ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: The Writer, His Wife, and their Afterlife
Book One, Part Two, Chapter 152: Last Day at the Cafe
It’s Thanksgiving Eve.
I stop by the cafe just to be there. I don’t order anything. Just go to Ernie’s and my table by the window, take off my leather jacket and biker’s cap, and sit sideways in my chair, absorbing it all.
A couple, both dressed in black — she looks a little like Liza Minnelli and he, a little like Tony Perkins — sit at the table next to mine, facing each other. In earnest conversation, they hold hands. Maybe he’s proposing. That would be memorable, on Thanksgiving Eve. Maybe he’ll give her a ring on Christmas Eve.
Jim, the cafe’s owner, stands tall behind the counter, taking orders. Alongside him, Katie works the register. In all the time we’ve come here, in all the exchanges of money, she’s never made a mistake.
Jim calls out a customer’s name. “Ernie,” he says. A pleasant-faced, graying man rises from a table against the wall, under the theater posters. Jim goes up to him. “I’m sorry, but we just ran out of the roast beef.” This Ernie takes the news casually. He follows Jim to the counter to order something else, then returns to his table to resume a conversation with a woman who’s probably his wife.
Oh, the joy I would feel in sharing a simple, casual cafe meal and conversation with Ernie. We would be here on this final cafe day. We would stay late. Jim would come over to our table. He and Ernie would talk, shake hands, pat each other’s back. Ernie would wish him good luck and say something memorable, I’m sure.
The rush is over. Jim pulls up a chair to sit with three friends at a middle table. He’s smiling, relaxed. His work for the day is over. His job is done.
I want to ride out these last moments, but the cafe is part of my past now. Its tiny blue ceiling lights, the background jazz, Katie, Jim, the red-haired chef who looks like Vincent Van Gogh, the quesadillas, Ernie sitting across from me at our table by the window . . . all gone except in memory.
Jim sees me, waves. I go up to him. “Thanks for the good times. The good talk,” I say.
“I didn’t recognize you at first, over there by the window.”
No, he didn’t recognize me because I wasn’t with Ernie.
I leave, and on the walk home I think: the good talk? With whom? I’ve had long, warm, honest conversations with Jeanette at the cafe. I had a long and warm and honest conversation with Veronica at the cafe. But with Ernie? I search my mind, but I don’t find a long and warm and honest conversation with Ernie at the cafe.
Or maybe, anywhere.
