Nocturnal
Tendencies
Continued
by Tim Bugansky
photos by Michele Lenni
Almost Over
It is 4 a.m. Steve and his cousin have just left, saying goodbye to the waitresses and the remaining regulars on their way out. Chris is still sitting in the back booth, contemplating his yellow legal pad and smoking another Marlboro 100. Jeremy has found some friends and now shares a table with them.
The smoking section is slowly and steadily emptying. The elevator music is louder there, with little conversation to fight it. But up front in non-smoking, a few tables have filled, and the sounds of talking softens the elevator music's impact.
In another two hours, Allison will be getting off work. A few regulars may still linger in the dining room, clinging to the tail end of a Country Kitchen all-nighter.
If the urge seizes them, the regulars could stay longer. They could watch as the truckers and retirees filter in for their morning coffee. They might even see a few businesspeople stop by before work. The third-shift regulars could sip their bottomless cups of coffee past noon, watching the lunchtime diners bustle in, quickly eat their lunches and leave before an hour is up.
The regulars could stay, but chances are they won't. They'll have to go to work or school. Or they'll just go home because the atmosphere at Country Kitchen isn't nearly the same with daylight filtering through the windows. The pace is a little too frantic, everyone needs to be somewhere else. For the daytime crowd, Country Kitchen is a stopover instead of a destination.
But soon enough, the second-shift families will finish their dinners and the third-shift waitresses will arrive. The regulars will follow soon after and the endless coffee parade will begin. People will move endlessly from table to table. Conversations will grow and shift, mountains of cigarette butts will spill from the ashtrays.
Thus it continues, 24 hours a day with no locking of the doors to signal any sort of finality. It's part of an endless, sleepless existence to the insomniacs like Steve and Chris or the late-night intellectuals like Jeremy.
So on and on it goes, like a bottomless cup of coffee replenished until the end of time.