Sinister: don't forget the flowers

[Kirsten Kenyon]

 it doesn't seem to me that a person who doesn't want attention 
should dress like a clown and drive around in a yellow volkswagon 
with "PINGO" vanity plates.  in a fit of silliness, i waved gleefully 
and made a gruesome face, expecting pingo to wave back, and maybe 
squirt water from the flower pinned to her lapel.  instead, she 
scowled at me, mouthed something, then floored it and cut me off, 
narrowly missing my fender.  there's nothing funny about road rage.
  it was sort of like the time that amish guy gave me the bird out 
the window of his buggy.  it just seemed to throw everything off, 
somehow.
  nothing much happens around here.  i sit for hours in booth twenty 
nine.  sometimes i take part in The Greasy Spoon Jeopardy Challenge, 
which might sound mildly exciting but is really nothing more 
than a couple of weathered old roofers, a middle-aged fry cook, and 
yours truly, sitting around a formica-topped table and shouting out 
questions (answers).  you know how it goes.  
  the cook tells me i'm his best customer.  "ya know," he mutters 
through a cloud of smoke, "ya really are.  all these old farts gotta 
have everything just so.  but not you."
  this is untrue, as i certainly do have to have things just so.  
it's just an easy sort of "so." black coffee (no need for a spoon) 
and ice water, which i never actually drink but always order anyway. 
  "see that one over there?"  he gestures somewhat discreetly with 
his sooty thumb.  "that's lorraine.  she's gotta have Egg Beaters and 
diabetic syrup, half decaf and half regular, and no ice in her 
water.  extra napkins.  if you fuck it up, you hear about it."
  i look at lorraine.  she looks like she's been rolled in flour.  
there is a smear of matte red revlon where her lips used to be, and 
her feet look like two fat yams shoved into moonboots. she's 
attacking her scrambled Egg Beaters as if she has to hurry and eat 
them before they start eating her.  it's easy to tell that she 
learned to smoke through careful observation of glamorous old movie 
stars.  she looks sort of beautiful that way, perched there on the 
little chrome stool like an orange balancing precariously on a spool 
of thread.  
  is it worse to be a depressed clown or a mime with something really 
important to say?  also, i was wondering...when the first identical 
twins were born, what did people think?  when TWO of them came out, 
and they looked exactly the same?  and what can you make of a powdery 
old woman who wears moonboots and has a crepey neck and watery eyes 
and still manages to remind you of audrey hepburn?  (assume that you 
love audrey hepburn.)  and finally, a question that has puzzled me 
since fourth grade, when i read it in a paperback joke book that i 
hid under my bed so that my mom wouldn't know i'd spent my book club 
money on a joke book instead of on something like 'anne of green 
gables' or 'five little peppers and how they grew' or another 
selection that didn't have a drawing of a guy with his finger up his 
nose on the front cover:  if a tree falls in the forest and crushes a 
mime, and nobody's around to hear it, does anyone care?  
  love
  kirsten

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