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Ariel
The restaurant in the hotel lobby is huge and completely empty. She pushes through the kitchen doors, her hair bunched up atop her head and listing wildly to the right. It dances as she comes at me. "You only have five minutes for breakfast." I ask her if she means to order it or to eat it. She laughs. She thinks I'm funny. She asks me what I want. Her hair waves at me. Her head tilts the same way as her hair as she takes my order, cocked like a thin bird contemplating a late morning worm. She scribbles on her pad. I watch her hair begin to arc in a slow loop towards the floor. I ask her if it has ever pulled her over. She laughs. She thinks I'm a laff riot. She brings me the check. "Thanks! Ariel" in careful, flowing script above the obligatory smiley face. "Were your parents inspired by The Tempest?" I ask. "Or Sylvia Plath," she says, absently rebanding her hair and sending it sprouting defiantly skyward again. "Early Sylvia Plath. Definitely not The Little Mermaid." --
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