If you split Diana Herself’s face down the middle with a mirror, she’d undoubtedly look like two very different people.
Her eyes aren’t only different sizes, but very different shapes set at different angles on her face.
Her nose bends so that mirroring one side of her face would give her a huge nose, and the other side, a tiny one.
And if you did do that mirror thing and she looked like two totally different unattractive people, that wouldn’t mean I think she’s unattractive.
That mirror thing is no relevant standard.
I know about physical asymmetry.
Every morning I needed a big breakfast to soak up the hangover aches.
I never wanted yogurt and granola or oatmeal or a fruit cup.
And every morning, knowing I’d see Diana Herself motivated me to keep my nose hairs plucked and ear hair trimmed.
Someone would know if I hadn’t changed my jersey.
I’d roll into The Diner alone by 10 a.m. each morning.
Most mornings, as a matter of disposition, I never much felt like talking, and Diana Herself knew it had nothing to do with her.
I’d sit with my paper and sip my burnt coffee that tasted like a dirty key had sunk to the bottom of the pot.
Diana Herself had a few years on me.
Her three kids, all pretty grown, still lived at home, except when the girl goes missing on a binge.
They’d pilfer her cigarettes and pinch an Andrew Jackson now and then, but what could she do, insist they cough up their painkillers and start paying rent?
Or what?
She was proud of her one son, The Future-Barber.
Twenty years behind that counter, she never imagined a day that she wouldn’t stand there.
She didn’t get maternity leave when her daughter had a kid.
Our routine established our trust.
She had a big honk of a laugh and would forget to breathe when she spoke, which made her voice sound like a barking goose.
And she was the woman I said Good Morning to each morning.
“Duh, unga-bunga.”
And she’d ask how I felt before my day had even really begun.
Big cities privilege younger waitresses, pretty women that any man would want serving him.
But I’d been married and had already suffered my insecure playboy phase.
The ideal waitress for me was just the same one that I’d come to expect every morning.
She knew I preferred breakfasts with limited color palettes—white toast, potatoes, eggs, French toast, pancakes— so she never bothered to take my order, sparing me from having to touch any fingerprint-smudged menus.
When I did feel like talking, she’d listen as long as I needed her to, and she never disagreed.
Her movements always choreographed to the incessant theme of the cheery morning news show on ze Tube behind her.
Her differently shaped eyes moistened at stories of a third grade class buying a homeless man a heavy coat.
Refilling my coffee after every sip, Diana Herself’d spin her wrist, turning her hand over backwards.
Behind the counter, in a corner barely beyond the line cook’s reach, above the stack of styrofoam cups and rows of small bottles of Tabasco sauce atop the soda machine, Diana Herself had taped up photos of her kids, each picture dated by a decade.
And next to these, a photocopy of a line drawing—the paper folded asymmetrically—hands folded in prayer, hung sloppy with Scotch tape.
With my paper open on the hard, plastic countertop made to look like marble, my eyes never moved from the news on ze Tube.
A young bank clerk set up her boss and made away with quite a sum, like Psycho.
Aaron sat with his back straight at the counter’s bend, his eyes blank on ze Tube, his fingers running along the teeth of a fork.
The silverware there did feel as if it’d been chewed on.
The long counter was usually empty between us except for the small plastic cards: Eggcelent Creations.
Sometimes other men sat in pairs, often silent, like fathers and sons.
A painting of a bowl of fruit hung above a bowl of plastic fruit.
A monkey-sized statue of a bellhop stood at the door like Aaron.
The decorations blended into a singular density which doubled and doubled again in hung mirrors, same size and same wood as the windows.
This density was meant to mask or at least minimize the smears of grease along the tiles behind the hot grill and the bins of bussed dishes left at the far side of the counter, same color as the countertops, the breakfasts, the landscapes, the dirty water.
But the pride of The Diner, and Diana Herself’s principal interest, was the wall of framed autographed photos of local athletes, Tube personalities, and stand-up comedians.
And together, me and Diana Herself were good like good bread is good.
We had a simple understanding not unlike a calendar and the weather.
With so much accrued exhaustion in common, we implicitly promised each other to each keep our energy up as a favor to the other.
And she succeeded at this far more often and more easily than I did.
I played a long, slow game of Take Away the Things She Thinks She Likes About Me One at a Time and See How Long She Still Likes Me but I never settled on a method of keeping score.
We never asked anything of each other, never wanted anything from each other.
I was all hers so long as she never asked.
And she was all mine so long as we never acknowledged all the ways she wasn’t.
Like some old husband or a grown son, a dog or a job, neither of us ever needed much attention, but our keen ability to account for one another’s imprecisions remained impeccable.
My Diana disappeared, vaporized instantaneously, if I ever dared look at her straight on.
But Diana Herself and me mirrored each other, resolving all the simple ways we each differed from our very unlike fathers.
And occasionally, depending on the angle, she was the second most beautiful
