ar SPACES HIPS The restaurant vibrates with warmth. Outside and unnoticed tired train Winter flows down the empty streets, spiralling sleepy white rain down onto the storefronts and abandoned automobiles. The world is frozen shut for the night. The waiters stand, tired and resentful, behind the register, staring angrily about and speaking in whispers. It is late and their minds have already left for home. I drink from my glass of water and glare at the other late night customers, wondering how they are handling the strain. There is a cheque on every table here and we're all down to the wire. With the exception of the young couple at the back table, the customers are mostly older men and women, oblivious » to all but the food on their plates. They could care less that the overhead music was turned off long ago. The waiters will tell you, they know it all too well. The old are slow eaters. The young couple in the back look like they haven’t slept in days. Identical outfits of dirty black clothing frame their pale, white skin. The boy reaches out one thin, mottled hand and turns their cheque over. They stare at it together, mutely. The girl is shaking beneath her black leather. Something painful and thrilling passes between their eyes when they look at each other. Through the order window in the kitchen I see a young, red haired girl with an apron on deftly applying garnish to the plates for the morning shift. Her small hands work quickly and skillfully. Her mind is a detached, floating thing, lost in a world more bright and beautiful than this tiny, tortured place. Years ago I would have been there with her, floating in the same detached world of the imagination. I wonder when it was that I lost the ability to take those trips away from the here and now. When was it that my interest shifted from the sky to the ground? I used to stare at people like the people in this restaurant and wonder how they would look shooting guns at one another or flying across the universe in streamlined spaceships. Now, the simplest things are enough for me. The girl’s hands, spreading the garnish, her fingers dancing across the plates ina blur of studied motion. Her hair tied back tight. A strand escapes from her forehead and floats to and fro in front of her face as she works. The tip of her nose shines under the light. The right side of her mouth curves up at the end into a tiny smile. Above the smile, on her cheek, she has a small mole. Above the mole her eyes burn like fire beneath tired, oily dark eyelids. Suddenly, from behind me comes the sound of _ the back exit door banging open. A cush of cold air enters the restaurant and puts the hairs at the back of my neck on end. I hear the sound of running footsteps disappearing down the back alley, and when I turn around and look the couple’s table is empty. One of the waiters hits his fist against the wall and walks quickly to the back door. He screams profanities down the alley in both directions for a while then slams the door shut against the wind. the other waiter steps to the abandoned table, takes out a rag, and begins to slowly wipe it clean. “You lose a few every day.” he says. Jamie Tolagson SPACESHIPS “The restaurant vibrates with warmth “Through the order window inthe kitchen I seea young, red hated gi ‘Outside and unnorced with an apron on tired ein Winter