“What’s to know?” Rose asked, handing her an apron, and her own pencil and pad. “You write down what they want; then you bring it to them.”
The place smelled like every diner Alex had ever been in. Coffee and fried eggs, bacon and toast. What had she thought they’d serve? People burgers?
“What happened to your last waitress?” Alex asked.
“She’s working at the bookstore now.” Rose shrugged. “Folks switch around. After a few decades, even a job like this gets boring.”
“Even a job like this?” Alex repeated.
“We’re always busy. Got something new on the menu every day.”
She indicated the chalkboard where the specials had been written in a precise, curving hand. Today’s omelet contained apples, spinach, and bacon, while the pancake of the day was cranberry nut. Alex realized she hadn’t eaten since yesterday. Luckily free food came with the job. She wondered if they’d care if she ordered all the specials at once.
“Always someone to talk to. Stories to hear,” Rose continued, patting Alex’s arm with a surprisingly soft, supple palm. Didn’t waitresses usually have rough skin? Although anyone that could heal a knife to the throat was going to heal dishpan hands in a jiffy. “You’re gonna love it.”
“Thanks,” she said.
Rose grinned, exposing slightly crooked but very white teeth. “I’ll be right there.” She pointed at the ancient cash register near the front.
Sometimes this town seemed like the land that time forgot. Then someone would wheel in on a snowmobile, or turn up the sound on their iPod, earbuds trailing into the pocket of their plaid flannel shirt, or share the latest Saturday Night Live skit, as the guys at the corner table appeared to be doing.
“That’s Joe behind the grill.” Rose lifted her chin to indicate the equally white-haired man flipping pancakes as he sang a song about the moon, and an eye, and a big pizza pie. He saluted them both with his spatula, but the look he leveled at Rose was pure devotion.
“Husband?” Alex guessed.
“Nearly a hundred and eighty years now.” Rose winked and headed for the register.
“A hundred and eighty years,” Alex echoed. She couldn’t imagine. She’d kill Barlow before the first year was through.
Alex jolted at her thoughts. She wasn’t going to marry Barlow. She wasn’t going to marry anyone. She was going to find the werewolf she’d come here to find, kill it, then run.
Once she got to work, Alex discovered that Rose was right. The job wasn’t hard. For a werewolf.
Alex had superior strength and amazing stamina, even in this form, so being on her feet for hours, carrying heavy trays loaded with equally heavy plates, setting them down, picking them up, and running, running, running…
Not a problem.
&nb
sp; However, if she’d been human she’d have washed out in an hour. The place was unbelievably busy, with wave after wave of customers filling the seats. Did anyone in the entire village eat breakfast at home?
A second waitress, who introduced herself as Cyn—short for Cynthia—and appeared to have been a waitress since the dawn of time, or perhaps the mid-1950s considering her red beehive and tendency to crack gum at the end of every sentence, handled most of the booths, leaving Alex the counter.
“That way you’ve only gotta deal with one person’s order at a time,” she said as she hurried by with a tray of coffee, juice, and tea for the local bridge club.
Alex couldn’t help but stare at the table full of elderly ladies, who twittered and laughed and discussed rubbers, slams, and dummies with great animation. She had to remind herself that they were werewolves.
Then she got a flash of the same ladies sitting around the table in wolf form, pearls still encircling their hairy necks, earrings swaying from their pointy ears, tasteful pink nail polish adorning their claws as they finished a hand of duplicate.
“I bet if I painted that on velvet, it would be a surefire hit,” Alex murmured. “Bigger even than the poker-playing dogs.”
“Order up!” Joe sang.
Joe sang everything. Alex had yet to hear him simply speak, and whenever his wheel was empty, he performed songs by someone he referred to as Dino. Everyone in the restaurant went silent when that happened. Joe had a fantastic voice.
He also had both his ears and no visible scars, as did Cyn and everyone else Alex had encountered so far.
The order, for the dapper gentleman at the end of the counter, consisted of three eggs poached, sausage, bacon, cakes, and toast, as well as home fries with onions and mushrooms. Everyone at the EAT Café consumed enough food for a ravenous wolf.