3. Treasure
TREASURE
Ipull into the shopping center parking lot early. On time is late in this business, and I’ve never been able to afford late.
The lot is busier than I expected for a small-town Tuesday. Someone’s dog barks at me from the bed of a pickup while I find a spot near the back and cut the engine. I keep my hands on the steering wheel and give myself one more minute before I have to be the new girl.
I flip down the visor and check my face.
My hair’s pinned up and braided the way my mama taught me back when I was too tender-headed to sit still for the whole job.
It’s neat, out of my face, and cute enough to earn tips.
My gloss faded on the drive over, so I press on the cherry one I keep in the glove compartment for emergencies, until my lips match the rest of me.
I smell my wrist. Too much body spray this morning. I spritz once more anyway, cap it, and drop it back in the console. If Andy’s got a problem with coconut, he can dock me.
It’s a waitress job. I’ve had fifty of these, some with meaner managers and customers who treated ten percent like an act of charity, and I handled every one. There’s no reason to be nervous about this.
My stomach doesn’t listen.
I grab my sweater off the passenger seat and lock the car behind me. The evening cold gets down the back of my neck where the braids don’t cover, and the shopping center is busy with after-work errands. I cut through it with my chin up and my keys clipped to my belt loop.
I’m almost to the diner door when I look up, and I stop.
There’s a gargoyle statue on the roof.
It’s carved in a crouch on the very edge of the roofline, wings folded tight against its back, claws curled over the shingles.
The thing is big enough that I have to tilt my head back to take all of it in.
And it’s a weird place to put a statue, right on the lip of the roof, all that stone weight leaning out over the lot.
How did I not see that during my interview yesterday?
I walked right underneath this thing. I sat in the booth closest to the window, walked out with an apron in my hand, squealed in the parking lot like a teenager, and at no point did I look up and go, huh, weird that there’s an enormous gothic statue on the roof of this country diner.
I stare at it longer than a statue deserves. I stand there with my hand on the strap of my purse and try to figure out if it’s a decoration, a piece of local art, or someone’s worst architectural decision. The face is turned slightly, not quite toward me and not quite away.
Since when do you care about architecture, Treasure. I shake my head at myself and push through the door of the diner. The bell jingles, and fry oil and coffee hit me in the face.
And for the rest of the evening, that statue is the furthest thing from my mind.
Andy is at the counter with his back half-turned to me. He slams containers into a brown paper takeout bag one at a time.
“Hey, Andy. I’m ready for my shift.”
He doesn’t look up.
He shoves a stack of napkins into the bag, so I read the room while I wait. A few booths going, two truckers at the counter, a woman alone with a paperback and a half-eaten BLT. A low rush, manageable.
Andy still hasn’t looked up.
“I didn’t know you did deliveries,” I try again.
He stabs a pair of plastic forks into the bag hard enough to tear the paper.
“Don’t worry. You’re not making any deliveries.”
“Okay?”
“I’m not about to lose another one of my employees to those damn shifters.” He tapes the bag shut and looks at me for the first time since I walked in. His tie’s crooked again. “You clock in yet?”
“I was gonna??—”
“Clock in.” He waves a hand toward the back like he’s shooing a cat. “You’re on the floor alone tonight. I gotta do inventory.”
Okay, so we’re still doing this. “Weird as always,” I mutter, mostly to myself, and push past him toward the back.
The kitchen hits me with a wall of heat and noise.
The grill hisses under the clatter of plates, and someone’s radio plays R&B low beneath all of it.
I wave at the two men back there without slowing down.
One of them is at the dishwasher station looking like he’s about to personally fight the sprayer nozzle.
The other one works the grill, tall and husky with a messy beard and flour on his sleeve, and he nods at me mid-flip.
The locker room is barely a closet with a cracked mirror and a curling hand-washing poster. I stash my purse and coat and take my apron off the hook. My name’s already across the front in masking tape, in Andy’s weirdly neat handwriting. I tie it on, pen in one pocket, mints in the other.
I check myself in the cracked mirror one more time. Let’s do this.
The punch clock by the door takes the old paper cards with the hole-punched dates, the ones I haven’t touched since my first job. I clock in and walk back out to the kitchen.
The dishwasher is losing.
Water is everywhere, suds are on the floor, and a plate balanced on the edge of the rack sits one bad breath away from the tile. The kid running the station is gangly, anxious, and barely old enough to be here, and the panic coming off him is one I remember wearing my own first week.
“Hey.” I lean against the wall where he can see me. “I’m Treasure. I’m the new closer.”
He looks up, startled, and drops the plate.
It shatters with maximum noise and minimum damage. Ceramic skips across the tile.
“Dammit!” Andy explodes from somewhere behind me, and then he’s through the kitchen door, already red in the face.
The kid drops to his knees before Andy even finishes and gathers pieces with his bare hands.
“I am so sorry,” the kid says to the floor.
“Damn, I miss Marcus.” Andy scrubs a hand through his hair. “Four years, that man never dropped a single plate. You’ve been here six days and I should be charging you rent on the broken ones.”
“Who’s Marcus?” I ask.
Mostly I want Andy’s attention off that kid. The rest is plain nosiness.
The cook turns from the grill, tall enough that his head almost brushes the ductwork, a smear of sauce in his beard. His smile comes slow and easy.
“Lamar.” He reaches a fist toward me over the service window and I bump it, his grip firm and warm. “Nice to meet you, Treasure.”
“Nice to meet you too, Lamar.”
“Marcus was our dishwasher. Best one this diner ever had, and Andy’s never gonna shut up about it.” He glances at Andy. “But he got picked up by a shifter last year. Nyra. Hasn’t worked a shift here since.”
I smirk. “Lucky Marcus.”
Lamar’s laugh rolls up out of his chest, and he goes back to his steak.
Andy throws both hands up and stomps out of the kitchen. He mutters about plates and shifters all the way back to the register.
I crouch down to help the kid pick up the pieces. “You’re gonna be fine,” I tell him, low enough that Andy doesn’t catch any of it secondhand. “What’s your name?”
He swipes the back of his hand under his nose and doesn’t look up. “Devon.”
“Okay, Devon. Breathe. The dishes aren’t going anywhere. Just slow down.”
I pick up the bigger pieces of ceramic with him, slow so he can match me, and his hands steady. I rest my hand on his shoulder, then stand up and let him handle his own mess.
I take the floor, and the rhythm comes back as soon as the order pad hits my hand.
The corner-booth family wants two pancake specials and chicken strips with extra ranch for the kid, and I’ve run it back to Lamar before they finish the menu conversation.
The truckers at the end of the counter order one regular coffee, one decaf with three sugars, and a stack of pancakes to split.
The woman with the paperback asks me what’s good tonight, and I tell her Lamar’s meatloaf is the move.
She closes her menu without another question.
By the middle of the shift I know the menu, the register, and which counter stool has the loose screw.
Lamar calls out tickets in a warm voice that carries, and I pick them up one-handed with two plates balanced on the other arm.
Every time I bring him something new it’s “Thank you, Treasure.” Never just thanks.
I don’t let myself smile about it until my back is turned.
Devon breaks two more plates, and Andy yells about it from the back office, then goes quiet in inventory. He comes back out while I’m clearing the truckers’ spot and stops dead at the quarter sitting next to the empty coffee cup.
“That man didn’t tip you.” He jabs a finger at the seat.
“Sir, it happens.” I wipe down the seat and keep my eyes on the vinyl.
“It doesn’t happen in my diner.” He’s working himself up again.
“Andy, I have been tipped in lottery tickets before. Respectfully. This is fine.” I meet his eyes long enough for him to see I’m not worried about it, then get back to wiping.
He grumbles off to the office.
I finish wiping the seat and drop the quarter in my apron pocket. My feet ache, the dining room hums, and somewhere in the middle of it my stomach has finally quit arguing.
This one is going to be just fine.