"Isn't it a Funny World Nowadays?" by Caitlyn Waltermire
part 3 of 3 installments - read PART ONE and PART TWO
5:
The waitress Albert remembered stood next to him. She
smelled like a sack that held onions; a sack that had gotten very wet
then dried miserably crumpled on itself. It was not altogether terrible. Anything rustic was hard to find those days; it was too quickly swept
up. No one had reason to exert anymore, so the only sweat anyone ever
smelled was streaked with psychedelic drug, frantic and purple and
metallic. It all smelled metallic. Albert wondered when he had last
gathered a handful of dirt, and was gruffly embarrassed to realize he
needed to do it.
“What can I get you?” she asked with nothing
like recognition. She held a portable order-taker and wore the ugliest
shoes Albert had ever seen.
“Just coffee.” He expected he would
have to run a napkin along the mug’s rim before drinking from it. Anger
lapped wearily at the dish-washers for being so unapologetically
mediocre at their sole programmed purpose.
Her fingers entered
the order without her eyes leaving him, but their surfaces reflected
every detail of the restaurant in minute entirety, so it was difficult
to tell which part of him she was looking at; it appeared to be his left
shoulder. “Cream and sugar?”
