MacKenzie Fire(17)

The air is thick with grease, steam, and the smell of people who should have probably used a little extra soap before stepping outside the house. I flap my arms a few times, trying to get my perfume to fog up around my face. My bag flops around, banging into me and the door.

“What are you doing?” Andie whispers loudly. “Trying to call attention to yourself on purpose or what? I told you, Hannah and I …”

My perfume kicks in and all that’s left of the strangers around me is the slight scent of cumin. Do they serve tacos here?

“Well, well, well, look who decided to drop by and grace us with her presence,” says an exaggerated southern fried voice from behind the counter.

How is it that a girl who’s spent her entire life in the top left corner of the country is talking like a girl from the bottom right or the bottom-middle part, like Texas or whatever? I don’t know. I might be able to figure it out with more time, since linguistics is a special interest of mine, but right now I’m too distracted to try.

I can’t focus on anything but the horrible bleach job that’s been done to the poor girl’s hair. Her cuticles are totally fried, making her hair look like a stack of straw on her head, and the color is what those of us in the industry call chicken-fat yellow. Sooo not attractive.

“Hello, Hannah,” Andie says, all demure, like she isn’t pissed that this girl just said something that sounded rude to me. “How have you been?”

We move farther into the room. Andie’s headed to a booth in the corner.

Hannah comes from behind the counter to follow me. I’m tempted to walk backwards so she can’t get a butter knife between my shoulder blades, but I don’t. Why? Because Hannah Banana doesn’t scare me. She’s named after a fruit, for chrissakes. How can she possibly be dangerous? If her nickname was Hannah the Horrible or Hannahbelle Lecter, maybe. But banana? Nah. No way. Besides. I’ve got a gun and a buttload of bullets. Oh yeah. They call me The Duke. No … The Duchess.

I turn around as I stop at a booth and catch Hannah all smiles. She does have nice teeth, I’ll give her that. It doesn’t hide the bad hair but it does distract my attention from it a little.

“Oh, I been good,” she says. “Real good. Been spending some time with Ian, you know.”

My mouth pinches up without me even realizing it. I quickly smooth it out when I catch Andie staring at me. She’s next to the booth, ready to sit.

I take the spot across from her, a formica table rimmed in aluminum between us. The vinyl-covered seat collapses under my butt with a wheeze of protesting air, but not at all under my thighs at the edge. I feel a lack of circulation coming on already. I better not get a leg-vein over this or I’m going to be pissed. No waffle is worth a leg-vein.

“Really? With Ian? That’s nice.” Andie squats down to sit, but then stops when her belly keeps her from fitting into the booth. She’s got about four inches of too much baby to ever think of making it in.

“Oh, lordy, you are getting huge, girl. I mean, like, hugely huge.” Hannah looks back over at the kitchen area. “Joe, you seen this?”

The man cooking doesn’t even look up, but that doesn’t stop Hannah. “Maybe you should move to a table. You could fit in a regular chair, probably. I think. You could probably sit sideways or something. My god, you must have terrible stretch marks.”

My eyes widen. Them’s fightin’ words if I’ve ever heard any. My trigger finger twitches a little.

Andie’s nostrils flare, but she keeps her cool. “No, I’ll be fine.” She grunts as she pushes against the edge of the table. “Just need to move the table a bit.”

“It’s stuck there, you ain’t gonna be able to move it.” Hannah steps back.

“Sure we can. Just needs a little shove.” Andie grunts once more as she tries again to make more space.

I can see being able to fit into this stupid booth is important to her. Sadness overwhelms me as I see my best friend feeling self-conscious about her weight and this ding-bat banana waitress lording her thin-ness over her. I feel terrible that I called Andie tubby tubblenstein.

The emotion fills me with super-human powers of strength and determination. I literally can feel it surging through my veins. Gripping the table on my side, I pull with all my might.

The table lets out a mighty crack, a screech, and something like a dog bark before separating from the floor. It’s nearly diagonal between the two benches now and I’m almost ready to sweat.

I look down at the floor to check out the damage, assuming from the noise we made that screws will be sticking up out of the linoleum. Instead, I find a pile of dark gray goop that used to hold the table’s one leg in place, and I’m pretty sure it’s not glue. There’s fuzz sticking up out of it too. Ew.

Andie sits down with a huff of air, her face pink and coated with a sheen of sweat. “See? No big deal.”

I grin as big as I know how. “Yep. No big deal at all.” Looking up at Hannah, I lift one of my eyebrows for emphasis. “You might want to get something to clean up that disgusting goop on the floor, though. I think it’s been there for a while. Don’t you guys ever clean around here?”

Hannah gives me a bitchy look. “Of course we clean the floor. We clean it every day.” Her hands go to her hips.

I look down at the gray spot on the floor and shrug as I give Andie my famous bug-eye. “If you say so.” And then I giggle.