Title: Income (1/1)
Author: Morgan R.
Email: [email protected]
Rating: PG
Summary: Being a waitress is so degrading. Hence, angst.
Spoilers: Destiny
Feedback: I thirst for affirmation.
Disclaimer: WB et al own everything and everyone
****
She's making more money than ever, now that she walks around with dulled, dead eyes.
"Look, Kyle," she'll say to me with an odd expression, "Max left me a fifty percent tip."
And like the responsible athlete that I am, I balance on the balls of my feet and prepare to catch her if she falls.
"Kyle, Max left me ten dollars, and all he had was a cherry cola."
"Kyle, Michael can't afford to tip like this."
"Kyle, tell your father he really doesn't need to be so generous- I don't need a tip just for filling his coffee mug."
And my hands move forward, and if she faints I will catch her.
Each bit of compensation makes the wound wider, and her whispery voice a little more desperate. I think it's so strange- she was the catalyst for their search for self discovery, as well as my father's involvement. But now, she's the outsider. She watches their secret conferences and brings their food and never asks to know what is going on. I think they want to apologize with their eyes, but her own see nothing, show nothing. Max is frantic to make that old connection with her, to 'see into her soul' - but she's totally hidden away.
So he pays.
He's always tipped well, I'm sure (he's been in love with her forever, after all), but never so exorbitantly. Where he's getting the money, I couldn't say, but he's lining her pockets and ripping her more with every dollar he lays down. His money bears his scent, and one day she washed her hands till they bled.
"Wasn't that silly, Kyle?"
Silly. Silly as I wrapped bandages around her hands.
She made seventy three dollars at lunch that day.
****
There was this jerk in the diner yesterday. He was rude to Liz, loud and annoying and generally out to prove how disgusting the human race can be. When he paid his bill, he left her a ten cent tip. Not percent, cent.
"He left me a dime, Kyle," she said as she picked up his plate and carried it back to the kitchen.
"He was a creep," I replied, as it was my duty to do.
"A dime."
I heard the plate shatter as it hit the floor, and only my coach's ruthless insistence that we sprint for our lives at practice enabled me to reach her before she crashed into the broken shards of crockery. My hands caught her crumpled body, grabbing her pale green uniform.
"Kyle, his estimation of my worth was this coin!"
"No, Liz, he was just-"
"Honest?"
I froze, and suddenly she was there again, and I could have sworn I saw her soul. Not because we were in love, not because we had any sort of destiny, but because she had been locked up for too long and was perishing in her efforts to get out.
"One day I'm 'five dollars how are you Liz', and the next I'm 'seven fifty I feel really guilty, Liz', and then I'm 'fifteen dollars I don't know you anymore, Liz', and only a stranger could give me an amount I deserve."
"Liz, why don't you sit down?"
She tumbled from my arms, purposefully missing the chair and dropping to her shaking knees in the unswept corner.
"The real name for a tip is 'gratuity'. Gratitude for services rendered, translated into a monetary form," she murmured.
So much money...
"I was broke when Max healed me. I remember, I didn't even have a- dime."
It glinted amongst pieces of broken plate, like a silver handprint on pale flesh.
****
finis