The Bottomless Cup by Elizabeth Harper

Back From Her Coffee Break

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 04:46:35 -0500

Pie...ugh! Effie absolutely hated when people asked about pie. Most of her regulars avoided the question and when they wanted pie, they either spoke in a kind of code or got up and looked for themselves. People who lived around here knew the rules. If you came in to Waxy’s and asked for pie, you had to listen to what was referred to as the roll call. Years before when Wally’s mama Gert had opened the diner, she’d quickly become know for two things, the bottomless cup of coffee and her pies. It wasn’t just the way they tasted that brought people in, but the little show you got in response to the question, “ What kind of pie do you have?” Effie paused for a second before asking with a bit more attitude than necessary, “ Are you sure you want pie?” The newcomer looked a little confused and said, “Well yeah, maybe...it depends on what kind you have.” “Alright ,” she thought to herself. Taking a deep breath, Effie launched into a round of pie poetry, the extra ingredient in the daily servings dished out at Waxy’s.

Pie, pie, you say you want pie,
there’s a bunch on the counter
that you’ll just have to try.
There’s sweet potato, rutabaga, peach cobbler and more
blackberry, blueberry, chocolate cream you’ll adore.
Apple, and cherry, lemon ice and strawberry,
with crumbles and creams, Gert’s pies are a dream.
The pumpkin and custards round out the rest,
there’s chess and shoofly, but it’s always a guess
to see what you’ll choose or which you’ll like best.
So could you just flip a coin and let me skip all this mess.

Alright, so the last line was pure Effie, but it was all she could do to recite what she considered bad poetry about pies. Her last therapist, Wendy would say she was being passive aggressive, but she could never spout that nonsense without adding a last line of her own.

When she finished the blond stranger just sat there for the second or two it took for him to absorb what she’d just said. Effie wondered how long he was going to sit there with his mouth half open like that. “ Well, what will it be? “ Effie asked. He blinked his mismatched colored eyes twice looking a little confused and said, “ I’m sorry, but could you repeat that?” Effie gave him the kind of look her mama used to refer to as the one she saved for idiots and rolling her eyes she sighed and paused for a second before starting in again with Gert’s little pie ditty.

Damn that Gert, for all her peculiar ways and Wally too, for keeping these crazy customs in place. He said he wanted to honor his mama and now that she had passed on to her reward, it would give him some peace to still hear her little poems once in a while. There were others who enjoyed them as well though Effie had never been a fan, not even when she was on the other side of the counter as a customer.

Some of the older folks still liked to stop by a few times a week to have one of Gert’s rhymes with their slice of pie and bottomless cup. Wally liked to call these old folks, “ Wrinklies” even though he had to be at least 70 himself. With skin hanging round his own face and neck, he looked more like one of those dogs with the wrinkled faces than somebody who should be standing over a grill in the busy kitchen. She thought for a minute about what those wrinkled face dogs were called, Shar...something or other, Effie couldn’t remember exactly what you called them. She thought about asking her daughter later when she got home because she was sure she’d know. Grace had been dog crazy since she was a little girl and could tell you anything you wanted to know about them right down to what went into the mixed breeds that you could get at the local pound. Grace was always reminding her that they were called animal shelters now, saying it with the same kind of eye roll that Effie reserved for customers like the one in front of her waiting for another shot at the roll call. She’d try remember that later, shelter not pound if she wasn’t too tired. Taking a breath, she just started down the rhyming pie list again when the man shouted, “Peach cobbler” so loudly that half the diner turned around. “Humph!” Effie thought, you didn’t have to yell....

Second Cup

Tue, 4 Nov 2008 19:44:30 -0500

“What’s your pleasure, darling?” Effie said, taking a closer look still trying to decide if he might be married. While she could tell as she approached the table that his left hand was not wearing a ring, no wedding ring was not always the best confirmation of an unmarried man. Still, it was always something she looked for at a first meeting.

She’d learned how to spot the less obvious clues during the years she’d worked at Waxy’s. Men from out of town passed through here all the time now since the state road works had built the new highway. Time was, you only saw town folks you’d known your whole life, but now with the new road coming through two years ago, Effie’s fish bowl life had become an ocean of possibility.

She knew she shouldn’t think of men as something you catch, like a big tuna on deep sea fishing trip down in Florida, but right now she could do with a shot at something decent. She thought about the silver salmon she managed to get on her line the one time she’d been able to make it to Alaska to visit her sister. Hell, it wasn’t even salmon season when that big fish took the bait intended for some other type of fish. Effie couldn’t remember now what kind they’d been after and it didn’t matter anyway, all she needed to remember was that a married man was never going be her catch of the day.

She glanced back over her shoulder at the blond stranger while pouring the old guy sitting across from him his second cup. “You want some coffee too?” she asked, waiting for him to decide what interested him on the menu. He looked over at the counter like he was looking for something in particular and then turned back around and looked up at her. “What kind of pie do you have?” he asked, and she noticed then that his eyes were two different colors. Without thinking she slowly raised her left eyebrow in a perfect arch, a gesture made famous by Vivian Leigh when she created the character Scarlett, in Gone with the Wind. Effie had practiced this look over and over as a teenager never quite getting it right as she stood in front of the old mirror that had been hers growing up. She’d been fourteen the first time she taken to her bed claiming to be sick so she could read the story she loved all weekend, uninterrupted by her portion of the family chores.

Hiding away behind her closed bedroom door, she’d read the parts from Margaret Mitchell’s famous book that stood out in her mind from the movie. Having seen the block buster hit of its day several times, she’d memorized the places where the Leigh’s Scarlett would lift her left eyebrow in order to emphasize whatever she was thinking or feeling in the moment. As much as she worked at it, Effie could never make her left eyebrow go up and down independent of the other one. Lord knows she practiced, but she always ended up making faces that looked more like the skinny actor with the deep voice that she remembered from the old black and white horror films she saw growing up. More Vincent Price than Vivian Leigh she thought and she finally quit trying after a couple of years. By then she’d outgrown the childish fantasies of a fourteen year old girl. A girl who was happy to be home alone on a Friday night reading her favorite book while pretending to be Vivian Leigh. It wasn’t long after that, that she swapped her evenings with Margaret Mitchell for date nights with Marty, the teenage Rhett Butler of her dreams. Marty, the boy who’d had the most amazing eyes, just like this stranger, with one green and one blue.

The Bottomless Cup

Sat, 1 Nov 2008 04:44:01 -0400

Effie Harris watched him as he came through the door. He was a cute sort of guy, maybe thirtyish, it was kind of hard to be sure in the low light of the diner. Damn, sometimes she wished Wally wasn’t so cheap, she never could get a good look at anybody in this place anymore, not unless she was practically standing on top of them. She was too young to be needing glasses she told herself. Although she was closer to forty than she ever admitted, there were still a few people who thought she looked about thirty in the right light. Well, the only folks that really said that anymore were some of the men she met down Charlie’s Bucket-O-Suds. It was usually late at night after she and Wally had closed up Waxy’s Cafe for the night. And while she knew she could still hold her own next to almost any woman in this tiny town, she also knew what too many beers and a night full of loneliness could do to man. Yep, her mama always said, “don’t trust anything a man says when it’s time for last call and they’re heading for home.”

She watched as the blond haired man sat down at the table in the corner with the old guy who always sat alone drinking his coffee, looking like he was waiting for something. Long before Wally had inherited Waxy’s from his mama when she died, there had been what they referred on the menu as, the bottomless cup. What that meant was, more coffee for the customer and more work for Effie. With the amount of teenagers drinking coffee these days she wished they’d charge after the second cup so she wouldn’t be run ragged by a bunch kids that ought to be still drinking milk instead of getting hopped on caffeine. Sometimes, around 4:00 when school let out and she knew they’d be coming by to take up her booth space, she make a bunch of decaf and pour that in their cups like it was high test.

She carried a pot of coffee to the table with her to offer the old man a refill and to see what she could do for this new guy in town. As she got closer to the table, she noticed his glasses for the first time and was suddenly thankful for Wally’s low watt bulbs from Value City. She smiled a bit brighter when she saw that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. He was different looking than the men she normally took orders from. Taking orders was what it felt like most days, “well that is what a waitress does,” her sister Louise would say, “if you wanted more for your life, you should have thought about that before climbing into the backseat of Marty’s car when you were sixteen.” Easy enough for Lu, as she liked to call her just to irritate her. She’d gone off to Wichita State on an art scholarship and married the first smart boy she met. Now she was living up in Alaska with her husband and boys doing things every day with her life that Effie could only dream of.

More refills coming soon....