Customer Service by Nora Greenstein Biondi

AmeriCymru
@americymru
11/30/17 11:45:14PM
112 posts

The bell was broken. So were the jukeboxes. Moira stared hard at the doorframe where the rusted bell used to sit chirping shrilly every time a new person came to stain the tablecloths.

The man in the duck-yellow crocheted hat said nothing, even as he watched her turn a different angle away from him.

Moira brushed off the table and each crumb fell on the linoleum.

Why are you here?” she asked, her face blank and red.

Camron didn’t answer. He just stared at the crumbs and, after a fourteen second long silence, her grassy tennis shoes. They kept squeaking as she moved each toe separately inside of them.

Eventually she turned to look at his eyebrows. Three hairs, all in between his eyes. That was when the rag dropped.

Christ, what is it?”

I’ve come to talk.”

To my shoes?”

Her eyelids were the same shade as her left iris.

I….you….dropped something.”

Twenty seconds.

I’m at work.” She’d brought her thumb and index finger to rest right above her perfectly arched eyebrows.

I know. That’s how I knew where to find you.”

He heard a little breath and then watched her tongue fiddle with a gold bicuspid.

Thirty seconds.

Mom misses you.” It came out in a one word mumble and the arches went flat. A ruby flashed from her thumb.

They may have shared a nose, but that didn’t stop her from bringing four knuckles squarely into it. With a small pop he joined the rag on the floor with all the other crumbs she’d dropped.

After a little lick to her fingertip to find a fresh page, Moira wrote FIX BELL in large looping script and slapped her waitress pad onto the cake counter.

Three sneaker squeaks.

You’ve seen the door, I’m sure.”




updated by @americymru: 11/30/17 11:45:56PM