The short story “Autumn at the Automat” by Lawrence Block follows an older woman as she eats her dinner at an automat. On its surface the story seems boring, but there are layers to her experience that keep the reader interested, and all the while it is clear that she is building to something. The first thing that she thinks of in the story is money — how to ration her nickels throughout the year — and this is a theme that will come back up continuously until its relevance is finally revealed to the reader near the end. It is made clear to the reader, in a subtle and well-integrated way, that this character was once well off but is now suffering from financial difficulties since the death of Alfred, likely her husband. She talks about her clothes, which are good but worn, and her apartment which is much the same, and Alfred, who she imagines speaking to her, but who is long gone.
Throughout the story, the main character spends much of her time focusing on apparently tedious things, contemplating nickels and dessert and the woman putting too much sugar in her coffee, and is repeatedly called out by her imaginary version of Alfred for “stalling.” What is she stalling? Near the end, the reader learns that she has been planning a scam against the restaurant in order to make money. This revelation makes everything that led up to it make sense — her focus on money, her “conversation” with Alfred, her focus on the other patrons of the automat. When she returns to her apartment, successful, she speaks to Alfred again. He is the one who taught her to scam in this way, and now, without him, she is learning to do it on her own.
The “conversations” that this character has with her husband in her head reveal as much about her character than they do about his. Through them, we gain a tangible sense of her loneliness. We can sense the strong presence that he had in her life; she makes many references to his having taught her things about life. He taught her to prefer strong coffee, and he taught her how to watch a person through her periphery without really looking at them — a strange skill. It is obvious simply by the fact that these imaginary conversations exist, and that they are so frequent, that Alfred’s absence weighs on her every day. Despite the tension building up to the scam and the anxiousness of wondering what is going to happen, the overwhelming feeling of this story is loneliness.