All Inclusive

Ruby had gone to her room smelling of cheeseburgers often enough that one might assume she grew tired of them, though the one piled high in front of her could easily make a lie out of that. She had the day off from the Smoking Room but was still tucked away in one of its booths, a plate bearing a half-eaten cheeseburger and a scattering of fries next to a mostly smeared ketchup puddle in front of her. In one hand was a copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night, and while she kept glancing up and around to see who had joined her for lunch in the bar, she was enjoying the book very much. Reading was not a past time she made enough time for, she’d decided, and her New Year’s resolution had been to tackle the knee-high pile of “To Read” books that had gathered on her side of the bed she shared with Graham before she or he tripped over them for the millionth time.

She glanced up and around at the bar once more as she selected another fry and swirled the tip in ketchup, bringing it to her mouth for a bite before casting her attention back down to the book. She had heard somewhere that Fitzgerald’s wife Zelda was allegedly responsible for a good deal of his work, this book included, and she thought she could believe it. This book had the sort of prose that was not frilly but touchable, the sort of “fiction” one might write after taking a good, long look at both themselves and their marriage. A definite feminine touch, but who really knew in the end? All she was really sure of was that the story had proven to be brilliant and insightful and sad, and while Ruby usually preferred adventure stories and this one was definitely not that, it was holding her attention marvelously.

Idly, she moved to wipe the salt from her fingers on a napkin before turning a page, glancing up once again between the break of one chapter and the start of another. She’d opted for a pint of beer with her burger, and nearly jolted at the realization that she’d been neglecting it all too much between her people watching, her burger, and her book. She sat the book face down on the table, still open and far away from her food to keep from either wetting the pages or getting them dirty, and picked her beer up for a nice, long drink.