The laminated diner menu

Between the syrup caddy and the little chrome napkin dispenser, in a plastic sleeve fogged at the seams, the laminated menu holds its post through every shift the diner has ever run. Thirty-one items are listed, four of them ordered on ninety percent of visits, and the plastic long ago outgrew any need for repair beyond a strip of clear tape at the spine. Grease has entered the lamination itself, not merely settled on top of it, so the pancake stack in the corner illustration has taken on the permanent tan of a photograph left too long in a windowsill. Corners have rounded from thumbs; a coffee ring has fused two of the specials together in a way no one has bothered to correct. It has survived dishwashing accidents, toddlers with crayons, and one memorable flood in the walk-in that reached exactly as far as the counter and no further. Regulars do not read it. They hold it the way a hymnal is held during a familiar verse, more out of respect for the form than the content, eyes already on the server. New customers read every line, sometimes twice, and ask what the soup is even though the soup has not changed in four years. Replacement menus arrive twice a year from a supply catalog and sit in a drawer, crisp and unclaimed, while this one continues its rounds; the newer one, it turns out, is not needed until this one finally splits clean down the spine.

Beatrice Womack