fluorescent lights, laminate tables, coffee that had been sitting since 2 in the afternoon, a menu that hadn’t changed since Eisenhower. It was not the kind of place where you expected to see Paul Newman and Robert Redford. But Newman had a theory about diners. They he had held it since his early career and had never abandoned it despite everything that followed.
The theory was simple. The food in a diner was honest. It did not pretend to be something it wasn’t. The coffee was coffee. The soup was soup. The pie was whatever kind of pie it said it was on the menu. Newman distrusted restaurants where the menu required explanation, and he had made his preferences known to Redford over many years, and Redford had developed the patience to indulge them.
They had spent the afternoon in a screening room on 47th Street, watching a rough cut of a film that a mutual friend had directed and wanted their opinion on. The screening had run long. By the time they emerged onto the street, it was early evening, the November dark, already fully down. Roya Newman had said, “I know a place.
” And Redford had said, “Of course you do.” And they had walked three blocks to the Lexington Diner and taken a booth near the back. They had been there about 40 minutes when the old man came in. Ruth noticed him first. She noticed everyone who came through that door. It was a professional habit she had developed without trying to.
the automatic inventory of a woman who had been assessing customers needs for 11 years. The man was in his late 60s, she estimated, military bearing, despite the cane, the particular straightness of the spine that men who have been through basic training carry for the rest of their lives, regardless of what else happens to them.
Army jacket, olive drab, well-maintained, one sleeve pinned at the elbow where his right arm ended on his collar and a small pin that Ruth recognized as a unit insignia, though she could not have said which unit. He sat at the counter. He looked at the menu for a long time, the careful look of a man who is not deciding what he wants, but deciding what he can afford.
Then he folded the menu and set it down. What’s the soup tonight? He asked. Chicken noodle? Ruth said, “How much?” 65 cents. Coffee is 20. The man nodded. I’ll have both. Ruth put in the order. She set the coffee in front of him. He wrapped both hands around the mug. She noticed his left hand was missing the two smallest fingers, another old wound healed over decades ago, and drank slowly, looking at the counter.
