The Graveyard Shift Diner

🕐9 min read

The Regular in Booth Six

I’ve cooked nights at the Starlight Diner for going on seven years. The Starlight is on Route 9 in Coventry, New York, between a closed Midas shop and a self-storage place that’s been “coming soon” for as long as I’ve worked there. We’re open twenty-four hours and we get what you’d expect — bar close crowd from eleven to two, then a long dead stretch from two to five, then the early shift workers starting at five. Long-haul truckers sometimes, people coming off hospital shifts, the occasional insomniac.

We do a decent short stack, a serviceable club sandwich, and coffee that I can say without reservation is the best thing on the menu because I make it from a recipe I developed over four years of experimentation. I’m proud of the coffee. I’m less proud of some of the other items but that’s a different conversation.

The man I’m going to tell you about started coming in sometime in early November. I noticed him because he always came in at 2:38 AM — I started checking the clock because it seemed like every time I looked up he was already sitting in booth six — and he always ordered the same thing. Wanda, who works the floor on overnights, would bring me the ticket and it was always the same: two eggs scrambled, wheat toast dry, sausage links, black coffee. Ticket comes in, I cook it, Wanda takes it out. Simple.

I didn’t think about him much for the first few weeks. We have regulars. Some people hit a pattern they like and they stick to it. He was a middle-aged guy in a gray windbreaker, I thought, though I only ever got glimpses through the pass-through window. He always sat with his back to the counter, facing the parking lot window. He always ate alone. He always left, as far as I could tell, without incident.

The Night Wanda Wasn’t There

Wanda called in sick on a Thursday in December. Tammy, the manager, came in from her house twenty minutes away and she was annoyed about it, and by the time she arrived I was already handling everything because the bar crowd had thinned out and we only had two tables occupied. Tammy took the floor and I stayed on the line.

2:38. The bell above the door. I looked through the pass-through out of habit.

The man in the gray windbreaker came in and sat down in booth six.

Tammy was wiping down the counter. I watched her. She didn’t look up. The man sat down and opened the laminated menu and I watched Tammy move to the coffee station and refill the decaf carafe and she didn’t acknowledge him at all.

I figured she was just in a bad mood. Some servers go into auto-pilot when they’re irritated. I waited for her to go over and take his order.

She didn’t. She went to the couple in booth two and freshened their coffees and asked if they needed anything else. She went to the old man at the counter and made small talk about the weather. She walked past booth six twice without looking at it.

I opened the pass-through window. “Tammy. Booth six.”

She looked over her shoulder, then back at me. “What about it?”

“Your customer.”

She turned and looked directly at booth six. “There’s nobody in booth six, Ray.”

I looked through the window. The man was sitting there, menu open, waiting. I could see the gray windbreaker. I could see his hands on the table. Tammy was staring at the booth with an expression of mild confusion, like I’d pointed out a spot on the wall.

I went out through the kitchen door and walked to booth six.

The booth was empty. The menu was flat on the table, exactly where it always was, untouched. The seat showed no impression, no warmth that I could detect when I pressed my palm to it. I stood there for a moment. I went back to the kitchen.

I looked through the pass-through again. The booth was empty.

The Footage

We have a security camera system — four cameras, installed about three years ago after someone broke into the register at 4 AM while the server was in the bathroom. One of the cameras covers the dining room in a wide angle from the corner near the restrooms. It’s an Axis P1375, the footage saves to a local drive for thirty days.

The morning after the Tammy incident, I stayed late and pulled the footage from the previous four weeks. I went through it in fast-forward, night by night, watching booth six.

I checked six different nights when I was certain I’d cooked the scrambled eggs and sausage links. Nights I remembered clearly because Wanda had brought me the ticket and I’d made the food and she’d taken it out to him.

On every one of those nights, booth six was empty on the footage. People walked past it. One night Wanda walked toward it and then past it, as if she’d changed her mind, and she set no food down and came back with nothing in her hands. I could see the whole dining room. I could see every other occupied booth and every single customer. Booth six was empty.

I pulled the ticket records from the POS system. The tickets existed. Two eggs scrambled, wheat toast dry, sausage links, black coffee. Payment recorded as cash each time. Correct amount. No discrepancy in the drawer at the end of the night — I checked with Tammy, who handles reconciliation, and she confirmed the drawer had always balanced on those nights.

So we had tickets. We had payment. We had no customer on camera. We had a server who had no memory of taking those tickets or delivering that food.

I cooked the food. I know I cooked the food because I remember cracking those eggs and thinking, as I always did, that I was going to suggest we upgrade to a larger sausage link because the current ones were undersized for the price point. I remember the specific thought. The food went somewhere.

What I Asked Wanda

When Wanda came back the following week I waited until we were slow, around 3 AM, and I asked her about the regular in booth six. I described him — gray windbreaker, sits facing the parking lot, always the same order. I asked if she remembered him.

She thought about it for a while. She said she thought she knew who I meant, kind of. She said sometimes she had a feeling she’d served someone in booth six but when she tried to picture his face she couldn’t get it. Like trying to remember a dream.

“Does he tip?” I asked.

She thought about it again. “I think so? I feel like I should know, but I can’t see it clearly.”

I told her I’d pulled the security footage. I told her what I’d found.

She was quiet for a while. Then she said: “The cash in the drawer always adds up, though.”

I said yes. She nodded like that settled something.

“Then he’s paying for it,” she said. “Whatever he is, he’s paying for it.”

The Last Time

He came in on a Tuesday in January. 2:38. I watched the door when I heard the bell and I saw the door open, felt the draft of cold air, and saw the gray windbreaker move to booth six. I watched Wanda. She paused, tilted her head, and then wrote on her order pad and brought me the ticket.

Two eggs scrambled, wheat toast dry, sausage links, black coffee.

I cooked it. I plated it. Wanda took it out. I watched through the pass-through as she crossed the dining room and set the plate down in what looked to me like an occupied booth and what would look to you, if you were watching the security camera, like an empty one.

And then I went back to my station and started prepping for the morning rush, because the food was good and the cash balanced and he wasn’t hurting anything. Whatever he was, he’d found a diner he liked and a table he was comfortable at and he kept coming back. I’ve been cooking for twenty years and that’s the highest compliment a customer can pay.

He stopped coming in February. I don’t know why. The booth is still booth six. Wanda still works Thursdays.

I still make the coffee the same way.

I’ve worked nights long enough to know the shift does things to your sense of what’s normal. You get used to the strange hours, the empty streets, the specific loneliness of three in the morning. Other overnight workers understand this — I’ve talked to a warehouse security guard who told me about footage that showed things the cameras shouldn’t have been able to pick up, and I believed him, because at that hour the ordinary rules seem negotiable. You learn to work with it.

Whatever that man was, he had good taste in diners. I’ll give him that.

More from the Night Shift

• Bakery Before Dawn
• Gas Station Midnight
• The Guest in Room 6