Written by Andi Van den Berge
Published April 2024 in The Pitkin Review
“You want a warmup, sugar?”
“Yeah, thank you.”
“I’ll be back with more cream.” The waitress said.
I leaned my back against the booth and lit a Newport 100—those were Angie’s smoke of choice. And this was her table. I couldn’t sleep so I thought a late-night trip to Waffle House was better than lying awake watching my imagination play out scenes from her last night with us. I didn’t have the patience for how many times my brain hit the replay button, each time a touch more disturbed than the last. If I was going to be stuck awake, I decided I’d at least get something to eat.
“You know what you want yet?”
Shelly, the waitress, reached into her apron and dumped a handful of creamers on the table.
“I’ll just have a regular hashbrown—diced, smothered, and covered.”
“Sorry hun, we’re outa tomatoes tonight”
“Just smothered and covered is fine.”
Angie and I met a year ago and became best friends practically that same day. Her dad was also an alcoholic with a temper, so we bonded over strange things like falling asleep in the closet as a kid. Sometimes I thought we’d lived parallel lives. I told her that once. She said No way because it would be impossible for us to meet. Most people casted her aside as dirty trailer trash, but she was a clever girl, even when she was wasted.
I caught myself staring off through the window. My cigarette was half ash at that point, clinging hard to keep itself together.
“Here ya go hun.” Shelly sat my hashbrowns down. “Hope you don’t mind me sayin, but I thought you looked a little down on your luck, so I asked Chuck over there to throw an extra slice of cheese on the taters for ya.”
I could feel the pooled tears in my ducts. “You’re very kind, thank you.”
She gave me a wink and walked back behind the counter. I laid my cigarette down and wiped my eyes before anyone else could see. When you grow up without a lot of affection, something as simple as a stranger giving you a piece of cheese can bring you to tears. I scooped a fork full of hashbrown into my mouth.
Angie and I loved Waffle House because it was one of the only restaurants in town that still allowed smoking inside. And this is how she ate her hashbrowns—smothered and covered—like the body she left behind.
A. VDB 