Sweetness and Light


He has been driving for ten straight hours when he sees the
diner ahead of him on State Route 24. It glows in the dark,
the only building visible for miles in the fields of corn
and soy, a vision of neon fluorescence. The sign says WE
NEVER CLOSE. The WE flickers on and off, and he is tired
enough that he reads NEVER CLOSE as NEVER CLOTHES. He
laughs a little and rubs his eyes with one hand as he turns
in to the parking lot.

He pushes the door open and sits down on one of the stools
at the grill. There is a menu there. Should he even look at
it? All he really wants is coffee. He has to get to Detroit
by daybreak or some blonde-and-so-high is going to be
really pissed, and the box of chocolates on the passenger
seat will all be for nothing. He glances at the cook, who
glances back. Hell of a job, short-order fry cooking.
Especially in a WE NEVER CLOSE. You switch on that sign and
you're trapped. Ten years later someone else clocks in and
puts on an apron and you have to wonder if you're seeing
things.

The waitress comes up, pad and pen in hand. "What'll it be,
honey?"

He looks up at her, expecting another version of the fry
cook -- all grease in the lines, sepia-toned with fatigue.
Instead she is the only young thing he has seen all night.
Her hair is sleek and nut-brown, her eyes wide, sky-blue,
and all knowing. Such blue eyes. Blue Plate Special. She
gives him exactly one-half of a smile.

He is in her hands.

"Whatever's good."

She cannot be more than seventeen, or is she? It's so
fucking hard to tell these days. She turns, and that too is
beautiful, her hip straining against the slick, cheap
material of her uniform as she leans to call to the fry
cook. He sees that her name, pinned to her breast, is
DARLEEN. Lovely, lovely DARLEEN, he wishes to croon, NEVER
CLOSE, humming it into her ear as he cups her breast, slips
a hand between her warm thighs... But she is speaking.

"Louis!" she says. "Louis, a Numero Quatro, pin a rose on
it."

"And coffee," he says, to make her turn back to him again.

"Cream? Sugar?" He nods, helpless to resist. He'll take
whatever she'll give him.

"Louis! Sweetness and light, and make it snappy." He aches
to order every item on the menu so that dear Darleen can
turn each one into her poetry, but already she is walking
away, walking on high heels that roll her hips and curve
the small of her back. He watches her go as if she is his
only hope of ever eating again.

It is then that his tired eyes catch the lady talking on
the pay phone by the wall. She has her back partly to him,
and she is murmuring something with her lips close to the
receiver. She is fingering a bruise on the back of her
neck. It is the second blue thing he has seen tonight, and
it makes any blue he brought in with him pale by
comparison.

He thinks of the word scruff, thinks of ham fists, because,
with that swelling, that bruise is no accident. He thinks
of what it must be like to have such an outward and visible
sign of where things went bad, or came to an end, or threw
you a curve. He can't hear what she's saying, though the
timbre of her voice is uncertain. No matter how long she
has practiced this speech, she is having trouble saying
*Don't wait up, I'm not coming back, ever. Don't forget to
feed the cat.*

And then, watching her long fingers edge around that blue
bruise, he thinks *nape*. He imagines that he might press
his lips to that bruise and come away with nothing there
but creamy skin, sweetness and light, not a wince in her
body. Kisses along the knobs of her spine. She on her hands
and knees, not a hint of blue anywhere but in her eyes. He
runs a hand up her ribs to her breasts, and she breathes
out and then in. Her spine arches, her ass presses back
against him, sweet and light, sweet and light.

He blinks hard to dispel the image. Darleen, the beautiful,
the magnificent, the shapely, is before him.

"Here's the lady's," she says, to no one in particular, and
puts down a dish of scrambled eggs and toast at the next
table. He realizes that she may actually be talking to him,
expecting him as a fellow midnight coffee-drinker to know
what she should do with the lady's. The lady is murmuring
ever more intently. She may be weeping. Scrambled eggs will
never do. Nil by mouth. She may never eat again.

He nods again, vaguely, lost in those china-blue eyes.
Darleen chews her gum, and gives him the other half of the
smile. He wants to touch her hair, but imagines her
flinching away from his hand. Scruff, he thinks, but she is
too smooth, too perfect. No bruise could ever flower on the
back of that neck. Could it? He gets up suddenly and heads
for the bathroom. He is tired, his thoughts have
wanderlust.

He washes his face in cold water in the shining, tiled
space, and examines himself, dripping, in the mirror. The
fluorescent lights flicker above him. WE NEVER CLOSE. He
could shave, but he has left his razor in the car, and he
is much too tired to go and get it now. His eyes are the
same deep brown as always, his hair receding a little. He
won't comb it over, not him. His friend Morris would kill
himself laughing.

He is drying his face with a paper towel when the door
opens. It's Darleen, and at first he is so shocked by her
entrance that he doesn't know where to look. He glances up,
then down, then at her breast: yes, it's DARLEEN all right.

"Hey," she says, standing square in his way, right between
him and the door, his only means of escape. "Where are you
going?"

He raises his hands pacifically, as if to ward off a
beautiful and unpredictable animal. She is so young.

"Back to my seat," he says.

She rolls her eyes, fetches an exasperated sigh from so
deep that he fears he may have to catch her when she falls
into a dead faint. "*No*, I mean when you leave."

"Detroit," he says. He is watching her ass in the mirror
behind her. She is shinier than the shiny tile. She has her
hands on her hips and her skirt rides up, revealing the
inner curve of her knee. He licks his dry lips. He cannot
help himself.

"Take me with you when you go," she says. "I gotta get out
of here. You don't know what it's like. Detroit is fine by
me."

She sees the No forming in his eyes, the I can't, the what
if, and she shakes her head desperately, trying to prevent
it from reaching his mouth.

"I won't be no trouble, mister," says Darleen, stepping
forward and touching his arm. Perhaps she feels the
livewire tremble there. Perhaps it is something else, some
message that he can't control sending. WE NEVER CLOSE. She
looks at him for a moment, wide-eyed, and then she reaches
for the buttons on her uniform.

"No," he says, but it's a weak word, too short to have any
effect, and it doesn't even try to lie between them.
Darleen is determined. The blouse is on the floor in
moments, a fold of slick material covering half the badge
of her name, so that DARL is all he can see. Darling, he
thinks. Darling. The skirt, too, is in a puddle on the
floor, and there she is in a bra and a half-slip and a
half-smile, her lovely dark nipples showing through the
lace. This is what she knows how to do. The bend of the
nape of her neck, vulnerable to him, has been vulnerable
before.

It may be the fault of the fluorescent light that he
touches her. It is cruel and chilly. Older women are aged
and destroyed by fluorescent light, and even this radiantly
perfect girl stands under it looking unhappy and cold. He
steps forward without thinking and takes her in his arms.

"Yeah," she says, slightly muffled against his shoulder,
and her arms go around him. Suddenly he finds himself with
both arms full of warm, eager flesh. He doesn't want to let
go, even to adjust his cock trapped down the leg of his
jeans, but the need is imperative: he is painfully hard. He
kisses her smooth cheek, her earlobe as she turns her head.
He buries his face hungrily in her fragrant neck and feels
her shiver as he kisses and sucks the delicate skin there,
moving his thumbs rapidly over her nipples, over the
scratchy lace of her bra. She giggles uncertainly, then
hisses breath in his ear. He stops, panting, and lifts his
head.

There on the side of her smooth neck is a blue mark in the
shape of his kiss. It is a mark of passion, a flowering
bruise he has left with lips and teeth and desire. He
stares at it, and he thinks, Here is the visible sign of
where things went wrong. He remembers someone
blonde-and-so-high saying once of a mutual friend, *You can
always count on him to make a bad situation worse, like
putting liquid makeup on a hickey.*

"What's wrong, mister?" asks Darleen.

He turns around and flees the bathroom.

When he reaches his seat at the grill, his food is at his
place. A hamburger with an enormous slice of raw onion (pin
a rose on it). A cup of sweetness and light. The lady at
the pay phone is still talking. He watches her, wanting her
to slam the receiver down for good and all on whoever it
is, even if now she's only telling the operator that this
has all been one long wrong number and she needs her
quarter back.

He drinks his coffee in one long swallow. It scalds his
tongue, but he doesn't care. It will keep him awake long
enough. He can hear the door of the men's bathroom opening.
Like a coward, like someone turning for safe haven, he
slaps his money on the counter and goes. He doesn't want to
see those reproachful Blue Plate Special eyes.

Blonde-and-so-high, he thinks, as his car pulls out of the
lot. Sweetness and light.

Detroit by daybreak. That's the ticket.