I fired a look over in the direction of the flatulence and saw a well-greased old prospector in a straw cowboy hat that was literally falling apart on his bald head. He slunk back into his chair with a slight grin and started forking at some wet pancakes.
“Just have a seat. Char’s gone,” a friendly voice called out from the middle of the dining area where a guy with a snow white push broom mustache wearing a Canadian tuxedo coated with dust was nursing a cup of coffee.
“Thanks,” I said in the most non-bitchy tone that I could summon at the moment and then immediately whispered at Kyle. “Should we just go?”
“Are you kidding me? This is great.”
I knew Kyle was going to say that. He had that obnoxious hipster crumbling Americana fetish thing where he relished bars full of borderline homeless people, thrift shop t-shirts and the fact that he could pack all of his possessions into his 1994 RAV4, even at the age of 31.
“But seriously, there is probably going to be like babies in the food, and they don’t even have a waitress.”
Right on cue, the odor of musty smokes replaced the lingering stench of hot fart and a nearly-elderly woman with a bun of salty black hair who sounded and looked like she had been smoking a pack a day since she was 12 walked past us with an announcement.
“Sit anywhere you like. Menus are on the table.”
Kyle led me through the graveyard of vacant tables until he settled on a little two-seater near where the old man with the mustache who had first spoken to us had been before he had vanished like some kind of truck stop ghost in an old CB radio song from the 70s. We took seats across from each other and the immediate presence of Kyle’s smile actually put my at ease in a place that seemingly should have never elicited looks of joy from someone with more than three years left on their lifespan.
“I gotta take a piss,” Kyle announced and took off towards the entrance.
I numbly scanned the laminated menu with razor sharp corners as soon as Kyle left while being mad at myself for leaving my phone in the car.
