Her hair was as blonde and long as an eighteen year old. Seeing her from behind, you might think she was a teenager: she was slim with shapely legs covered in thick stockings. When she turned around, the truth was not as pretty. She was old, her chin over-biting her upperlip. Her nose, bumped in its middle hooked over her lips. Her hands were skinny and pale, paler than her perfectly blonde hair. She had large blue eyes, which looked more gray than blue now. People always suspected she dyed her hair, but she didn’t. The hair was a gift of her genes, and she had flaunted it throughout her life, using it to do something. Her waddle was now well developed, heading at a forty-five degree angle into her sunken chest. She wore a pearl-like stretch bracelet around her tiny wrist. Today, she wore beige nursing shoes, the comfortable type with rubber sole and straps. She would have preferred to wear her heels to give the illusion (at least from behind) that she was still the beautiful woman she had been in her youth, but her feet had expanded so much as she grew older, that she could not find shoes that fit her. And, besides, she didn’t think she could walk in those heels anymore. After breaking her hip three years before, her balance had never recovered.

He came in here every day to complete the crossword puzzle. The little hair that remained above his hair he slicked back. A small curl formed at the back of his neck. He wore thick, bronzed glasses that darkened the area around his eyes. His skin was a reddish pink, looking almost bovine. He wore a graying mustache over his pointed nose. His chin showed the beginnings of stubble. He wore a plaid short-sleeved, button-down shirt with a blue checkbook in its right pocket. A packet of cigarettes weighed down the opposite pocket, and he took frequent smoke breaks outside the diner for a quick smoke. He had a gray jacket with ridges on the bottom of the sleeves and jacket. The jacket was made of a slick material to reflect rain, and perfected in him the 1970s look.

She was older than him, and when she came into the diner, she drank her coffee and stared. She never brought newspapers or books to read. She always sat with her back to the television, and never tapped her foot or seemed to take much entertainment from the people moving about her. She drank tea and ate half sandwiches. Except for the tea, she didn’t have a usual, and the waiter waited patiently while she decided on the morning’s food. She said “Let’s see” as she scanned the menu, having, much to the waiter’s chagrin, seen the menu for the past five years, and having had to have memorized its contents.

Over the past few months, he started greeting her when he entered. At first, she didn’t know how to respond. Her reactions were slow and she wouldn’t respond until after he had passed. She kicked herself for that. She had had a wild youth, and had been with many men before age had taken away most of her assets. She had never settled down, never finding the right man, or, perhaps as she now thought, never being the marrying type to find the right man.

The man, Herbert, once he sat down, pulled out his red pen and began inking the answers into the crossword. He wasn’t terribly good at the crossword, but when he finished filling in his version of the answers, the grid was filled in with words that mostly made sense. They both sat facing the same direction but at different tables each day. Some days she would be facing his back, others he would be facing her back.

Molly thought she was beyond these feelings. She hadn’t had a real desire in years, but she missed the companionship. She had distanced herself from many of her friends over the years, as the married and had first kids and then grandkids. She never regretted her decision. She had done what she needed to do. Her eyes, when she looked at things now, moved rapidly back and forth, as if they couldn’t find the focus. Molly had given up smoking many years before after her once beautiful voice began to sound horse. She had smoked more because of the way it had made her look than the taste. Like most things in her life, it had not been difficult for Molly to give up the cigarettes. Her passions ran cold, and she never loved or hated much.

She lived in an apartment she had purchased thirty years before. She had worked somewhere. Her apartment building, during those thirty years, was taken over by a developer who turned it into one of the most desirable buildings along the sound. All her neighbors had sold to the young professionals that began to pay outrageous amounts for the small apartments.

Tara had moved in next to her three years back. She was a young executive at a small publishing house. She had left her family in Toronto to take her job, and she missed them terribly, especially her grandmother who she had a close relationship with. Tara found Molly a good surrogate for her grandmother, and befriended her immediately. Tara had brown, reddish hair, and wet, hazel eyes, which looked almost transparent. That day, she wore a peach, rounded neck on which a Jewish star hung. She wore cackie? Pants and brown, sandel-like shoes, which slipped and stomped as she walked.

Herbert wore a bright red baseball cap with no writing. His keys were attacked to his pants with a climber’s thingy, and his pants were dirty. Ever day, as he left the diner, he would offer Molly his paper. She would look at him and the paper, putting on her glasses, which made her eyes appear enormous, look at the paper, and refuse it. He would try to push it on her, but she would shake her head and he would shrug and walk out, not sure how else to strike up the conversation.

Tara learned about Molly’s visits to the diner when she convinced her to meet her for lunch one Sunday. Now, about once a week, Tara would find Molly in the diner and join her. Molly was at first uncomfortable with the visit, unsure how she could stand the change in her routine, but over time, as Tara became a closer confidant, she began to look forward to the visits.

Molly’s blue jacket was velvety, and around the left arm near the wrist, a red band had been sewn. It had been quite a stylish jacket many years before. One of her boyfriends had bought it for her after she had showed interest in it while walking in front of a clothing store.

She stained the tea cup with her lipstick. She still spent an hour each morning applying her face, as she put it. The makeup did not much do much to tighten the skin, which Molly could have sworn seemed to becoming unglued from her face. She wore four rings on each hand.

Tara pulled her hair back in a white band. She was a part-time student and waiter at an Italian place. She loved people and did well in school, but never applied herself because she could never figure out what she wanted to be. Her desires did not run financial or even familial (except for her family back in Canada). Tara saw the way Herbert looked at Molly when they were in the Diner. She had broached the subject on a few occasions, but Molly had always waved her off. Tara walked a bit hunched over, her knees pointed toward each other, giving her a walk like she was wearing a tight skirt that hobbled her legs together, even though she was wearing pants.

Tara began visiting the diner when Molly wasn’t there. She sat and watched Herbert as he did his crossword puzzle, and she asked the wait staff about him. They knew little, as he didn’t speak much with them except to order his daily cheeseburger.

Hoodlums try to rob the diner while the three of them are there—Herbert tries to save Molly? Herbert’s family comes for a visit, and Molly understand that she’s the one who is alone in life, and not him. Tara always looks behind her toward Herbert when she sits with Molly. She hopes he’ll take the hint that they’re talking about him. It’s Tara that talks about him.

Molly was a ballet dancer. She was good and played in local dances, but never made the jump to a big city ballet. She was beautiful and used her beauty to date many men and received many marriage proposals, but, having grown up in an abusive house, never trusted anyone enough to stay with them longer than a month. As she grew older, the offers came less often and she didn’t miss them. She lived her life, as she did her dancing, without passions, content in the daily routines, such as her cup of tea, and her visits to the diner.

“He looks so alone over there,” Tara said, giving an exaggerated look past Molly’s shoulder to where Herbert sat sipping his coffee. Tara smiled at Herbert when he looked up.

“Stop that,” Molly said.

Tara waved at Herbert who coughed and went back to his puzzle. “I think he likes you.”

“Well, that’s all good and fine, but have you ever thought that maybe I wouldn’t like the looks of him? All you young people think you know so much better what’s good for us older people. I’ve been around here a while, and I know what’s what and what I want, and Herbert isn’t what I want.”

“So that’s his name,” Tara said. “I didn’t know you knew his name.” Molly blushed, her pale face turning a pinker pale as the blood tried to find veins that still worked in her face.

…

“And this doesn’t mean that you get to do any hanky panky.”

“I wasn’t even thinking about that. Besides, I don’t even think I could do hanky panky anymore.”

“They have drugs for that now.”

“I had heard about those drugs. But I haven’t had anyone to try those drugs on.”

“Don’t think you’re going to try it them on me.”

“I wasn’t thinking about it.”

“That’s good, because I haven’t had those types of desires in years. I’m an old lady now.”

“No that old.”

“Well, maybe not that old.”

***

One of the lenses in his eyeglasses were black. He carried around a blind man’s stick, a pair of darker sunglasses to wear over his glasses, and an eyepiece, usually used to see distances. He used it to things ten feet away. He wore a straw hat and a black vest over his beige shirt. He carried a black bag with many pockets over his left shoulder. When he read the paper, he held it up to his face, his hat covering the top of it and his right eye close enough to make out the words. He had a white beard, which fell a few inches from his chin. He shaved the sides of his face and his upper lip. He was skinny and wore no jewelry. On first glance, he looked like an explorer, with his hat and beard and stick. He walked slow but surely, trying to avoid any obstacles, which he couldn’t make out from far away.