Under the Stars and Stripes (Under Him)

Chapter One - Brittany

“Order up!” one of the line cooks calls from the restaurant kitchen as he shoves a plate of hot food through the tiny opening in the wall and under the heat lamps.

“Last order up,” he corrects himself.

“Thanks, Tim,” I say as I grab the last plate from the metal ledge beneath the lamps.

I then take a spin and walk across the length of a nearly deserted restaurant toward a two-seater table in the window where a man wearing the surgical masks sits staring out the window into the equally deserted street.

“Here you go, sir,” I tell him through my own mask as I place his plate down on the table. “Let me know when you’re ready for your check or if you need a refill or anything before then.”

“Well,” he says, with the same snarky attitude he’s had since arriving here half an hour ago. “Can I at least take this damn thing off to eat my food? Or do you expect me to teleport it into my mouth?”

The patron was none-too-pleased when we told him he had to wear a mask to enter the restaurant, as per the CDC suggestion since the Coronavirus pandemic really began to spread.

“I’ll go elsewhere,” he’d said, before stomping out the door and up and down the street until he realized we were the only restaurant still open within miles.

When he returned— with a mask, mind you— I was nice enough to relay to him that he would be able to eat without a mask, but it seems he’s chosen to forget that to serve whatever point he’s trying to make.

“Yes, of course,” I tell him politely.

I’m too tired to match his attitude, and it’s not really in my sunny disposition anyway. I’ve worked both the dinner and lunch shift before it, and now that the restaurant is finally about to close its doors for the day, I’m too exhausted to be anything other than politely indifferent to his attitude.

I sit in a nearby booth and begin emptying my tips from my pocket. Collectively from both shifts, I count out $9.00 in one dollar bills, $2.00 in quarters, and a little over $1.00 in dimes, nickels, and pennies.

Yes. Pennies. In the year 2020, people are still leaving tips in pennies.

And it’s usually people like the man seated in the window who are likeliest to leave the worst tips of all, if any.

At least I still have my measly paycheck coming…

“Britt,” my boss Jerry says, as he approaches the booth.

“What’s up?”

“Can you lock up and the meet us at the back table once this asshole leaves? We’re having a staff meeting.”

Staff meetings are rare in a rundown diner like this one that Jerry owns, but I nod my head and tell him I’ll start cleaning up. Not that there’s much to clean up, as I’ve been able to bus tables and serve all day because we’ve had a total of 5 customers— including window guy— come in all day.

I hope my check is enough to cover my rent, and it’s all I can think about as I start marrying ketchups from tables and then take a can of Lysol and spray the surfaces of the restaurant before also scrubbing them down with Clorox Clean-Up.

I, for one, don’t want to catch this nasty bug that’s been spreading and killing people. It’s been hard enough to survive just by making sure I can pay my bills.

At least I don’t have to pay the entire $1,000 rent alone. My best friend Sarah and I have been living together since we graduated from high school and started going to community college in alternating shifts to our work schedules.

Sarah has a better job than me— she actually works on the college campus in the advising department— and if the worst-case scenario is that I have to ask her to cover the rent for a month, I know she won’t be angry.

The two of us moved in together to get away from our parents, but also because we didn’t have college funds or scholarships to ferry us off to far-away universities where we could avoid our parents. My dad, in particular, is a horror.

A few years ago, my mother got so sick of his drinking and putting her down to no avail, that she finally left. When they’d met, she’d been a young model and actress who saw my dad at a runway show she was doing.

He’d been there to support some of the models he represented.

He was immediately taken with her, so much so that he signed her as a modeling client. But when my mom got pregnant with me, my dad wanted her to give up modeling and acting and even went so far as to tell her no one would ever hire her again after she’d ruined her body to have me.