Diner™

by Amber Baird

Sunshine yellow mustard caked all over my hands, America’s Favorite Brand or what the fuck ever, I grab the next bottle. Squirt out ketchup, America’s Favorite non-Newtonian fluid, in a spiral pattern on the wood-style laminate floor. Twist my hips to the soft rock anthem still blaring out of the diner’s sound system.

They announced it this morning, the death of capitalism.

So now Sunny shifts her liberated long blonde hair from side to side, a groove shivering her body. Her lace bra drapes over the back of one of the puke-green booths, so her breasts swing freely inside her company-issued polo. “Here’s your service with a smile!” she shouts, punctuating it with both middle fingers raised high.

A “hell yeah!” comes from the back, from one of the egg sluts.

Miguel, the dish kid, hoots as a dinner plate sails across the dining room and shatters against the modern farmhouse shiplap that makes up the back wall. He follows it with another, and soon the crash and shatter becomes a rhythm with more still.

I punch my manager code into the cash register and it pops open revealing its neat little compartments stuffed full of dead presidents, dead relics. Sunny slides up to me and the money, eyes alight. She takes Andrew Jackson into her mouth, between her teeth, and rips the bill in half with a growl, as if she could ever be as vicious.

We each grab fat stacks and let them fly, mine with mustardy smudges, and we laugh and laugh as they flutter through the air.

 

Amber Baird works and writes in Portland, OR, where she studied under authors Chelsea Cain and Chuck Palahniuk. Previous work has appeared in Digging Through the Fat. Find her on Twitter or Instagram @amberbairdpdx.