Frank was on his way to a meeting when he got a text that the meeting had been cancelled, so he decided to take himself to breakfast. It was Thursday and just past eleven o’clock, a little late for breakfast on a weekday, so when he walked into Burnt Toast, a classic greasy spoon that he had been to a few times and could see himself becoming a regular, he was one of only three seated at a long counter.
At the grill was a middle-aged African-American man named Tyrone that the wait staff usually addressed as T. Tyrone had a shaved head with a spider web tattooed into his scalp. He had a thin waist and broad shoulders, and, as Frank had noticed when he first ate here, his hands and forearms were oddly asymmetrical. Tyrone’s right hand was enormous, with fingers like kielbasa, and his forearm was muscled like Popeye the Sailor. His left hand and forearm were small by comparison, appearing almost shriveled. Frank wondered if the right was bigger and more muscular from years of strenuous tasks that required only one hand, or if the left had been deteriorated by illness or injury. Perhaps Tyrone was born with this strangeness, and his genetic propensity for it was something that had been passed down through the generations and somehow traceable to the ships that brought his enslaved ancestors to this country from Africa, yet another putrid aftershock of this country’s cruel and unpardonable sin. Frank thought, Is everything about today’s America understandable primarily as the legacy of slavery?
Each time Frank had eaten here, Tyrone greeted him as he did everyone seated at the counter, with a jaunty salute and a big smile. But today, as Tyrone stood about six feet down the counter putting take-out orders in cardboard containers, he spoke directly to Frank in an accent so thick and unfamiliar that Frank could barely discern his meaning from body language and facial expressions. Did Tyrone know that Frank couldn’t understand him, or maybe he didn’t care. Did he use it as a filter, as in the people who really know me have no problem understanding what I’m saying? Or maybe he just liked fucking with the white people who were obvious transplants to New Orleans by seeing how long he could go on talking before they said something or just gave up. Frank was finally able to make out the word, “usual,” so he said, “Sure, T, thanks,” assuming this meant Tyrone remembered what he had ordered before, a chili-cheese omelet with rye toast and a fruit cup, no grits or potatoes.
Frank appreciated this interaction with Tyrone, and was flattered to be recognized and remembered. Frank ate out often, mostly alone at the counter or the bar, and had lots of longstanding relationships with servers, bartenders, cooks. Some blossomed into deeper friendships, but most didn’t, even though they were a significant and valued part of Frank’s life in New Orleans, where so many smart, fun, and kind people of all backgrounds worked service jobs. Occasionally, the transactional nature of these relationships picked at the scab of Frank’s loneliness, and he recognized that, friendliness, familiarity, and frequency aside, there was something artificial and impermanent about these relationships. At some level, he knew that his friends-across-the-counter were, as the song says, paid to smile.
After a few minutes, Tyrone delivered Frank’s breakfast. As he stepped back to the grill and wiped his hands on the dish towel he had tucked into his belt, Frank noticed again the oddness about his hands and arms. Frank considered his own hands, and the oddball way in which he was ambidextrous. There wasn’t anything he could do equally well with either hand, but rather, he did some things with his right, like throwing, and other things with his left, like writing or brushing his teeth. He looked down at his hands to see if there were any visible differences. There weren’t.
Frank was emboldened by the flattery he perceived in Tyrone’s attention, and flattered himself by deciding that he was now officially a regular. He called down the counter, “Hey, Tyrone. Can I ask you something?”
Tyrone turned and took a few steps toward Frank. “Sure, my friend. What’s on your mind?” It struck Frank that up close, he could understand T perfectly. From any more than a few feet away, with all the kitchen noises, forget it.
“I don’t mean to pry, but what’s with your hands? You know, the different sizes?” Frank motioned with his hands as if he were tossing a tennis ball back and forth. “How did that happen? Were they always like that?” Hearing himself, Frank immediately thought the question might be inappropriate, and his casual tone and presumption to ask disrespectful.
“Thank you, my friend,” Tyrone said with a big charming smile. “Yeah, you right. All day long.” With that, he stepped back to the grill and began to flip the dozen or so pancakes sizzling on the hot metal.
Frank thought if he asked again, if he persisted by calling out his question across the counter, that it would somehow be worse. Either Tyrone would continue to misunderstand, or he would be put off by an intrusive question, or he’d be annoyed by the difficulty of communication between them. Frank knew that any interaction with Tyrone that took them beyond the paid-to-smile pleasantries would require that he traverse not only the service divide, but geography, race, culture, lineage, class, privilege, … But Frank wondered what it meant to let it drop, to not even try. Was that offensive in some way? Was it racist? Did it reveal that any attempt at even casual conversation was nothing more than a sham, an awkward courtesy that was, underneath the facade, discourteous? Did any of this matter to Tyrone?
Frank was still struggling for what to do, here, now. Should he ask again about the hand? And even if he did, Tyrone was certainly under no obligation to talk about it. What made Frank think he was entitled to an answer anyway, that it was okay to intrude like that? Would Tyrone appreciate it as a sincere and empathetic question from a regular, or was he sick of explaining it because people asked about it all the time. Frank wanted to say something, anything for a moment of connection. After a few seconds, he blurted out, “Hey, T. Can I get a side of bacon?” and immediately felt as if this knee-jerk default to their “service” relationship only lengthened the distance between them.
Tyrone nodded slightly without saying anything, or even looking back at Frank. He reached up and grabbed a handful of bacon from a metal tray on a high shelf. He dropped it on the grill where it hissed and sizzled.
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