimes he rings it and smiles, his reflection in the curves, trying to remember still, the name of the turtle.