Well, since just about all of you missed seeing/hearing me read my story last night at Sexy Tales & Other Intimate Acts (you'll just have to use your imagination about the second part of that) and since I'm feeling lazy, below you can read the story your self.
There were actually some decent pictures taken of me onstage, but I don't have those yet so, again, you must resort to your own imagination...

The Cross of Lorraine


She looked familiar but he couldn’t for the life of him place her. He tried as he sipped at his still too hot coffee. He continued to run her through various scenarios and locales in his mind. His thoughts wandered as he ate his French toast automatically. She wasn’t his waitress so he didn’t see her close up but it was driving him a little mad, like the name of a song that keeps going through your head and you know you’ve got to come up with it or you won’t be able to sleep that night. He considered asking her but didn’t know how to do so without it sounding like a cheesy pick-up line. And he wouldn’t do that. She was young. Probably young enough to be his very own daughter. Probably? Who was he kidding? Roger was forty-five; she could have been his kid, easy. This was the first time he had seen her at Odessa though. Of that he was sure.
It nagged at certain long unexplored crevices in his mind for much of the following week. It became a game. He would think back to every situation where her path could have crossed his; rearranging faces and meetings to do so but he still came up barren.

His regular waitress raised a painted on eyebrow at him when he walked past her section and seated himself in the new one’s. Roger had been eating breakfast, actually to be completely honest, he had been eating French toast, every Tuesday after filing that week’s piece at the Village Voice for a couple of years. He almost always sat at the same table. He wouldn’t fight for it, he was a creature of habit but not completely controlled by his customs, so the raised eyebrow was to be expected. He wouldn’t call what he had with his regular waitress at the Polish diner a relationship. He tipped exactly seventeen percent so it wasn’t as if losing out on his dollar and sixty-three cents this particular Tuesday was going to make her destitute.
The girl was slower than his normal waitress. He sincerely hoped he would solve this mystery and quickly. He actually had to ask her for coffee, and she gave him “a couple of minutes with the menu,” which he did not require. But seeing how he had this time to kill, he flipped open the plastic laminated menu and perused it for the first time in years. He was contemplating pierogies when she returned at his elbow, her notepad at the ready. “Are you ready to order, sir?” she said. For some reason the “sir” made him wince.
He flipped the menu closed, handing it back to her and ordered what he always ordered. He watched her intently as she walked toward the kitchen to put his order in, French toast plate, well done. He sipped at his coffee and now with her voice as well as a close-up of her face in his image bank tried yet again to place her.
The following week his old waitress took less notice of where he sat. When the girl came over to ask if he wanted coffee and to hand him the menu, he handed it right back agreeing to the coffee and ordering his usual immediately. She jotted it down silently and slipped away. It had been two full weeks now and it wasn’t like he was losing sleep over the riddle, but he wanted it solved. He also wanted to return to his former section of tables for the other waitress was far superior.
As he was eating his French toast (not as well done as he preferred; the egg was still a little wet and runny), he glanced up at the precise moment the girl was leaning over his table to warm up his coffee. He wasn’t intentionally looking down her blouse but it was lucky that he was. He spied a gold chain around her neck that dangled as she bent to pour. When he saw what was at the end of the chain it all came flooding back. He felt like he’d been caught with a riot squad’s power hose.
He remembered the precise moment when she was given the small, golden Cross of Lorraine, her eighth birthday. Her mother had been French and was particularly taken with the symbol. It was originally thought to be the symbol of Joan of Arc. The double barred T later was the emblem of the Free French Forces under Charles de Gaulle in World War II.
The girl’s name was Lorraine; her mother was Claudine whom Roger had dated quite seriously ten years ago. Now, Lorraine was eighteen and Roger having solved the mystery that had been plaguing his mind for a fortnight was gob-smacked. Of course he recognized her, he had almost become her stepfather and she had more than a passing resemblance to the woman who had broken his heart like no other. Before his mouth even knew what his brain thought of this shocking development, his ears heard it ask, “Could I take you out for a drink, or a coffee sometime?” Inside his head, his brain cracked a laugh. Still processing the deluge, most of him knew that this pretty, eighteen-year-old girl (and why didn’t she recognize him?) would laugh him off of Avenue A. He’d soon be forced to find a new Polish diner to eat his French toast at on deadline day. As he ran through the litany of backup choices, his ears sent a strange missive.
“Coffee would be okay … I guess,” she said as she tucked her cross back inside her white shirt. When she gave him the bill, she also gave him her telephone number and asked Roger to call.

He would throw the scrap of paper away. He would never call her. He would find another diner, pick out a new waitress and train her. He would stop going to diners altogether. He’d learn to make French toast at home. He would never have French toast ever again. Christ! He’d never even have Quiche Lorraine ever again. Could he avoid eggs, altogether? He would get really, really drunk tonight. He would forget the entire, strange affair.
He called her. He took her to coffee. He took her home and he took her to bed. He took her virginity. He took his sheets to his washing machine.
As he stood in the small laundry nook, he started to sob uncontrollably. He didn’t know how long he was standing there, at least through the rinse cycle, when she found him. He sensed her presence and turned. She spotted his tears and chuckled. “I thought I was supposed to do the crying the first time.”
He wiped his face with the back of his hand and knew what he had to do. He knew he had to tell her immediately or he never would. He told her who he was. He told her what he had done and why he had done it. He told her he surmised it was some sort of sick revenge to get back at her mother for hurting him. He told her that he didn’t know he had it in him. Lorraine just laughed and raised his face to hers. She shook her head, kissed his nose as if he were a disobedient puppy and whispered “Roger, I fucked you for all the same reasons.”
She was gone before the first spin cycle.