“Be with you in a minute, Tony.”

He nodded in recognition. The place seemed busy for a Tuesday. In all his years of frequenting Nick‘s Restaurant and Bistro, the most customers he ever saw on a Tuesday afternoon was perhaps fifteen.

It was a rainy day, a quiet day. Even with all the diners that were in the restaurant, he could hear little exchange between mouths. And yet he could hear plenty. As he gazed out the window at the downpour, memories seemed to flock to his recollection as if on a conveyor belt, and each drop of rain seemed to beat the memories into his brain like a hammer.

“Beer, then?” asked a familiar face that had waited on him numerous times.

That was not an unusual question. Tony always ordered a beer. He had ordered it so many times that it seemed to be a paradigm among the staff--- Tony gets a beer. They just sort of assumed it; after all, Tony had been a patron for years. He always came here. It’s where his fifth birthday was celebrated. It’s where he fell in love with fried chicken. Come to think of it, it’s where he drank his first beer. It’s where he took her…all the time.

“You OK, Tony? Need two today?” the face said half-jokingly and-half compassionately.

He had a beer that night when he brought her there. She looked so beautiful in that navy dress that she put his tuxedo to shame. They had been there earlier in the day with friends to have supper, but they broke away from the dance early to come back and be alone together. Ah, the times they had. It was always in fun, right? They were young and immortal, making what he would later see as reckless decisions without much consequence. They had to have a break from the professors and courses. That night settled in his mind a debate he had had running in his mind for several weeks. Come the next week and a trip to the jeweler’s, he would have a big question for her.

He had a beer after the funeral last week. The Full Plate seemed to be the only place to go from the cemetery. Although he was met by friendly and compassionate faces, all he wanted to do was sit in the corner, envisioning that navy dress walking through the door, reciting in his mind what he would have said if that drunk driver had not been driving when she was.

As he sat there with all these thoughts running across his mind’s eye, he felt a change in himself. It couldn’t continue--- no more living this way, as if he had all the time in the world. No more carelessness and foolishness. No more laughing in the face of danger. He couldn’t keep on like this, or else he might end up staining someone’s navy dress in crimson.

“No, no beer.” he sighed. “Coffee.”