The lunch crowd was long gone and the dinner crowd was not due for a couple of hours. Julie drew contentedly on her cigarette, glad that her shift would end before then. Eugene was coming to meet her, and they were expected at her mother's house for dinner. She hadn't introduced a boyfriend to Mother in years, but today she felt confident. Eugene was so steady; he had a good job and no bad habits. He had nice hair. He was just the type of guy who would impress her mom.
Only three of the tables had customers, and most of the rest were still messy from lunch. Julie put out her cigarette and pushed the cleaning trolley out from behind the counter. Choosing a table at random, she piled the dirty dishes on the trolley, pocketed some change that had been left as a tip, and used the slimy dishrag to wipe the crumbs off the edge of the table into her hand. In the next booth, several older men smoked cigarettes and lingered over cold coffee. One of them was speaking.
"...forced me into an early retirement, even though I feel I was still contributing. I think I know why, too, and it's just not fair, in fact it's for a reason that's nothing short of bizarre.
"It all started when I went to the bathroom one day. I was sitting on the john and I looked at the space where the door is hinged into the door frame. Not on the bathroom door, see, but on the door of the stall I was sitting in. It was dusty and there were four fingerprints there. This didn't bother me, but then I thought about it for a while and I realized that it just didn't make sense. You see, first of all, the fingerprints were only about one foot above the floor, and that means the person who left them must have been kneeling or bent way over. Why would someone do that?"
"Maybe they were peeking under the door," said a second man, "Some pervert?"
"Right. That's what I thought," said the first man, "At least at first. But wait. Think about this. When the door is shut because somebody is inside, there's no way even a child could get their fingers into that space. It's only a quarter of an inch wide. So the fingers must have been placed there when the door was open. But if the door is open, then anybody who wants to look in, can just look in through the open doorway. See what I mean?"
Julie pushed the trolley up to a booth next to the window and looked at the sky, wondering if it would rain by the time she finished her shift. The clouds were thicker and darker than they had been that morning. Frowning, she began to bus the table. Nearby, two young women, college students most likely, lingered over their soft drinks. One of them, waving her hands expressively, was telling a story.
"...Me and Sigrid were bar-hopping and we met a girl we knew from high school. The bars were about to close and she had been invited to some party in the West Island, so we decided to tag along. The party was in a basement apartment, and when we walked up we could hear music and lots of noise, so we thought it would be a blast. But when we walked in, there was a big fight going on.
"I would have gotten out of there right away, except I didn't realize at first that it was a fight. I walked a few steps into the hallway, and it was really crowded, right? But then I realized these guys were shoving each other around, a whole bunch of guys, not just two of them, and one of them got shoved into me, and I was knocked into the wall."
"That's frightening! Were you hurt?"
"No. I just have a bruise from where my shoulder hit the wall. But by then the guys were throwing punches, and some of them were rolling around on the floor, wrestling, and I realized it was a real brawl, but I couldn't get back to the front door because I would have had to run between these fighting people."
"Was it all guys fighting? Or were girls fighting too?"
"Everybody in the party was fighting. Every second, it got worse. Sigrid was fighting, and I couldn't see Ginny..."
"She's the girl we went there with. The girl we knew in high school. I think she was behind me when we walked in, and she must have just turned right around and left, because I never saw her again that night."
"She got bumped into by one of the guys, or something, and she got pissed off. She fights all the time, though, and against guys, not just girls. She's really tough. She probably enjoyed it."
"Well, I looked into the kitchen, but people were fighting in there, too, so I couldn't reach the back door either. There was a bathroom door, but it was closed and I was afraid to open it. Then I saw a girl going into the bedroom, so I ran in there with her, and there were about five of us in there. It was all of the people who didn't want to fight. The bedroom was like some sort of sanctuary for non-fighters..."
Julie wheeled the trolley to another table and wiped it down. The sugar jar was empty, so she filled it from the bin on the trolley, and then pushed napkins into the dispenser.
At the next table were three men who had ordered club sandwiches. Two of them had finished, but the third man was talking and his food had hardly been touched.
"...I was depressed about breaking up with Susan and I knew that dating was the only thing that could take my mind off her, and all the things that happened. So I decided to ask out this woman who lives in the next apartment building from me. And the only chance I had to ask her out is when she happened to leave or enter her building at the same time as me."
"That's a pretty small window of opportunity."
"That's right. Far too small. The only good thing about it is that she parks inside, so she has to open the garage door, get in the car and drive a few yards, then get out of the car to close the door. So it gives me a few seconds to start a conversation. But the timing is still a matter of luck. And of course, after the first time I noticed her, I kept seeing her, but then after the final phone call where Susan and I called it quits, I would look for this lady whenever I went to the parking lot, but all of a sudden my luck had dried up and I didn't see her for about a week.
"Then one night I stayed home because I had to do my laundry, and I saw that her car was not in the garage, so while my clothes were in the machine, I sat outside on the front steps. I was hoping to widen that window of opportunity. But I didn't see her. Then of course I eventually had to go and put the clothes into the dryer, and when I got back outside I couldn't be sure that she hadn't come home in the meantime. So I pretended to be going to my car, so that I could look in through the garage window and see if her car was there. Before I got to the garage window, I saw her car parked in the parking lot, near mine. I had just missed her, after all.
"Then I heard a noise behind me, and I turned around to look, and it was her. She was just coming out of her building. So I said hi and started a conversation, and it was a little awkward at first, but then I asked her out and she said yes."
"The date was fine. We went to a movie and then we went to a cafe and had a soft drink and talked for about three hours. But there's one more thing I want to tell you. A couple of weeks before I asked her out, I came home late one night and when I swung in to the driveway my headlights lit up the face of a young man who was coming out from between the two buildings. Then, when I got out of my car, I saw some broken glass on the ground a few feet away. I didn't think anything of it, but the next morning there was a cop car behind the building. I went out to see what was going on, and found out that the car of my upstairs neighbor had been broken into the night before. I told the cops about seeing broken glass, and about seeing the young man just before, but of course I had no proof that he was the one who did it..."
Finished bussing tables, Julie moved back to her station behind the lunch counter and lit another cigarette. From her vantage point behind the counter, Julie was able to watch all of the tables. A good waitress, she frequently glanced around the room, and was able to tell by a customer's body language whether they required her attention. From here the separate conversations coalesced into a murmur of background noise. At a time like the present, when the diner was not too busy, Julie had learned how to filter out all conversations but one, and could listen in if something interesting was being discussed. She did this now, focusing on first one conversation and then another, much in the same way that one browses among television stations with a remote control.
"...and then I noticed the fingerprints in a third bathroom. By now I was really curious, so whenever I needed to go to the bathroom, I would wander around the building and find a different one, so that I could look for the fingerprints. And there they'd be, always in the same spot..."
"...our second date I took her to that cozy little restaurant on St. Denis. You know, the one where all of the walls have big aquariums full of tropical fish. And it went well, again. I tell you, I really like this lady a lot. And afterwards, when I drove her home, she invited me inside. I didn't know what this meant, but when we got inside I heard music playing and she called out, `Hi dear, I'm back' to somebody, and that's how I found out she had a son..."
"...when suddenly the bedroom door opened and this guy stumbled in, with blood pouring from his nose. We closed the door and then we started to help him. It was funny; it felt like we were army nurses or something, with this war going on right outside the door, and then a wounded man comes in and we all rush to treat his injuries. Anyways, I got a rag and washed away the blood, and another girl felt his nose and told him it wasn't broken. Then the guy starts to hit on me! He was asking for my phone number, and I gave it to him, mostly because I felt kind of sorry for him..."
"...so I was sitting on her living room couch and her son walked in and she introduced us. And it was the same young man I saw walking past me, you know, the night my neighbor's car was broken into. I recognized him right away, but I tried not to look surprised. I'm sure she didn't notice anything, but he looked at me a little strangely, I thought, and there was a tension in the air while we were shaking hands..."
"...Sigrid and I compared notes, and as far as we can figure it, the guy she beat up at the party was the same guy who came into the bedroom with the bleeding nose. I mean, he fits her description perfectly, and the guy she was fighting had a bloody nose, and she said he kicked her right in the crotch and she fell down, like, in a hundred percent pain, and when she got back up he had disappeared. She couldn't figure out where he went, so maybe he ducked into the bedroom while she was lying on the floor..."
"...more and more mysterious, until one day I walked into the bathroom in the payroll department, and there was this man, one of the management types, fresh out of business school, all gussied up in a fancy suit; and he was just straightening up, in a hurry because I had walked in and surprised him, and I tell you, he looked guilty as hell, and he was standing in the right place so that, crouched down, he could have been holding onto the door of the stall in just that particular spot where the fingerprints always are..."
"...tell the police. I mean, I think I'm morally obligated to tell them that the young man I saw the night the car was burgled is the same young man who lives in the next building. But how is this woman going to feel about me, if her son gets arrested for breaking into a car, and she finds out that I got him caught? And what if he didn't do it? What will she think of me then?"
"...and then Sigrid got this really crafty look in her eyes and told me she had a plan. She wants me to go on a date with this guy and tell her where we're going. Then she's going to show up and confront him. I don't know if she wants to just tell him off, or if she's going to beat him up, or what. Anyway, the guy did call, and I'm supposed to have dinner with him tomorrow night..."
"...called into my supervisor's office, and that little creep from the bathroom was leaving as I went in, and he was smirking at me. Then my supervisor told me I was being downsized. At first I was in shock because the news was so unexpected, and it wasn't until a few days later that it occurred to me that the fellow went and made me lose my job, just because I saw him doing something strange in the bathroom..."
Julie saw someone pass by the plate glass window at the front of the diner, then the door swung open and Eugene walked in, smiling widely at her. He took two steps into the restaurant, then stopped in his tracks. His jaw dropped and his gaze moved from one group of customers to another. Julie realized that all of the conversations had stopped, and all three storytellers were staring at the young man, with expressions that mingled recognition, anger, suspicion, and disgust. One by one, all of the heads in the restaurant turned, as each person began to stare wordlessly at Eugene. And Julie came to a sudden realization.