It. (rasatabula) wrote in repose, @ 2015-11-30 20:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | *log, cat dubrovna, jack penhaligon |
Selina C/Jack P: the (bad) diner
Who: Selina C and Jack P
What: Breakfast
When: Shortly after Thanksgiving
Where: The (bad) diner
The weekend slumped on from the surge of poor decision-making and exploratory surgery on bank-accounts, toward a clear-eyed week. Jack emerged, as did the start of the Christmas season, bleary-eyed and jaw and throat roughened with blond grizzle and aimed steadfast for the diner on the other side of town from the newspaper office lodged over the bookstore. Across town was safer. The food could be relied upon to be pure grease, and the owner wasn't cheerful. Jack regarded most cheer as obnoxious when hungover, and cheer without reason cruel and unusual punishment.
He would, in the eventuality, scrape himself clean of the detritus of a weekend determined to forget the season. Buried in take-out, the TV gone to snow and the better part of a bottle of tequila sunk in vain-glorious effort to wipe out the weekend, he had the best of intentions toward sobering up properly, to write yet another yawningly boring set of articles on bake-sales, church drives and Christmas preparations. It would be dull. It would be destined, as the lovely pair that graced the music shop, served to remind him, as the recipient for bird shit.
This was morbidly depressing, and he trudged into the diner on the less salubrious side of town, better-scrubbed but still bloodshot about the eyes, the faded washed-blue set on a sprawl of newspaper by writers who actually wrote prose that wasn't chewed over until it was about as appetizing as boiled porridge. Distraction in the name of a beautiful woman never went amiss. Jack brightened: particularly when she had fond associations with good alcohol.
"I thought you were a good side of town kind of diner," he commented, over steaming black coffee that smelled strongly of burned beans.