At Certain Points We Touch by Lauren John Joseph

Author:Lauren John Joseph
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781526631312
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2021-12-27T00:00:00+00:00

XII

I’m dipping fries in mayonnaise one morning at Kellogg’s Diner. Morgan is looking wan and restless, occasionally tracing loops on her plate in ketchup. Her job at the shoe shop has come to an end. Not because she was fired, she is keen to explain, but because the landlord was raising the rent on the store. Now that it has become such a prime spot, her boss could no longer afford the lease.

‘Just think,’ she says, ‘two years ago it was all thrift stores and strip clubs.’

‘It still is,’ I say.

‘Yeah, but now a second-hand blouse costs $180, and the strip club has a wine list,’ she snarks.

The diner is just one street over from our apartment, it’s open 24/7, and so we often end up at the table in the window if we can’t sleep, if there’s something playing on our minds. The menu is famously bad and the service is worse, but it’s deeply soothing to slide in at 3.30 a.m., slurp a chocolate shake and doodle on napkins.

Because it’s cheap, and because it’s right off the L-train, and because you can always get a spot, all sorts of people turn up. Performers come in after gigs, and ravers come after clubs, subway drivers come in before their shifts, mourners hold all-night wakes over refillable cups of dishwater coffee, and taxi drivers stop by for breakfast before they go to bed. In amongst the insomniacs, adolescent hair metal fans, and hustlers in repose, there’s often an actor from TV trying to lay low in the corner, or a drunken downtown luminary squawking and holding court over a coterie of acolytes and half-cut twinks. Sometimes we see a few of the burlesque girls too, coming in late after a show, dressed down in athleisure wear, but with their stage make-up and extravagant wigs still on. Sometimes they just wave, more often they come over and air kiss us, ask how things are going, and order a few new rhinestoned bras from Morgan, her sideline in underwear-for-strippers having boomed exponentially.

This morning though, it’s unusually quiet, just Morgan, me, and someone’s lonely abuelita, struggling on a grilled American cheese sandwich, with Celine Dion drifting through the diner on the airwaves. We finish our fries and ask for some water, the waitress sloshes our plastic glasses three-quarters full with disinterest, then departs.

Morgan plonks a big fat book on the table, a huge 1980s volume on Mexican history, all laid out in coffee and cream, which she found lying in the street earlier in the evening. Unable to ignore it, she had scooped up the book and lugged it about all night, clinging to it like a Kisbee ring. She’s dying to crack it open, and though I’m not really all that interested, I play along because she seems sort of blue. She sweeps our dirty napkins and empty condiment sachets aside, clears a space for the book, and begins to read, poring over the soiled pages, though many of them are stuck together and tear as she flips through.

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