Free New York One by Tony Schumacher

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Crace looked around the half empty diner and pulled the yellow nylon baseball cap he was wearing off his head and ruffled his $100 dollar haircut for the fifth time in the last hour. He sighed, looked at the cap and frowned at the smiling Mickey Mouse that was beaming up at him from above the brim and tossed it onto the table.
    "You want more coffee?" it was the Filipino waitress back again,
    "No."
    "The boss say you gotta order food or you gotta go soon, you taking up space for eating customer." She tapped her pencil tip on the pad, like she was practicing her full stops, and put all her weight onto her left leg causing her right hip to pop out. Crace guessed her feet were hurting after working a ten hour shift in this shit hole and just under his irritation a tiny bubble of sympathy floated to the surface.
    "Look, I'm waiting for someone, I can't order till they get here."
    "You or Mickey gotta eat or else he say you gotta go wait somewhere else." She flicked a glance at Mickey on the table and Crace felt his sympathy bubble go "pop".
    "I'll take a coffee." He said looking away from her and out the window.
    "No coffee now, unless with food."
    "Jesus Christ, this place is half empty, what difference does it make?"
    "Boss say you wanna wait, you gotta eat, that the rule."
    Crace sighed and whipped out his wallet from the back pocket of the cheap jeans he was wearing, pulled out a fifty and tossed it on the table in the vague direction of the waitress as he turned away,
    "You tell the boss I just turned his shit-bird diner into a goddamned waiting room okay?"
    The waitress picked up the fifty dollars and slipped it under her pad faster than a card sharp on a riverboat and smiled down a Crace, flashing her tiny white teeth at him for the first time since he'd been there.
    "You want coffee now?"
    "Fuck off."
    Evening was sauntering past outside and pretty much had the street to itself. The Lower Manhattan winter hadn't quite blown in yet and a few of the tooth pick trees still had some leaves clinging on for dear life. It was starting to rain and Crace wished he'd been allowed to drive across town instead of having to get the bus, he decided to get a cab home and mentally promised himself a drink of something strong as soon as he made it back to the apartment, unless that bitch was still there, if she was home he'd go to a bar. That was the plan until he remembered what he was wearing, he looked down at the "I love New York" tee shirt and ten dollar jeans he'd been given to wear, next to him in the window booth lay the Planet Hollywood jacket. At least he'd be able to ditch the baseball cap soon. He stared at Mickey again and longed for his usual uniform of designer brands and smart suits and wondered if he'd be too late to stop at a shop to pick up something decent to wear on his way back across town.
    Crace picked up his mug and felt its chill in the palm of his hand,
    "Can I get some warm coffee here?" he shouted holding up the mug like it was a flaming torch in a cave. The waitress glanced up from her magazine by the register and nodded,
    "It brewing Mickey, be there soon."
    Crace cursed and let mug bang onto the table making little effort to hide his irritation, fifty bucks for four cups of shit coffee, he felt like killing this bitch as well.
    "Ten more minutes and I'm outta here." He whispered softly to nobody and turned back to the window to look at the rain that was now falling fast and hard, only a solitary pigeon stood in the road, looking like it had missed its bus and was waiting for a taxi.
    "I know how you feel buddy." Crace said to the pigeon through the glass and turned back to shout at the waitress again. He nearly jumped out of the ill fitting jeans when he saw a man sitting opposite him in the booth. Crace took a deep breath to calm his beating heart and placed both his hands palm down on the table in front of him, just like he had been told to do in the email.
    The man tilted his