SPOTLIGHT Read Free Page B

but Abby suspected they’d gone a little overboard and none of the subsequent owners had dared untangle the mess. What resulted was a kitsch twenty-four-hour diner liberally decorated with picnic tables and taxidermy moose heads.
     
    Its waitresses, of which Abby was one, were required to wear gingham dresses with lace aprons and matching hair bows, a uniform which was as impractical as it was gaudy.  Abby had learned in the new employee handbook that it was compulsory that the employees kept up a 1950’s sensibility when dealing with all patrons.
     
    For all that, Home Sweet’s eccentric appearance didn’t take away from its high quality food, particularly its signature apple pies, and it didn’t detract from the fact that it was on a busy NYC cross street, open twenty four hours and most important on that particular day, heavily air-conditioned.
     
    Abby couldn’t complain about her new position. She had worked as a waitress since high school back home in South Meadow, and although she was clumsy elsewhere in life, she certainly had a gift for balancing plates of hot food.
     
    She had found the job opening through an online search back home when she’d first settled on moving to New York, and after hearing her credentials over the phone, Aaron, the restaurant’s manager, had hired her on the spot.
     
    Abby had officially met Aaron in person the day after she moved in. He was a gangly thirty-something, with a constant stubble and long shaggy hair so dark black it seemed to shine. The best she could describe him as was nearly attractive, but there was something about his toothy smile that Abby found distrustful.
     
    “Aaron only hires the pretty girls,” was how her new co-worker, Noelle, had put it. “But don’t let him bother you. He’ll act all heartbroken when you turn him down and then he’ll get over it. It’s New York, there’s no lack of pretty girls.”
     
    Noelle was definitely pretty. At five foot eleven she was as tall as Aaron and more than a head taller than Abby. Most of that height was in her strong lean dancer’s legs. Noelle was only nineteen and had moved to the city from the more suburban Staten Island with the original intent of being a Rockette at Radio City Music Hall.
     
    “Turns out I’m just a little too tall,” Noelle had told her, cracking her gum. “So I decided to be a model. Better costumes anyway. Less reindeers. ”
     
    Abby liked Noelle right away. The girl was undeniably funny. She constantly cracked jokes just as often as she cracked the gum she was perpetually chewing. Noelle’s dogged determination and witty outlook about life reminded Abby of her sister in a lot of ways. Aside from that, the two had so many career aspirations in common and Noelle had already started informing Abby of open calls for auditions around town.
     
    “Here’s the address I was telling you about,” Noelle said, waving a scrap of paper as Abby entered the restaurant for another double shift at the Home Sweet. “It’s just a commercial but they’re looking for extras who can sing and dance.”
     
    “I’ll take anything I can get,” Abby said, tucking the scrap of paper into her apron pocket. “Thank you, Noelle.”
     
    “No problem. I’ll keep ‘em coming. We just keep auditioning like crazy and someone’s bound to take pity on us, right?”
     
    Abby laughed. “That’s not exactly how I’d put it.”
     
    Noelle shrugged, pulling off her own apron. “Anyways, it’s all yours. Have fun. Well, try to, at least.”
     
    “You’re done for the day?” Abby asked.
     
    Noelle let out a bark of a laugh. “Oh, believe me girl, I wish I was. I’m working a split. I’ll be back to join you for the dinner rush. That is unless I meet my prince charming on my break and he whisks me away to Paris. Then I’m not coming back. Sorry. ”
     
    Abby shook her head in bemusement. She grabbed a pencil and order pad and stuck them in her apron pocket.
     
    “It’s pretty