The Diner on Mary Street (Working Title)

The Diner on Mary Street (Working Title)

Lily Stojcevski

On the other side of the world, in an unnamed town in a state just north of Connecticut, autumn leaves lay on paths and the town clock creeps closer to nine AM. People are on their way to work. To school. And, unable to prepare a bowl or cereal, they eat breakfast in the diner. The diner sits in the middle of the town square, or maybe right on the edges, and is filling up. Mother-daughter duos, teenage couples, policeman who haven’t slept yet and quirky small-town oddities file through the door, continuously setting off the bell that hangs above it. Their quotable banter doesn’t slow as they fall into a red vinyl booth, or take their seats around a laminate table, or pull a stool up to the wooden counter. The owner is drawn into their conversations as he pours black coffee into huge brightly coloured mugs. They order pancakes and waffles and catch-up on everyone’s love lives and children and school schedules and who was murdered near the sawmill last night. They exist in a time permanently before mobile phones and hipsters and smashed-avocado-on-toast. They exist in a time that is authentic and wholesome, ever so slightly haunted.
In Cygnet, the Huon Valley’s greenie, artistic home of craft fairs and antique shops, eleven o’clock hits and with it the Red Velvet Lounge begins its lunch hours. Or, the waitresses start offering lunch menus, but everyone is more interested in the coffee.It’s made at a European-style espresso machine rather than kept warm in a glass jug. Three older women in statement glasses order a mix of chai teas and flat whites. A young couple sits by the window in a brightly lit bubble of ease, taking their time to order cappuccinos as their menus sit in front of them, untouched. A mother with two young children attempts to wrangle them into an early lunch but a magnetic pull lures them to a small toy box by a pair of vintage-upholstered couches. The boy latches onto a truck, and his younger sister begins to cry, “I’VE NEVER HAD A TRUCK.” Their mother tells them they can only play if they cooperate and, ordering a bowl of hot chip, asks for no coriander to appease the fussiness of youth. Two women enter and order cakes before even sitting down. They hug in front of the counter, exchange greetings with the table behind them. Orders lodged, they curl into a mustard coloured couch near an unlit fire, trading gentle kisses between conversations. Arms around each other shoulders, they share a brownie. Through the speakers, a woman with a Texan accent sings oh me oh my oh, would you look at miss Ohio.The children have lost interest in toys and nestle, marsupial alike, against their mother. She reads a squirrel storybook out loud. No one engages with her, no one is bothered by it. Just as no one engages with the affectionate couple sharing the brownie. When people walk through that bell-less door, they do not enter a hurricane of action and banter. Rather, they find their own living room transported:Retro couches, low coffee tables, plush cushions and a bookshelf stacked with out-dated boxes of Trivial Pursuit. Here, they are allowed comfort and a level of privacy, even during the lunch and coffee rush.

In the diner across the seas, the rush never seems to stop. Not only is there a constant need for food and caffeine, there’s a constant need for interaction. Flirtation, small talk, arguments, opinions, running gags. A constant stream of conversations and questions and comments bolstered by the buzz of caffeine. And that’s only between individuals, between the community and the owner the need becomes a string a never-ending string of demands. Of mayoral candidates to endorse, public works to fund, beauty pageants to promote and participate in, high school sportsmen to celebrate. And then there are the festivals. Several times a year, the diner owner will be shunned, punished, limited unless he puts on a Civil War uniform or hangs a cardboard turkey in his window. Unless he participates in the parades and re-enactments and holidays that celebrate America and the pilgrims, generals, and founding fathers of the town’s history. He can disagree with them, he can even hate them but because of his apron and pie shelf and that pot full of coffee he is the backbone of the town they built. And he has to act like it.

The Red Velvet Lounge’s busiest day coincides with the Cygnet market. A small affair, dominated by men’s sheds and seedlings and potters. Second hand clothes and locally painted art. All the things that the Red Velvet Lounge promotes in every way it can. Alongside the counter, a wall is crowded with posters. Discover the Art behind the Artist; Discover the Artist behind the Art. Tom Vincent Trio. Cygnet Folk Festival. New Norfolk Vinyl Record Fair. Small Island Release. Up in Smoke. The People’s Library. Keep Calm and Knit Something. They present a sample of what the owners have built here and built in the community. How the Red Velvet serves food to support the environment, is set up to support its community, and holds weekly open mic nights to support its performers. The stage at the back of the room, draped in oriental midnight-blue fabric, is minimalist and improvisational. A battered leather guitar case marked all over with stickers. A thin-legged white stool. Out-dated amplifiers and speakers. A lonely microphone. A red velvet curtain to add some opulence and shield the stage from the bathrooms behind. Music events are ticketed, boosted with pizza or curry, and sure, maybe the stage is sometimes littered with abandoned toy trucks, and maybe during the day you might spot a red-faced child in a red flannel shirt tunelessly humming as he wanders the platform, but that doesn’t lessen its importance. Customers coexist alongside community engagement, and that makes its all the more special. Halfway through a workday, a bearded man walks in with a supermarket tote bag and sits down with a manager, pulling Huon pine sugarbowls and cheeseboard out of his bag to show her. An off-duty barista has her lunch with two friends and tells them she’s thinking of trying to set up a youth centre nearby. She wants Cygnet’s young people to have access to more than the stage behind her and what they can get at school. She wants them to have access to kitchens, rehearsal rooms, projects, artists in residence, a mechanic and youth worker to train them and help them out, lessons and concerts and parties to fill their days and nights. From the radio, a woman croons, won’t you stay with meeee? A table of two women order a soy chocolate milkshake and a ginger beer. When the waiter pours the latter it fizzes and hisses, threatening to spill over the rim of the glass. “Maybe it was shaken up?” one of the women suggests but the waiter shakes his head, tells them it was brewed locally and for that reason can be a little dodgy. Another woman, at another table, sips the same drink and exclaims, “There’s so much real ginger!” A man in a purple t-shirt walks in and leaves a bottle of locally made Rose on the counter. The menu boasts of its locally grown greens and locally laid eggs.

The menu in the diner across the sea is unsurprising, embroiled as it is in the diner culture of the States. Hamburgers and milkshakes and waffle fries. But even as it follows the rules, follows the stereotypes it holds a localised, personal touch. The fruit for the pies is locally sourced and differs with the season and the state. It boasts a specialised, original, sandwich recipe. A secret barbeque sauce. A state speciality, perhaps. Pizza in Chicago and Chicken and waffles in Maryland. But alwaysas American as apple pie. As American as the old-fashioned diner set-up: red vinyl, chequered tiles, laminate tables and something signed by a sport star or Elvis or Dolly. As American as its patrons. Bulky, lonely men in trucker caps and overalls with enormous rigs passed outside and eyes red-rimmed from driving all night. The star quarterback, complete with letterman jacket, who slings a possessive arm around the shoulder of his girlfriend as she stares into the base of her strawberry milkshake. With his other arm, he gestures wildly to his best-friend-cum-sidekick who sits across the booth. In the booth behind them, another teenage boy of the less lauded type – a reticent guitarist with a Harley parked outside – sits in hunched conversation with a high school journalist, trying not to implicate himself in murder. The door opens and the mayor walks in, cheap suit and ample gut, greying hair and red face. He’s trying to make a deal with a visiting politician, police chief, real estate mogul. His bluster is oppressive. The owner rolls his eyes but smiles as he pours the coffee, knowing he won’t make any money off that table. The high school football coach comes in to pick up a takeaway order and is absorbed, unwillingly, by the bluster. They won last night’s game, boasts the mayor. They’re going all the way to state, just you wait and see. “NATIONALS!!” The quarterback yells from his booth. His girlfriend winces. The boy behind him rolls his eyes.

The patrons of the Red Velvet Lounge do not represent the stereotypes of America. Nor do they represent the stereotypes of Australia. Rather, they play out quirks and moments and mysteries entirely their own. A tall man in a buttoned-up shirt and newsie cap orders takeaway coffee for himself – flat white no sugar – and then makes a call on his cell phone, he’s ordering for someone else. A cappuccino with one. The someone else seems to be his ShorthairedWife, who walks in a few minutes later. They take a seat. Their coffees are ready and, even though they ordered takeaway they don’t seem keen on moving. They sip in unison. A younger man with shoulder length hair walks in and goes to join them. He doesn’t order anything. He does most of the talking. Next, a bald-headed man joins the table. He also doesn’t order. Instead, he puts a full punnet of strawberries down in front of Newsie. They talk for a few moments, then the two late arrivals leave. Newsie and The Shorthaired Woman finish their coffees. The two younger men come back. This time they have two punnets of strawberries. A girl in butter-yellow shift dress sways by the counter. Through the speakers, Carole King sings Ifeel the earth. Move. Under my feet. On the other side of the restaurant, a white-haired woman in black and gold is getting lunch with a younger, brunette. Every now and then she gets up to leave, sometimes for as long as half an hour. The younger woman begins to pull out a book with a bright yellow cover. The breaks vary in length but always end up at the same place, a small wooden shop across the road, an art gallery that boasts original designs and jewellery, designs and jewellery that, alongside the wooden façade, tend towards the gothic and the witchy. Her loose-cut top billows out behind her like a cape. Next door to the café, someone named Wolf Arrow is doing tarot card readings. Has Cygnet claimed the supernatural for itself? Another quirk to sit alongside the apples and the vegetarianism and the woollen patterned tunics? Not a dangerous magic, not a Harry Potter magic, a magic of nature and charms and covens and prayers to the goddess. Cats instead of owls, stovetop pans instead of cauldrons. It wouldn’t be hard to believe. Back in the Red Velvet, someone says “horticulture” loud enough for everyone to hear and, through the speakers, a man sings oh baby, baby it’s a wild world. The white-haired woman is back the next day, at a different table, with a tablet, notebook and collection of pens in front of her. She isn’t using them. Three tables away, a tall balding man who looks like an American history professor has a similar set up. One of the baristas goes over to the white-haired woman, knowing from her posture and her face and her sitting position that she is not okay. It’s infinitely touching. They sit together for some time, comforting and debriefing and maybe shedding a few tears. When she stands up to go – her children are waiting – the barista orders a soy latte for the white-haired woman, who has begun to tap away at the tablet, click the pen into go-mode. The man in the speakers sings take a load off, Annie.

In the diner across the seas, a stapled pile of paper, stained with yellow highlighter, sits behind the counter. The kitchen is non-functional, and the owner is having his makeup touched up between taking orders that will never be put through. Someone else pours coffee from his jug into the takeaway cups of bespectacled and baseball-cap wearing cameramen. The quirky dance teacher’s accent lapses back into her native Bostonian. The star quarterback takes a funny photo with his girlfriend and best friend, she’s smiling now. They post it to Instagram with an endless list of fan service hash-tags. The ‘bad boy’ leaves his booth, grabs his own stapled pile of paper, and approaches the bearded man by the door. He has some questions about his motivation. The overachieving student he was sitting with puts down her Nancy Drew novel, she wasn’t really reading it anyway, and goes outside to get her hair fixed. Her ponytail was losing bounce. Around them, constructed Americana crumbles like an undercooked piecrust. The pumpkin-spiced utopia of high school innocence, lurking mystery, and hilarious conversation rolls to a stop, revealing a different America. A scripted America of camera footage, fakery, and costume. An America that creates what seems to be the real, authentic America to those who see it projected. Constructed nationalism, constructed appeal.

There’s a spy in the Red Velvet Lounge. An interloper. A trespasser. They are not local, nor are they a tourist. They are something far, far worse.A writer. Silent, sitting alone, nursing brewed chai after brewed chai and watching. Always with a laptop open, always jotting down descriptions, snippets of conversation, outfits and exchanges and assumptions. She can sustain herself for three or four hours on one serve of tempura mushrooms and a coffee. She is constantly distracted by mental visions of the cafes and diners she knows better, the Double RR in Twin Peaks, Luke’s in Stars Hollow, Pop’s Chock’lit Shop in Riverdale (the town with pep!). A man in a motorcycle jacket walks by and she thinks he’s the local sheriff. Then she remembers Tasmania doesn’t have sheriffs. In between these reveries and her mole-like note taking, she falls into moments of disturbing self-awareness. She doesn’t fit here. She doesn’t know this people. Her writing is rude, invasive, unfair. She’s a waitress herself and can’t think how much she’d hate to know that someone was recording her, recording her customers. In the notebook lying to her left, it is enormous relief to create a character from scratch. To not have to worry if you’re getting it wrong.

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