Overheard

“One day,” he said. He held his hat in his hand. The bill was dusty and worn. His hair stuck to his head in sweaty patches where the hat had been.

I had been sitting across the diner from him, in a booth next to the window. I had been looking at my phone, at people passing on the street—everywhere but at the bar stool he had been seated on. When I heard his voice, I turned and saw him starting to rise. That’s when he said it.

“One day.”

The words hung there, not said to anyone that I could see, not said in my direction certainly. The stool next to him spun. I couldn’t tell if he had bumped it or if someone else had just left, even less noticeably. The stools spun easily of course; they were the kind I always longed to sit in as a child, and never sat in now, even when alone.

He reached up with one hand and ran it through his hair, which, though not gray, seemed to have faded from what its original luster might have been. I’m terrible at judging a person’s age, but he was not young. His face was lined and seemed almost dusty, like the hat. He did not look in my direction. Without moving, he simply radiated a sensation of gathering himself together. He moved toward the door. No check on the counter, already paid presumably. He took with him only the hat, and any clue as to what his words had meant.

I did not stop him. I did not ask if he had been making a promise, to himself or an unseen companion. I did not ask what he had missed, whether he was also a dollar short. I just watched him walk out the door, donning his hat and pocketing his story for another time.

One day, I thought.