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“But I am not hungry, I just ate.”
“So sorry, but that’s the policy. You want to use our restroom, no problem. But you must be a customer first and order something. That’s the policy.” Holding up the bathroom key to show her what such policies look like.
“But that’s not fair.”
“Fair?”
“Why have a restroom if people can’t use it?”
“You can use it but first, according to the owner, there is a procedure that goes like this: paying customers, first, restroom, second.”
Meanwhile, there is a cook who is forever scraping at the grill, flipping hamburgers, pulling French fries from an oily vat. He wears a hairnet. There is something sadly plain and cookery about him. I think he has a beard. Nearby, a waitress busily wipes tabletops.
“Very unfair to those of us who aren’t hungry and need to use the bathroom,” she says, a firm grasp on her very pregnant belly.
“Yes, well, I will take it up with the owner the next time I see him.”
“Well until you do, can I slip into your restroom for just a moment, and I promise I will leave everything squeaking clean,” she says, trying out a smile.
He considers this, looking up at the ceiling and now down at his shoes, until,
“But I could lose my job if the owner were to ever find out. He’s like that. I’d be fired in a minute.”
“Yes, well, I promise not to tell.”
The waitress looks up and nods before returning to the tables, moving a napkin holder from here to there.
“Yes, but if he were to walk in unexpectedly, it has happened before, and saw what was what, I’d be in trouble.”
She shuffles. “Yes, but what are the chances of that happening? I mean, really? See, if you had allowed me to use the restroom in the beginning, when I first walked in so very long ago, I ‘d be gone, out the door with no owner to worry about.”
“That’s true.”
She shuffles again. “Please, I will be as quick as humanly possible.” Two hands on her belly now.
The manager goes back to scanning the ceiling lights, followed by a quick glance over his shoulder before whispering, “Ok, but hurry.” And he quickly unlocks the bathroom door.
She steps through the doorway that says Restrooms. This is when the manager decides it is a good time to wash his hands, and when he does that is exactly when the owner, a thin dishdasha with large brown hands, walks in the front door.
He is all business, is the owner, and not bothering to good morning anyone, he immediately goes to the cash register to count the money.
The manager’s eyes have not stopped looking at the restroom. The waitress, whose nametag says Sara but everyone knows her as Nancy, looks up to give an obligatory ‘Good morning’ before going back to re-wiping tabletops. By the time the owner takes what he needs and looks up to see what is what with his restaurant: waitress cleaning tables—check—cook cooking—check—manager keeping a watchful eye on the restrooms—check. All is right with the restaurant world.
And of course that is when she comes walking out of the restroom.
She smiles, saying, “Thank you” to the manager, as she gingerly steps out into the morning. The owner looks at the tables again, at the manager, back at the tables; he sees nothing in the way of a paying customer, and says so, “A customer, that one?”
The manager tries looking up at the ceiling lights again but before he can answer, the waitress says, “Yes, I just cleaned her table. So yes, sir.”
The owner looks at her as if he has never seen her before, a stranger who has walked in off the streets to wipe tables, before finally remembering. “Is that so.”
Sara, who has not stopped wiping tables, repeats, “Yes sir, it is.”
The owner considers this for a moment before looking up at the ceiling lights, announcing, “This one needs a new bulb.” His restaurant ownership all done, he walks out, leaving the manager and waitress, not to mention the cook who, hearing a big quiet, stops cooking long enough to look up, asking the manager, “What?”
About Craig Loomis
For the last twenty years (2004-2024) Craig Loomis taught English at the American University of Kuwait in Kuwait City. Over the years, he has had his short fiction published in such literary journals as The Iowa Review, The Colorado Review, The Prague Revue, Sukoon Magazine, The Maryland Review, The Louisville Review, Bazaar, The Rambler, The Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles The Prairie Schooner, Yalobusha Review, Fiction International and others. In 1995 his short story collection, A Softer Violence: Tales of Orient. London: Minerva Press was published; and, spring 2013 Syracuse University Press published another collection of his short stories entitled The Salmiya Collection: Stories of the Life and Times of Modern Day Kuwait. October 2021, his novel: This is a Chair: A Lyrical Tale of Love, Death and Other Curriculum Challenges was published by Sixty Degrees Publishing. The short story collection Where the Clouds Begin: Tales from the California Foothills, Sixty Degrees Publishing was published Nov. 2022.
