Part 56: Late That Same Afternoon.
“Go ahead,” Mephis says with a hideous grin on his face, gesturing to the plump girl.
She looks at him and gives a broad, stupid smile.
With a shrug, I say, “If my eggs are runny, you’re fucked.”
Remaining bent over, she answers, “Shall I follow you to the men’s room?”
Mephis bursts out laughing. “See! Isn’t that a riot? I could seriously do this all day.”
Nepotism slaps him with a disapproving glare and slides into the booth, claiming the middle seat. “Dude, that’s fucked up. Think of the implications. I mean, putting workers into altered states? You are making a human being into a machine. This is a major atrocity against the working class. This girl is put in a state of mind where she will fuck Dr. Filth to make minimum wage.”
“She should be happy for the opportunity,” I say.
“Would you like anything else?” the girl asks, clasping her hands in front of her. Her expression shows no recognition of the conversation we’re having at full-volume a few feet from her face in an otherwise empty room.
“Send us coffee and get out of my sight,” Mephis growls, fighting out of his jacket.
“Yes sir!” she coos and runs off
“Gets boring fast.” He puts his jacket on the edge of the booth behind us.
“Dude, seriously, you shouldn’t do that shit,” Nepotism says in a low voice, carefully watching the window. “What if the wrong person overhears you? We’re all fucked for your amusement.” A brown Cadillac pulls in slow to the parking lot and parks outside our window.
“What do you have to do to get in touch with your friends?” I ask, not really caring one way or another if Mephis abuses a hostess in this dive. You have to know what you are getting into when you take the job.
“There is a payphone out front,” he answers, standing up and walking away. “Remember, shoot the waitress if she asks a question she shouldn’t ask.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I mutter, repositioning myself at the bend in the seat and drape my hands over the pleather railing. “Why won’t Mephis say who we are going to meet?”
“It feels fishy,” Nepotism says, staring off into space. “Mephis’s up to something, but I’m not sure what. You see the Triple R out front?”
I nod. Whatever the driver of that car is doing, it’s completely cloaked by the inky windows. “Why don’t we high-tail it out of here right now before he gets back.” My fingers tense, reaching for my gun as the car door opens at long last. “I’d rather not find ourselves surrounded by enemy agents with weapons drawn.” With unfair effort, a rotund elderly man in a beige bowler extricates himself from the steel sarcophagus he had been entombed within. It’s not a Scrubber, unless Teddy Roosevelt counts as a dead writer.
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