A Long December
Tiny is staring out the window at the cars in the parking lot as the exterior lights begin to blink on. Some computer company entrepreneur types are in the Whalehead Room having a holiday party. Miriam thinks their laughter sounds canned like from a sitcom.
Cassie, the other server, is walking around the restaurant like her shoes are made of lead.
“Could she walk any slower?” Miriam says to Tiny when he comes to pick up food.
Tiny’s real name is Tim, and he isn’t tiny. He’s actually quite tall. They nicknamed him Tiny as a joke early on. He is a recent college grad who took a summer job at Ray’s Waterfront and Tiki Bar to make some quick money. Now it’s December, and he is still here.
“Cassie,” Miriam nods toward the main dining room. “She’s moving in slow motion today.”
Miriam is working the raw bar. She’s gloved up and ripping open oysters.
“She doesn’t sleep,” Tiny says, pulling one of the trays of oysters toward him. “Like not ever. And she’s fighting with her daughter again.”
“The holidays are hard,” Miriam says, and he nods.
He watches her take another oyster from the stack and pop it open with her knife. When Ray’s is busy like this, Miriam gets into a rhythm with the pops and scrapes.
“I could watch you do that all day,” Tiny says, and she snorts.
“It’s a lot of oysters, but no pearls.” Miriam might be talking about the job, or she might be talking about life.
“No pearls? Really?”
“Nope.” She pops a another. “Not a lot of pearls in farmed oysters. Well, not pearls that would be worth anything.”
“Ever find one?”
Miriam flips the hair out of her eyes and looks at him at him. Something is broken inside of Tiny or is breaking. Miriam can see it in his eyes. She doesn’t want to get pulled in. She looks away and shakes her head.
Tiny takes the tray and moves away. Miriam keeps shucking as he glides around the dining room refilling coffees and getting cocktails from the bartender. She starts to think the leaden Cassie has disappeared, and that maybe someone should go find her, when the woman materializes with a tray of coffee cups.
Tiny’s back and still looking devastated, his eyes big and wet.
“T, talk to me. What’s going on,” Miriam says.
“It’s nothing.”
“It don’t look like nothing.” She purposely doesn’t meet his eyes. Pop. Scrape.
Tiny sighs and looks out at the grey afternoon, the dark water.
“I had plans. I had set personal goals for myself. I haven’t met any of my goals this year.”
He pulls a tray toward him and leaves before she can say anything. The truth is she doesn’t have any advice for him. And some point he will get a job, a real job, and move on.
Miriam thinks Ray’s looks better when it gets dark. The faded holiday decorations and lights glow softly; deep shadows hide the shabby, the neglect.
When Tiny returns, he looks better, taller even. Miriam smiles at him.
“What’s up?” she asks.
“A pearl?” He holds up a business card. “One of the guys at the party, I was talking to him, and well, I have a job interview, I think.”
“For real?” Miriam stops shucking.
Tiny gulps some air. “I think so. They have a new contract or something and need people. He asked what my degree was in.” “That’s amazing,” Miriam tells him, picking another oyster off the pile. “Congrats.”
“I don’t want to get ahead of myself or anything.” Tiny holds the card up as if he is reading it again.
Miriam points the shucking knife at the card. “Hey, this must meet at least one of your goals.”
He laughs and nods his head. “It does. It totally does.”
He winks at her and pulls another tray toward him. Miriam pulls another oyster from the pile.
Colleen Kearney Rich is the author of the chapbooks Things You Won’t Tell Your Therapist (Finishing Line Press, 2019) and Bunnyman Bridge (A3 Press, 2021). Her writing has been published in the literary journals SmokeLong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Matchbook, and Pithead Chapel, among others. She is a fellow of the Hambidge Center for the Creative Arts in Georgia and was a 2021 Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers Conference. One of the founding editors of So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art, she has an MFA from George Mason University in Virginia, where she also works.