Patsy's Diner

by David Salner

Gerald had a dollar to buy two packs of Luckies for his father. 

They’d pulled in at Patsy’s Diner. It looked like a coach car from the railroad, all glass and polished metal, glinting in the sun, just off the south side of the Lincoln Highway.

The door was heavy. It closed softly behind him as he stepped inside. A wave of chatter came toward him from the lunch hour crowd. Everyone is going to stare at me, he thought. But only a few heads turned. The muffled background continued: jokes, gossip, business dealings over a Salisbury steak or as the last of the French fries were being picked from a white plate.

The cashier’s stand was immediately to his right, empty just now. Gerald stepped toward it, put a hand on the countertop and stared through the glass at the brands glistening in cellophane and arranged in neat rows: the bright red on the packs of Marlboro and Pall Mall; the white of the Chesterfield and Kent packages; and the short cigarettes his father smoked, Luckies with the neat bullseye, and Camels, which had a tan drawing of a camel standing solidly on the desert floor with a pyramid and palm trees in the distance. The words “Turkish & Domestic Blend” appeared right under the camel. Were there camels in Turkey? Pyramids?

Gerald held out his dollar as he leaned on the counter even though no one was there to field his request. Maybe someday he’d be one of those self-confident men who grinned broadly and called out, “Hey, Darlin’, you wanna take my money?” But he was only fifteen. And he probably wouldn’t grow up to be that kind of man no matter how much he might imagine it.

As he waited, a song came on the jukebox, the words drifting over the counter and the packed booths. The chatter fell away before the quavering voice of Hank Williams singing the opening words to “Take These Chains from My Heart.” Gerald knew this song was about the hold of an unhappy love, but he was surprised that adults were listening so intently. Didn’t adults grow out of feelings like that? 

For a year, he’d had a crush on Elaine Booker. Of course, he never told anyone. The other boys would have mocked him, including his friends. Especially them. They probably knew the feeling—and knew enough not to admit to it. Tell one person and it would be all over school. He was getting over Elaine, he told himself, and no longer felt funny when her name came up. If you lived in town you could walk home from school or hang out every day and you’d have an easier time forgetting the heartache because you’d be surrounded by other kids. But he lived in the country where life was lonelier. Each day he hoped she’d stop to talk to him in the hallway. On the bus ride home, he’d admit to himself that she no longer cared. But the next morning, before school, he’d be hopeful again.  

Now, as he waited at the cash register, he noticed the young woman standing by the jukebox. She wore a gray uniform, a knee-length dress with short ruffled sleeves and a white apron cinched around a slender waist. She was bent over, listening—so she must have just put the dime in for this song.

He listened as the plaintive voice penetrated the quiet of the diner, singing of unreturned love, how the feeling chained your heart and wouldn’t let go. Gerald thought about the unfairness of those feelings and imagined the chains, not the kind he put on the car for his father during a bad snow. That was a different kind of pain, because you couldn’t wear gloves and put chains on with any success. Hard to even untangle them wearing gloves let alone stretch them over the tires and position the tightening clips just so. 

The quiet in the diner continued. Every word in the song sounded with the depth of the heartache. It surprised Gerald to think that maybe everyone listening in the diner had had feelings like those voiced by the singer.

Then the young woman, the cashier, stepped to the register and took one last drag on her cigarette before placing it in the ashtray next to Gerald’s hand. She was not much older than he was. The voice over the jukebox was still there, begging the lover, the ex-lover, to wipe away his tears. This was followed by a momentary expression of hope. But everyone listening knew the singer’s situation wasn’t going to change, not for the better. 

The cashier waved her hand to shoo the smoke from her eyes. When she turned toward him, Gerald realized he knew her. Her gray eyes studied him, curious. Then her lips, a little chapped beneath the pale gloss of her lipstick, formed the hint of a smile.

“Gerald?”

She’d been the cashier at the drugstore in York. They’d talked as she’d rung up his copies of Sporting News and kidded him for sneaking a look at dirty magazines. Now she was working at Patsy’s and remembered his name. But had he ever heard hers?

She continued to study him. Then her smile melted away. “What can I get you?” 

“Two packs of Luckies, please … for my father.”

“I don’t care who they’re for, Gerald.” She was talking down to him now, an edge of weariness in her voice. She bent over to retrieve the Luckies from under the glass counter. She placed them beside his hand and leaned toward him, her eyes still filled with the sadness of the song. Then she rang up the sale and presented his change, fingers pressing the two quarters into his hand. The tarnished metal—the way she pressed the coins into his palm—he wondered if there was a message in that. 

He was still searching for something to say when a customer behind him coughed, wanting to pay for his lunch and go back to work. 

“Nice to see you,” he mumbled as he picked up the Luckies. She nodded as if she didn’t really care, the same way Elaine had sometimes nodded. 

He pushed on the heavy door and the silence at the end of the song followed him. He understood what the singer meant when he begged to be set free and wondered if this was what life had in store for him. And for this older girl, too.

Darlene. He finally remembered her name. He wanted to go back and say goodbye to her, say something clever, to cheer her up and to show he knew her name. But the door had already closed and he couldn’t think of anything clever to say. Besides, his father was waiting. 

He hurried over to the car and slid in next to his father, who grabbed for one of the packs, pulled at the little red ribbon around the top, and tore the cellophane off.

About the author

David Salner’s most recent poetry collections are The Green Vault Heist and Summer Words: New and Selected Poems, both appearing in 2023. His debut novel is A Place to Hide (2021), first prize winner for historical fiction from Next Generation Indie Book Awards. His poetry appears in many magazines including Threepenny Review, North American Review, Ploughshares, Valparaiso Poetry Review, and Sundial. He’s worked as an iron ore miner, steelworker, librarian, and baseball usher.

About the illustration

The illustration is of a woman at cash register viewed through diner show window with buildings reflected. Photograph taken by Angelo Rizzuto in February, 1959. The Library of Congress. In the public domain.