Kylie Ayn Yockey

The counter is smooth, unsticky. You’ve never met a clean Waffle House before. Are you meeting one now? The yellow-lit orbs above you seem whiter than normal, their own little daylights in this 2 a.m. dark. Two employees — a skinny teenager texting against his mop and the manager counting the day’s tickets — are the only other ones inside. Have you ever met an empty Waffle House before? The front window says Open 24 Hours, Hot Coffee, and sure, your coffee is steaming in front of you. But you don’t remember ordering it, nor adding the two broken-open Sweet’N Lows, nor drinking half. Caffeine doesn’t seem to coat your veins with energy. Are you even awake? You feel like the only sticky thing here.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” you croak to the manager. She peers up over her glasses at you but keeps flipping through receipts like she doesn’t even need to read them to keep her calculations going. “Do you happen to know what time I got here?”

Her shoulders grunt a shrug between the repetitive movements of her ticket-flipping arm. “Were sittin’ there since before my shift.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

You glance at the teenager, already deciding not to bother him too, but he’s looking right at you. Maybe this is a family-owned location because his thumbs continue to not miss a beat across his touchscreen. His features each look too small for his face, like tiny islands of human parts in a lake of milk, the opposite of the broad bronze of the manager’s. Maybe working at Waffle House just makes people nimble. Maybe being nocturnal does.

“B’fore mine, too.” The teen’s surprisingly deep voice barely reaches your ears before he’s looking at his phone again. He makes a performative sweep with his mop. You just now notice its stringy head is dry.

“Thanks.”

Your mug is empty. Did you take sips between half-assed gratitudes? The napkin tucked under your wrist is browned with syrup or chocolate or crusted mustard. While you don’t feel full, your stomach lacks any sense of cavern. Running your tongue over each of your teeth, you only taste coffee. If you’ve eaten anything since being here, you can’t tell from the inside-out. You wonder if a revealing receipt of your own has been deftly counted. You wonder what would happen if you tried to order something now. Your jaw slackens to ask for some toast, but the manager is busy doing something in the little side office now and the boy, apparently unphased by age or audience, has stepped outside for a cigarette. The wispy trail of smoke dragging from his thin roll seems disproportionate to the dense clouds he blows back out.

Unsure what else to do, you pat down your pants for your phone. Perhaps you can check your banking app to see if you’ve paid yet, or if there are any other clues to how long you’ve been here, or wherever else before this, like somebody else wondering where you’ve been and messaging you. But you can’t even manage to feel surprised when your pockets are empty. No cell, no crumpled gum wrappers or loose change, no wallet. Sure hope you’ve paid already then. Though something tells you that neither of these employees would care either way.

Rubbing the butt of your palms into your eye sockets, you try to clear your train of thought. No money and no phone mean no way home. You peek through your hands out the window and past the teenager. The parking lot is completely empty. No employee vehicles, no trash littered around the big green dumpster, no splits in the asphalt. Yeah, so you don’t have a car here. Do you even own a car? Maybe the manager will let you use the restaurant’s phone to call for a ride, or the teen will let you borrow his. Maybe you could remember anyone’s phone number if you really tried. Maybe you have anyone to call.

You sigh and push yourself up from the counter. Your mug is full again, steam swirling, another ripped packet of Sweet’N Low laying next to the napkin. You take a small sip and slosh the hot coffee around in your cheeks like mouthwash. Eventually all the caffeine you’ve allegedly drank should wake up your blurry neurons, right?

Both employees are still out of range, so you head to the bathroom to kill a minute. Like the rest of the Waffle House, it’s spotless. No grime in the cheap tile grout, no rust on the faucet lip, no evidence of previous toilet use. There’s also no mirror. Just a beige, paint-chipped rectangle on the wall where a mirror must’ve been. Any plan you had to pee retreats, though you quickly wash your hands anyway. Either their soap smells like coffee, too, or that’s just the only thing your senses can register anymore.

The teenager is back inside when you step out of the bathroom. He’s slung a clean dishtowel over his shoulder but sits in a booth in the corner on his phone again. Your napkin and Sweet’N Low discards are both gone. You start to approach the boy to ask about borrowing his cellphone, but the manager returns from her office and lays an ungreasy green ticket upside-down next to your mug.

“Whenever you’re ready, hon,” she says without stopping. She relights the grill and starts cracking several eggs into a pan.

You flip the ticket over to see what you’ve ordered. The chicken-scratch writing is completely illegible. You look back up at the manager for a translation and to explain that you have no way to pay, but she turns back to you and simply plucks the paper from your hand unprompted. Except as she holds it up to inspect, it’s not a ticket, it’s a shiny yellow punch card. She pulls a handheld holepunch from her apron and snips it on the last remaining coffee icon printed on the card.

“Ten punches gets a free coffee, so it’s on the house.” She flashes the filled rewards card at you then tucks it into her apron with the holepunch and turns back to season her eggs.

Blinking numbly at her back, you feel yourself slumping back into your seat at the counter. The pleather is cold and unshaped, as if you’d never been sitting there at all. You glance at the teenager. He has a tall, sweating glass of cola now. Ever flurrying his thumbs over his screen, he bends at the neck to suck from a plastic straw. Beads of condensation slide down in tandem with the upward slurp of soda, but never seem to wet the table. He doesn’t react when the overhead orbs dim in reaction to dawn’s growing glow from the windows. A bird tweets somewhere outside. Wasn’t it just the middle of the night? The analog clock hung over the manager’s office is still at 2. Guess at least one other thing is sticky.

The manager — visibly, audibly, for the first time since you can recall being here — sets a plate of over-medium eggs and ham and buttered toast in front of you. You don’t remember ordering this, and you don’t know how to pay for it but suddenly you’re famished. A new napkin rolled around clean silverware is waiting by your coffee mug. Well, it’s not like you’re going anywhere any time soon. It’s not like you think you have anywhere else to be. Might as well stay for breakfast.