The Diner Part 3, the finale.

( so here is part 3 of 3, look in the two blogs before this is you need 1 and 2.  I will get back to my life next week, but here is my favorite of my own writing.)

And, during that time, if you were there when the Harley roared up you could see her cringe. You could see her wince and her bottom lip tremble. If you timed it just right, or, more likely, just wrong, you could hear an argument hotter than the grill, erupt in the kitchen on the other side of the swing door. 

One day, after words with her not so dreamy anymore, dreamboat, Phyllis ran to the ladies room. Patti, another The  Blue Plate girl followed her in. When they came out a while later, their orders had backed up a little but Phyllis smiled and got to work like the trooper she was. Puffy-eyed with fresh make up on, she charged from table to table before the good food got cold.

And she stayed past her shift, not talking too much but quiet in the corner with the local paper and untouched pie. So she was still in the diner when the cops, Sergeant Banner, and his young faced deputy told her that the Harley had missed a turn down on 92.  It had crossed the tracks and plunged into the April cold river. 

It doesn’t pay to look too much like James Dean.

And that’s the third time anyone could remember Phyllis missing work, the day of his funeral. The diner even closed and it hadn’t been closed since VE day. After his dry-eyed service, she went back into the diner.  Everybody had been at the funeral, now they too, drifted toward the comfort of the diner. 

Bob, the owner and the one who made such greet pie, let the town in for free for a couple hours that afternoon. Soon, before anybody could stop her, Phyllis had her apron on over her black dress and was pouring coffee and collecting sympathy. That was the only day the regulars poured more than Phyllis. She poured coffee and they poured back well wishes.  It was a great day.

And after that day, little Jenny Wren, Phyllis’s daughter, no bigger than a wren came to work, too. When she wasn’t in school or Girl Scouts or 4H she was on the stool closest to the ladies room. She did her schoolwork there, brought her friends there after school or a dance or a movie. The regulars could tell when college breaks were because Jenny came back to the diner instead of gadding off to Fort Lauderdale like the shallow co-eds. 

And when Jenny grew up, she couldn't leave. She came back to the diner, even with a college degree. She came back with a more reasonable husband than her father had been.  He took her old stool and she put on the pink The  Blue Plate shirt and went to work. He kidded his mother-in-law something awful but you could see some of that old look in her eyes when he came into the place. You could see her begin to grin when his old truck came into the parking lot. You could see her eyes gleam when he came blustering in and kissed her cheek, while everyone watched.  

And you could see a duet then. The reasonable husband sitting on his stool, all the regulars in their booths, and Phyllis and Jenny dancing from the counter to the tables before the food got cold. Phyllis was a little slower, maybe, but still full of Honeys and Sweethearts, and never spilling a drop of The  Blue Plate good coffee. 

And, all things being equal a diner is a diner. But we have both Phyllis and Jenny and maybe that’s why the food at The  Blue Plate is so darn good. 

The End.

I wrote this from a prompt at my writers group, "all things being equal," but I had been thinking how much i love local diners for a long while. It all came together with the prompt. What do you write?