Pseudonym

This is the first short story I wrote for university. It’s the first short story I’d written for a very long time, and the first bit of writing I showed to people I didn’t know – the other people in my class. I feel I’ve come a long way since writing it, but I still like it and think it has my voice. So here it is.

-

“Integrity: A name is the blueprint of the thing we call character. You ask, What’s in a name? I answer, Just about everything you do.” -Morris Mandel

When he walked into the diner every head glanced up with bleary eyes, then, uninterested, returned to staring into their cups of coffee. My eyes stayed upon him.

There wasn’t any particular reason why they should do so—he wasn’t extraordinary in looks—but there was a way he moved. He moved like he came from the city; his legs swished stiffly, like scissors. Here in Imogene, Iowa, our strides are looser, wider, more relaxed. He paused in the doorway, silhouetted by the morning sunlight behind him, taking in the tired jukebox, the faded, faux-leather red seats, the tarnished chrome. It no longer bothered me, but I knew the stale miasma of old grease and cheap coffee wafted towards him. For a moment, he hesitated, but after a resigned squaring of the shoulders, the man met my stare and sat in my section.

I came over with the coffeepot. He gave a quick nod of his head and I poured it. He wore a ratty cap pulled low on his forehead, casting a shadow over his face. His dark clothes were almost caked with smog. New York, I decided. As I leaned over to pour the coffee, he noticed my nametag.

“Sage,” he said. “It means wisdom. A good, strong name.”

“What, no hippie joke?” I said with the smile I always reserved for customers who commented on my name.

“It was around long before the hippies.”

“I suppose.” I paused. “What’s your name?”

He looked up and the light fell across him. He seemed to be somewhere in his mid-twenties. Half of his face was covered in a 5 o’clock shadow, but the other half was almost shockingly pale, and with one mole marring a cheek he looked like a ying-yang sign.

He grimaced. “Puck.”

“Like the fairy in A Midsummer’s Night Dream?” I asked, intrigued to discover someone else with an unusual name. Here, everyone was named Jessica, Britney, John, or Todd.

“That’s one meaning, but I don’t think I’m much like him.” He smiled, showing white teeth. As another waitress passed behind me in a pastel pink blur, his eyes flicked towards her.

“See, her name? Sarah. It sounds boring, it’s ubiquitous, and all it means isprincess in Hebrew.”  I suppressed an un-waitress-like snigger. Sarah wasn’t exactly a princess.

“What’s in a name?” I said with a more genuine smile. He gave a lopsided grin in return, but I had the feeling he’d probably heard that line before.

I took his order of eggs and bacon to the kitchen, watching him from behind the counter. He drew lazy organic designs on the tabletop with a fingertip. His eyes occasionally followed Sarah as she weaved her way among the customers, taking in the bleached hair, the tan, the raccoon’s mask of mascara and eyeliner. She was the opposite of me in looks. I looked down at the cracked linoleum countertop for a moment, biting my lip.

As Sarah sashayed back towards the kitchen, she flicked back her mock-blond hair and lifted her stenciled eyebrows at me. I just smiled back. That eyebrow lift signaled “he’s cute.” I agreed with her, for once; usually her tastes ran to the big, blonde and blockheaded, and so generally her eyebrow lift was met with my nose scrunching up with distaste. We usually passed judgment on the attractiveness of customers to help make the shifts a bit livelier, but this time it felt hollow.