gentlemen surfers.

Mr. and Mrs. Frank Thomas are going back to Florida.

So are a lot of people, you say, especially if you have spoken to me in the past couple of days, seeing as the mass migration of the elderly is all I talk about anymore. What makes Mr. and Mrs. Frank Thomas special?

Well, I'll actually miss them.

I didn't even know that Mr. and Mrs. Frank Thomas were Mr. and Mrs. Frank Thomas until I'd waited on them several times. Mr. Frank Thomas always paid in cash, always a twenty, keep the change. But once he used his credit card, and then I knew that the older couple in front of me was in fact Mr. and Mrs. Frank Thomas.

Though Mr. Frank Thomas' first name is Frank, or at least that's the shortened form of it, I do not know Mrs. Frank Thomas' first name. I feel certain that it is not Frank or any form of Frank. They know my first name, because I tell all my customers my name. I don't think they know my last name, since I've never told them. They always call me by name. I love it when customers do that.

They come in every Sunday, I assume after church because they are always wearing Sunday clothes when they come in a little after noon, and because I feel that Mr. and Mrs. Frank Thomas are church people. Perhaps Presbyterians. They request me to be their server, and that is almost always arranged. Sometimes they sit in the sunroom, sometimes in the gazebo. They don't care where they sit as long as it's in my section. Once they sat in someone else's section, and I asked them if their server was taking good care of them. Mr. Frank Thomas said the server spilled soup on him and insulted his wife, but other than that, everything was just fine.

They drink water. They eat different things, but they always wash down those different things with water. I bring them lemon slices for their water, even though they don't ask and we're not supposed to unless they ask. My boss thinks that his profits are all being spent in lemons, that servers are just giving away his money in the form of mountains of lemons. But because they are special, I risk termination, and they get lemons without having to ask.

Sometimes they have french onion soup and a salad with ranch dressing. Sometimes just a salad. Sometimes a reuben sandwich. They don't eat things like cheeseburgers or crab cake sandwiches with our special gorgonzola coleslaw. They've never ordered dessert, and I've stopped asking if they want any. I know Mr. Frank Thomas, and if he wanted a piece of cheesecake, I'm pretty sure he'd let me know.

Every week, Mr. Frank Thomas starts up a new conversation, a little bit more strange than the week before. Sometimes he asks me to fix his computer because he knows I'm a computer science major. This week, he gave me a digital watch and asked me to fix the time. As I did, he told me it was a dead man's watch that he had found washed up on the beach. Mrs. Frank Thomas shook her head.

Mr. Frank Thomas says the strangest things. There were a couple of weeks when Mr. and Mrs. Frank Thomas did not show up on Sunday afternoon, shortly after 12 in their Sunday clothes. The Sunday they came back, I asked where they had been. Mr. Frank Thomas whispered to me behind his menu that they didn't come because Mrs. Frank Thomas thought she was pregnant. They are both probably in their seventies.

I don't know how long Mrs. Frank Thomas has been Mrs. Frank Thomas, but I bet it's a long time. Maybe even fifty years. I think Mr. and Mrs. Frank Thomas are in love. When I take their order, Mr. Frank Thomas puts his hand on that of Mrs. Frank Thomas and says very tenderly, "What would you like, my dear?" And when Mr. Frank Thomas tells me ridiculous stories, Mrs. Frank Thomas laughs and laughs like she has the funniest husband in the world.

This week, they told me they were going back to Florida for the winter, and I realized that Mr. and Mrs. Frank Thomas were very rich. Rich enough to have two lives, one in Blowing Rock, North Carolina and one in Florida. Mr. Frank Thomas asked if I was too old to kidnap and said he could get me a job in a very fine establishment in Florida called Granny's Kitchen, where all the gentlemen surfers go. Gentlemen surfers, he said, wear ties.

And now Mr. and Mrs. Frank Thomas have flown south for the winter and I won't see them again until next May. Mr. Frank Thomas always gives me at least a 20% tip, but he gave me an extra large tip this week, I guess to tide me over until May when he can give me another twenty dollar bill and tell me to keep the change. And then they left, saying their goodbyes to me as they walked together out of the sunroom, out the door, and towards the land of the gentlemen surfers.