I heard an interesting phrase once: the wicked get no rest. I must be wicked. Fifteen minutes after David left I got my second and third customers. At the same time. This was going to get old really fast.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
The customers took a minute to respond. For whatever reason, they spent a full sixty seconds staring at the menu. There are two options. My patience was thin. Just when my anger was about to boil over, the woman in the front spoke up.
“Do you have something here called a carnivore taco?”
I decided to hold my tongue about their not understanding the menu after staring at it for a full minute. Charlie hadn’t mentioned any punishments directly, but he hadn’t ruled them out either. After all, the whole situation felt a lot like a punishment.
“Yeah,” I said.
“David suggested it to us, so we don’t want that. We’ll take two rabbit foods. Please and thank you.”
“Really?” I asked. “You’re so against David you’d rather order rabbit food than a taco?”
“David really, really sucks.”
“Fair enough,” I agreed as I got to work. I found a large knife to chop up one of the heads of lettuce. I just cut it in half, since it was meant to be a salad. The definition of salad was loose, but it was there. Tearing up the lettuce, I tossed each half into a separate little boat. I only had two tomatoes, so I diced up two-thirds of a tomato and split it between the two entrees.
“Anything else I should know about? Other people to look out for or specific people to keep my eye on?” I asked as I finished prepping their food. I lifted the two little boats of rabbit food onto the counter.
“Well, there’s Maureen,” the second woman replied. “You definitely want to look out for her. She’s most likely to stiff you on the money.” She took out her money, paid for both items, and set it on the counter for me. It was like she wanted to make sure I knew she wasn’t running off. Each order of rabbit food was worth 5C, so I ended up making another 10C off the transaction. “This one time at bingo, I’m talking about Maureen, of course...”
I’m certain the rest of her story was delightful, but I didn’t hear any of it. I was busy drowning my head in sounds of heavy metal to tune the woman out. When her story was finally over, the two customers wandered off. I watched with chagrin as they crossed over the gray fog without a care in the world. It was fucking bullshit, to be honest.
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I’m not certain what I put into the salads. Well, I was, but people in Purgatory were weird. The next four customers were all looking for orders of rabbit food. They weren’t particularly noteworthy people. None of them were David. None of them were Maureen. I was—if I were honest with myself—looking forward to meeting Maureen. When the fifth person came looking for rabbit food, I was done with the absurdity of the scenario, despite being pleased with my war chest of 36C.
“Alright, dude. What is it with the rabbit food? Everyone is ignoring the other menu item. I know the pickings are slim right now, but what the – you know.”
“Oh,” Ken said. “Yeah, I can explain that.”
“Ken like the dolls?” I asked. I knew his name was Ken because he was wearing it on a name badge for a technology retailer. I assumed he worked there, which made me livid at Charlie. There were fucking phones in this place and he was holding out on me.
He shot me a sad look. “I prefer not to talk about it.” He cleared his throat before continuing, “Dave is kinda a prick, right? So he’s going around saying the carnivore taco is great and everyone has to try it. Well, since you’re the only restaurant, a lot of us did want to come by the new place. Seems like you got a little work to do, but we’re all a bit rough around the edges. Anyway, if you see Dave, might want to tell him to stop ruining half your menu.”
“Wait, I thought his name was David?” I asked.
“You talked to Dave or David?” Ken parried.
Letting out a sigh, I chuckled through the pain. “I served David. I’ve never met Dave.”
“This always happens,” Ken said. “Dave is the actual worst. David isn’t actually that bad, just has a little bit of an emo phase going on. Everyone’s always getting them confused.”
“Yeah, totally not confusing at all,” I said.
“Exactly.”
With that, I let Ken take his leave. He walked through the fog—the bastard—and I turned my attention to counting my money. I could buy some ingredients with 36C, but any new equipment would cost me. If I saved up another hundred or so, I could buy an ugly wooden park bench for people to sit on. That sucked because I didn’t really want people hanging around. I yelled into the void for angelic assistance.
“Charlie? Hello? You and me, we gotta have a word buddy.”
I wanted to discuss the technology thing with him. The silence was very telling. Charlie didn’t seem to want to show up. I was distracted by a message popping through my angel game system or whatever. It was easy to get distracted on account of my attention span being mushed by various apps in my previous life.
If you can save up a total of 1000C, I’ll let you have a phone. You’ll need to unlock other features, but it will come pre-loaded with access to popular video networks. I think you’ll benefit a lot from something to work towards. - Charlie
I was faced with a powerful question: was that old weirdo reading my mind? I just knew he was sitting in a feathered armchair somewhere, acting really smug about having total control over my fate. I needed to commit myself to the process. I was stuck. Fuck it, let’s go. The video wormhole was only a few hundred meals away. Looking at my remaining nine servings of beef, I was hoping for a different kind of ground chuck.