I've waited on some strange people during my various stints as a waitress, but I have never met anyone like the man who came into the restaurant during my Friday double shift.
The man loitered near the front door. He looked confused, like maybe he was waiting for someone. He took a couple steps toward the pie case, bent, assessed the pie. Then he leaned over and started talking to another of the waitresses. It almost looked like he was trying to be sly about smelling her.
"Do you guys have reubens?" he asked.
"Yes, we sure do," the waitress said.
"Yeah," the guy said, "I know. I had one yesterday when I came in with my wife and kids."
The waitress looked confused. I widened my eyes at her.
"Well, you've had our reubens then," she said. "Did you enjoy?"
He said he did. He said he enjoyed them so much that he came in for another today. Then he sauntered off toward a booth. He walked with a sway, a sway that said I am not entirely sober right now.
"He's all yours," the waitress told me, and she passed me a menu.
The man was dressed in tattered jeans, boots, a worn plaid shirt, and a cowboy hat that was decorated with a crown of fresh flowers. His hair--ringlets tinged with gray--fell down past his shoulders and looked suspiciously like it hadn't been washed in several days.
"You can just put the order for the reuben in," he told me.
"Okay," I said. "And what can I get you to drink?"
"Water," he said. "I'm a water-man." Then he sang a little song about being a water man. Water, water, water-man.
I nodded slowly, in case he was having trouble seeing me--because by this point it was clear that he was stoned out of his mind--and I started walking back to the kitchen.
"Wait!" he said. I turned. "What kind of soup do you have?"
We had creamy kielbasa soup (winner in the Most Creative Way to Get Rid of the Leftover Kielbasa Casserole Special from Yesterday category) and our standard French onion, so I told him so.
"Can I have the menu?" he asked. He plucked it out of my hand and spread it out in front of him. He traced his fingers over the words HOMEMADE SOUP. "Can I keep this for a bit?" he asked. He kept tracing the words. He wouldn't stop.
"Sure," I said. "And can I get you any soup?"
He nodded, but he didn't stop tracing the words.
"Which kind?" I asked. "The kielbasa?"
"Blecch," he said.
"The French onion then?"
"Alright," he said. He proceeded to whip out a cell phone with all the bells and whistles and started typing a text message. He would continue typing through dinner.
And aside from him being a bit off, a bit odd, and aside from him looking and acting like a stoned cowboy who wandered in from the 1960's, I could've let it go. I could've let it slide. I could've let all the slurping of the soup and the texting and the mumbling during the texting and the slurping of the sauerkraut and the wandering around the restaurant like it was his own kitchen and it was the middle of the night and he was seriously jonesing for a late snack--well, I could've let all that go, but he came in the next day. And he proceeded to be even weirder.
The next day when I arrived for my dinner shift, one of the other waitresses announced that the Boy From Work (see also: this, part one of this, and our official gang photo) said I should get to take the table that had just walked in. When I peered around the corner to see who it was, there was the stoned cowboy again, wandering around the restaurant like it wasn't going to creep out the other customers.
I sighed. "Gee, thanks, BFW," I said. BFW was standing behind the grill, as he was cooking until the night cook got there. BFW had the makings of a reuben already geared up and ready to go.
"This makes three days in a row that this cat has been here," I said, and then I walked out to the table.
The stoned cowboy was once again stoned. His arm and leg movements were loose and random. He was bopping his head to something, and when I got closer I could see he had headphones stuck in his ears.
I smiled when I got to his table. He smiled back.
"Hello again," I said. "What can I get for you today?"
He gestured to the headphones, like, Duh, I can't hear you. "Music," he said, by way of explanation. Finally, he tugged them out of his ears. "What?"
I asked him again what he wanted. He said he wanted everything he had yesterday, just the way it was, just exactly, except he wanted fries instead of chips and he didn't want soup. "You guys makes the best reubens," he said.
I marched back into the kitchen and tore the slip of paper from my pad. I leaned over to scribble the BFW a note. It said, Reuben w/ fries. XOXO, Jess. P.S. This guy is cuh-razy. Thanks.
Then I went to deliver his drink. When I'd asked him what he wanted to drink, I braced myself for the water-man song, but I didn't get it. He just sighed and shrugged and said, "Oh, a water, I guess," in a dejected kind of way.
When I set the water down in front of him, the stoned cowboy again had his headphones in. And he wasn't satisfied with me just dropping the drink and retreating.
"Hey," he said as I started to back away. "Here. Come here."
He had pulled the headphones out and was holding one up like a peace offering. He gestured toward my ear.
I didn't know what else to do--after all, how do you politely tell someone you don't want to put something that was in their ear in your ear for fear of waxy particles, etc.--so I bent down and tried to stay as far away from the earpiece as possible.
He jabbed it closer. I could hear a familiar song, something I hadn't heard in years.
"How about that?" he asked.
The song sounded like exactly the right song the stoned cowboy should be walking around listening to. If they were making a movie about his life, that song would've been piped in under the opening shot of him ambling down the street.
"I remember that song," I said. I couldn't exactly place it, but I knew it involved a Beatle somehow.
"Who is it?" the stoned cowboy quizzed.
I shrugged. "I can't remember," I said.
He looked disappointed. "It's the Traveling Wilburys," he said. "They're a super-group. Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, and George Harrison were all in it."
"Oh," I said. "Cool. I like that song." I wasn't sure what to do then. He was looking at me so expectantly, like he was waiting for me to say something brilliant, something profound. I had nothing to say, so I just smiled and left.
Later, as I was delivering an order of food to another table, I had to walk past the stoned cowboy. I had my arms filled with chicken fingers and beef on wecks, but that didn't stop the stoned cowboy from trying to get my attention.
"HEY!" he said. He had his headphones in, so he was shouting. The customers looked alarmed. "HEY, my flowers died!" He held up his cowboy hat so I could see that the fresh flowers he had at one point stuck in the brim were now wilted and limp.
I stopped. I was balancing several plates. I was clearly in a hurry to get to another table. Yet this man thought it was completely fine, normal, and acceptable to kick up a conversation about his hat flowers when I had steaming food in my hands.
"I'm sorry," I said.
"I need new ones," he said. "You think so, right? I need new ones?"
I nodded. "Yes, I do. Fresh flowers are very pretty."
"Okay," he said, then nodded. I was dismissed.
The afternoon was filled with more exchanges like that--mostly he wanted to talk about the tenderness of the beef and how he was going around town telling everyone that the diner had really tender beef, and he was even telling complete strangers about the tenderness--and then he was gone. He got back into his red minivan--yes, the stoned cowboy pilots a red minivan--and left the diner to go about his business, his strange, strange business of tooling around town and looking for fresh flowers for the brim of his hat.
He would be back for more in a few days. And he would bring his family...
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