Silver Crest Diner
The thing about the Silver Crest Diner is that it will never change. I asked once, and the old Greek guy who cooks the burgers scratched his head and said he’s been there for something like 35 years now. True, a grilled cheese now costs $5.95, but the big wooden menu on the wall must have been here at least as long as the cook. The prices have been repainted many times.
The booths are brown vinyl. The stools are the same brown. The tables are brown wood veneer. The cracked floor tiles are a slightly different brown. The walls are faux-wood in an unconvincing brown plastic, slightly less glossy than the tables. The blackboard with the specials is in fact brown. The ceiling is a patchy industrial blue that looks like the hospitals of my childhood. The counter is chipped Formica. Long fluorescent lights completely fail to bring out the colors of the room.
There is something vaguely sad about this place, but I find that reassuring.
The donuts are made fresh every day but they look impervious to change. They lie unnaturally still within their glass display case. On top of this is a small plastic Christmas tree with white stuffed animals under it, wearing red and green outfits. There is one green and one blue length of tinsel suspended in multiple loops from the ceiling, and a hanging paper sign which says MERRY CHRISTMAS in cut-out letters. The decorations are appropriate but somehow they don’t feel festive. Instead they feel like no one ever bothered to clean them up.
I am the only one in the dining room. Through a door and series of dividing windows in cheap aluminum frames, I can see into the attached bar. There is another customer in that room, and I can hear a slow game of pool over the creaky jukebox. They are playing old R&B songs. Everything on the Jukebox is old. I know because at each booth there is a little selection machine, the old mechanical kind in a silver metal case, with handwritten song titles and square black plastic buttons. I recognize almost none of the selections.
Earlier I had to kick the jukebox to get the record out of a skip. The balding man in the dark blue suit didn’t look up from the sports pages when I did this. He is the only other customer tonight. He looks how I think Mafia are supposed to look, but paler in that real-life sort of way.
No one knows I’m here. No one cares to bother the kid in the corner booth with the laptop and dreadlocks. I am out of place here, but perfectly at home in its anonymity. Somehow they know that. It’s that sort of place. I imagine coming here broke. I imagine drinking a coffee here on my last dime. I imagine coming here after a divorce. I did once come here after a breakup. It is open 24 hours. There is a McDonalds across the street but they don’t have a row of five identical pinball machines against one wall. I’ve never seen anyone playing. I’ve never seen more than two other customers in the place. Sometimes there is also a frumpy waitress who is very nice.
The proprietor has slumped into a chair with his eyes closed, resting. His mustache is the same worn-out grey as his sparse hair. Every once in a while he coughs. I wonder about his life. I wonder what he’s seen. I don’t want him to tell me. I can imagine a conversation with him, or with the Mafia don, but I don’t want to have it just yet. I want my cozy nowhere for just a little while longer. I want to be no one at all. I have nothing to prove here. The tired faces who trickle through here, they’re just faces. They say: we’ve all been there.
“What are you in for?” I might eventually ask the man at the stool next to me.
Next time I grow tired of explaining myself, I will come back here. I will travel the whole world and I will be back. It will not have changed. Except that one day, it will be gone. One day, someone will recognize me here. Nothing ever stays the same.
