His Name Is Walt

His name is Walt and I’ve been writing around it for months now, calling him “the guy” in four different reviews because it felt cheap to use his real name for a bit, and at some point a bit stops being a bit and starts being a person you actually know. So. Walt.

He works two blocks over, does the books for a couple of small businesses on the street, and he’s been coming through the after-shift table at Percy’s since before I ran the kitchen. First time I ever saw him operate was at the counter, ordering food, standing there long enough that the guy behind him in line sighed loud enough for the whole block to hear it. Walt had the specials board memorized, could recite it back to you, and still couldn’t decide at the moment between the red beans and something he’d never once actually ordered. He does this everywhere. Every restaurant, every hardware store, every board game turn.

At the table it’s the same tape on a loop. He picks up a card, turns it over, sets it down, picks up a different one, waffling back and forth, and asks a question he already knows the answer to just to hear it out loud again. The man does payroll for two businesses, math’s never the issue, the issue is he treats every choice like it’s permanent, like there’s no next turn, no next hand, no next Tuesday to fix it on. My AP radar, the one I’ve apparently got a reputation for around here, pegs him from across the room before the cards are even dealt. I’ve clocked him at four minutes on a decision a coin flip would’ve solved fine. Somebody at the table, might’ve been me, once said watching him decide is like watching a man debone a fish who’s never held a knife, careful past the point where careful helps anybody, the fish is already dead, brother, just cut it.

Here’s the thing I never wrote in those reviews. Couple months back we were at Percy’s after close, just him and me, and he told me his dad ran a diner that folded when Walt was seventeen, and it folded partly because his dad kept changing the menu, kept second-guessing what people wanted, kept ordering ingredients for dishes nobody could sell. Walt watched a small business die from a man who guessed too easy, too often, and it rewired something in him permanent. He said he’d rather sit on a decision an hour too long than make the wrong one fast and watch it cost somebody something. That’s a kid who watched his old man guess wrong and decided guessing itself was the crime. I don’t get to make fun of that clean anymore.

I still give him grief for it, and after looking over the menu he still says “I’ll just have the eggs Benedict” like it’s a mortgage he’s signing, and his order comes a while later than everybody else’s. But I don’t rush him at the table the way I used to, not out loud anyway, and I’ve started ordering the same thing every time myself, partly as a joke, mostly because watching him think has made me a little more honest about how fast I decide things I probably shouldn’t. He’s got a dead diner sitting behind every choice he makes, and he’s right that some things deserve the extra two minutes. Most things don’t. But some do, and I don’t think it’s my place to tell him which is which. I’ve written most of this standing at my kitchen counter at home, same as everything else on here, and it took me longer to get this one down than a review usually does.

Next time he’s stuck on the bid in Cyclades I’m going to let the silence sit there a beat longer than I used to before I start needling him. Not much longer. A beat.