On my first morning at the hotel in Pearl, Jackson, I ran down to have eggs for breakfast. The “breakfast place” looked like a typical American diner, just like the ones I’d seen in movies. I looked around for the food but quickly realized there was no buffet. A lady appeared – seemingly the waitress – and confirmed that there was no buffet…She asked me if I was okaaay and whether I’d like to have breakfast, with an indulgent tone – as if speaking to an impatient child. I imagine this was a reaction to my frantic darting around looking for food. Her expression was priceless: a combination of several unspoken messages – ‘I don’t really want to talk to anyone, what species are you, where are you from, calm down, you’ll get your breakfast’. I said yes and asked how long I’d have to wait. At 7 am I was the only guest, and there was no reason to think it would take long – but there was a stillness, a lifelessness to the place that made me believe it would take an eternity. And the waitress too, with her slow, drifting walk and that fantastic gaze that looked straight at you yet somehow up and to the left at the same time, gave me the feeling that I wouldn’t see that breakfast with enough time to eat it. My partner consultant was picking me up at 7:30. I said, ‘Then just bring me a coffee, please.’ She replied in that slow, Southern, singsong drawl: ‘Coffee is outside in the lounge, Ma’am…’ And so it was – a self-serve Community Coffee machine. It was decent but watered down, even by American coffee standards. So in other words, I was welcome to leave if I wasn’t happy. Infinite laughs.
The Breakfast Lady
