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Written by Andi Van den Berge

Published April 2024 in The Pitkin Review

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“You want coffee, Sugar?” Shelly asked as I sat down in the booth

closest to the parking lot.

“Yes, thank you.” I was panting from the walk across the highway

overpass. Twenty years old, but my lungs felt like meatloaf.

Four days had passed, and I hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep. I think

I got bored of trying. Her face was all I could see when I closed my eyes. I

leaned back in the booth and lit a Newport 100—those were Angie’s smokes of

choice. This was her table.

“You know what you want yet?” Shelly reached into her apron and

dumped a handful of little creamer buckets on the table next to my coffee mug.

“I’ll just have a regular hashbrown—diced, smothered, and covered.”

“Sorry Hon,” she paused. Shelly had waited on Angie and me before.

“We’re out of tomatoes tonight.”

“Just smothered and covered is fine.”

Angie and I met a year ago. We bonded over strange things like

eating popcorn off the pavement below the bleachers because we didn’t have

money for our own snacks. Or, falling asleep in the closet as a kid because the

clothes muffled drunk adult screams. 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 cast her aside as dirty trailer trash, but Angie was a

clever girl, even once she got into taking pain pills.

I caught myself staring off through the window. The ash of my cigarette

had grown two inches and was clinging hard to keep itself together.

“Here ya go, Hon.” Shelly sat my hashbrowns down. “Hope you don’t

mind me sayin’, but Chuck thought you looked a little down, so he threw an extra

slice of cheese on them taters for ya.” Shelly shot me a wink and walked back

behind the counter.

I rested my cigarette in the ashtray so I could wipe my eyes before

anyone could see. Then I scooped a fork full of hashbrowns into my mouth.

This is how Angie ate her hashbrowns—smothered and covered.