First Day On The Job
Flicka von Hannover
Waitressing is harder than it looks.
Flicka checked her phone she had hidden behind the bar just for a second’s respite from the slot machines jangling around her, the constant shouted orders from the guys playing blackjack, and the kitchen’s clanking and derisive screaming when she wrote something down slightly wrong.
She was doing her best.
On the screen, a text from Dieter read,I’m on my way back to Vegas. I’m going to the airport within an hour to catch the first flight. Tell me a code.
A code.
Oh, Lord.What kind of code could she use?
She hid the phone back under the counter and grabbed the three glasses the bartender had readied for her, slopping sticky beer on her hand as she balanced them on hertray. She didn’t know which one was the lager and which one was the pilsner, which was ridiculous. Flicka knew a tremendous amount about alcohol, but she couldn’t tell the beers apart without sipping them, which she assumed would be frowned upon. She would have frowned upon it if she had seen a waitress doing such an unsanitary thing. The bartender had slapped all the beers in mugs instead of pouringthem into the proper drinkware for each beer type, and he’d put too much head on every single one of them.
When Flicka turned, the casino looked like an amphitheater filled with flashing lights, walls of slot machines, and boulders of blackjack tables. People scurried and milled, unconsciously bobbing along to the insistent rhythm of the ringing slots and mesmerized by the noise.
Which tablehad ordered these beers again? She couldn’t tell. Three rows of crescent-shaped blackjack tables stretched down the rows, and she wasn’t sure where the blackjack tables ended and the Texas Hold’em tables began. One blackjack table was crowded with Chinese people bantering in Mandarin, and she’d shocked the Hell out of them by asking for their order in the same language. They’d tipped her well whenshe’d reminded them that it was lucky to tip the waitresses. Large white men and a few black guys stuffed the next table, laughing uproariously like they’d known each other all their American lives even though an hour ago they’d gathered one-by-one at the newly opened table, exchanging names and hometowns.
Flicka waded into the rivulets of insanity, eddied back and forth by people streaming aroundthe blackjack tables and slots, and delivered the few beers to collect her tokens and bills.
One of the other waitresses turned quickly and slammed into Flicka as she hurried to deliver drinks and snacks, glaring at her because she was the fresh meat. Beer sloshed down Flicka’s leg, cold and nasty. She understood that it would take a while to make friends, but this blue-haired, pierced-nosedwoman seemed actively hostile, glaring at her through narrowed eyes.
When Flicka got back to the bar about half an hour later, she stared at the text from Dieter on the screen again, trying to decide what she should text back to him.
No imminent danger threatened her. No one was chasing her. She was free to leave this thundering casino if she chose, though she knew that she and Dieter were goingtoneedthis money very soon.
She didn’t want to text any of the danger codes to Dieter.
She couldn’t even honestly use any of the other codes that she and Wulfram had set up, such as the wordsart history,which meant that she was lonely and adrift in the sea of abstract friendlessness, ordream on,which meant that her royal and wealthy friends of the upper one percent were behaving like typicaljunior-high girls and making her cry.
Instead, she texted,Fiddlesticks.
Anything else was too much to admit. She might want to cry, but shewould not.
Mordant the bartender shoved four more beers at her with a scowl. “Get these beers out there before they go flat or those suckers leave before they give us all their money.”
Flicka scurried off into the crowd, doing her best, though her bestwas surely not good enough.
