Page 5 of Fated to the Gargoyle

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.