[This is directly transcribed, without changes or edits, from a journal entry dated May 15th, 2001]
…and I am sitting there in Nate’s diner waiting for her to arrive. Finally, my time running short, I get up to leave. At the counter, the night shift waitress turns over the reign to the day shift. Nate stands, friendly and smiling wryly with his shirtsleeve pinned up to this left shoulder, a war injury I assume — perhaps mistakenly. While the women bicker over tips and time clocks, Nate hands me a bag. “On the house,” he says. Because I have been stood up yet again by my breakfast date.
He smiles as I leave, wading through the snow to my car.
And when I wake, it is summer and I realize that somewhere between the diner and my car, I lost the bag Nate had given me, its paper bottom stained dark and greasy from the warm chorizo and eggs he had prepared special for me out of pity.
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