The Secret History of Peter Rabbit's Good Eats

 As published in Drift

Petra noticed the lady with the suitcase three weeks ago. At first, it was just an oddity—one of those things that catches your attention. Petra had caught a flash of hot pink out the diner’s largest window, the one set between paintings of rabbits. On the corner of Sparrow and Main, the old lady and her suitcase waited for the light to change.

“That’s enough,” the customer had said. Petra tore her eyes from the window and pulled the coffee pot away as molasses-coloured liquid reached the cup’s brim. She glanced outside, but the woman was gone.

The next day, as Petra slid a stack of pancakes across a table, she noticed the woman again. She must have been at least eighty years old, back curled as if a lifetime of storms had molded a permanent bend, and her hot pink suitcase glowed against grey concrete and brown buildings. The light changed, and the woman ambled into the crosswalk, suitcase bouncing behind.

“Petra!” her boss called. “Table 6!”

Every day, the woman appeared as though dropped from the sky. Petra never saw where she had come from, nor where she went. There were no houses or apartment buildings for at least four blocks. No bus stations, train stations, or anywhere worth visiting, yet there she was, a bright beacon that graced the stark inner city for a moment every morning.

What was once an oddity had become an obsession. The woman’s schedule was unpredictable, and some days, she never showed. Had Petra missed her? Had the woman not come that day? Would she ever come again?

Three days had passed with no sign of the woman or her suitcase, and a deep angst began to build in Petra’s stomach. She forgot to bring syrup with the pancakes, forgot to add orange juice to the bill, as her gaze lingered on the corner of Sparrow and Main.

“Table 5, Petra,” her boss barked. She turned to the pass where a plate of eggs cooled. “And get your head out of the clouds. Table 4 doesn’t even have menus.”

Petra grabbed the plate and four menus decorated with bunnies as a shot of pink flashed in her periphery. Adrenaline flooded her veins.

She dropped the food and menus at their tables, her eyes refusing to leave the pink. The light changed. The woman stepped into the crosswalk.

“I’m taking my coffee break,” Petra called out.

Her boss swept his hand through the air, indicating full tables.

Turning her back to her boss’s glare, Petra, in apron and “Peter Rabbit’s Good Eats” nametag, pushed through the diner doors.

The woman had reached the other side of the street and vanished into a wall of shrubbery. The pink followed, winking out as leaves covered its escape.

Petra rushed across the road, sidestepping a honking bus, and hurried along the wooded path secreted between two vine-covered buildings. The suitcase bounced across broken asphalt and turned the corner, out of sight.

Petra raced down the narrowing path and rounded the corner to spy the woman trudging down the alley, suitcase following like a loyal dog. As coffee-break minutes ticked away, Petra crept along the fences, the suitcase a siren.

She followed around another corner, then stopped short. Pink glowed like a lighthouse beacon, the suitcase finally at rest. The woman sat on a crate as an overhanging tree from a neglected yard kissed the top of her head. Grass spilled through slats in the fences as if nature had decided to take this part of the concrete world back, and a bunny hopped along the edge of a fence.

Petra peered out from behind an elm while the woman unlatched the suitcase and opened its guts to her sanctuary. She lifted an easel and unfolded it with practised grace. Next came a blank canvas that looked bigger than the suitcase itself, a palette of colours, brushes, paints, and lettuce.

A rabbit hopped down the alley, passed Petra, and headed towards the woman. Another scrambled from the grass and nibbled the lettuce. More bunnies—the tiny fluffy kind you keep as pets rather than wild ones—appeared. One hopped into the suitcase and another onto the woman’s lap.

While stroking the bunny, the woman brought a paintbrush to her palette. Whispers of an acrylic rabbit, just like the ones that framed the walls of the diner, emerged on the canvas while life, fresh and new, buzzed around the decrepit part of town.