Waiting for Mary

truck stop glowing under fluorescence, bloodshot eyes everywhere.

long-haul drivers slumped in the corners. builders with cement dust still in their hair and travelling salesmen chasing the next few quid. cheap knives scraping grease off the plates. old coffee stains dried deep into the formica.

above the jukebox, a chalkboard menu with blue and white shadows, chalk powder on the floor. Tonight’s special: meatloaf and fries. sausage and mash with carrots. Bill Bradley’s blue cheeseburger, all at the same price. the bottomless coffee is as black as the highway outside. the latrine door hangs loose, the brass sign gone dull. duck-grey paint peeling back in curls, the cracks stuffed with spider cocoons. little grey knots fused in the wood.

and then there’s Mary. scribbling on her pad, smiling through two thick layers of makeup and tarantula-leg eyelashes. a beauty spot on an old plucked mole. a turquoise stud winking on her lip like cheap market jewellery.

Mary with her heavy mortgage and her man just a distant smoke now. he’s probably sitting in some East End dive with the snooker boys, no money left except for the booze and the fags and those pork snacks in the bowl with a painted Japanese geisha.

she was a beautiful woman twenty years back. now she’s just Mary, with the warmest heart this side of London.

my father never did appreciate her. Not once.

cancer in the end,
70s disco wake at the club,
whisky and soda.