I drank my tepid coffee from a worn old cup and traced my finger over the map I had laid out in front of me. Soon I would cross the border into Oklahoma.
Arkansas was a quiet and lackluster state. I hadn’t seen anything it in that made me want to stay. The highways were dusty and cracked, and the air smelled like petrol whenever I pulled over at a diner or a gas station. It seemed like the type of place you’d wanna run from, so I was questioning why, on my journey away from home, I had found myself here.
I watched the hustle and bustle of the waitresses behind the counter, shrouded in clouds of smoke – cigarette smoke mixed with smoke from the grill mixed with sweat of the cooks. It must have smelled disgusting but I was a little jealous. It was the most life I’d seen in days: people could hear each other, feel each other in passing, taste the burnt coffee in the air, smell the food and the cigarettes and the coffee and the sweat. And among the chaos a waitress stood on the phone, shouting over the noise to be heard. She let everything brush her by as if the chaos around her was invisible, and she puffed instinctively on a cigarette.
She wasn’t particularly pretty, her eyes were tired and her face displayed the lines of someone who’d had to put on a smile their whole life, but she was attractive and appealing. She swiftly untied her apron in a single movement and stuffed it unconcernedly in the bag she swung over her should as she headed towards the door. I could see the intention in every step she took and was envious of her. She was going somewhere, and I was sure it wasn’t gonna be in Arkansas.
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