Chương 249: Book Six, Chapter 11: The Break Room

I barely made it back into the kitchen in time for my next scene. Luckily, that scene didn't involve much from me; it involved listening. Of course, it also involved whipping up some pizzas. Five of them, to be exact. Isaac was in the front kitchen. He ducked down, looked through the open mouth of Hot Head, and called out to me, "That last order got cancelled."

"That order of five?" I responded, looking at the last ticket.

"They just called in," he said.

"What am I supposed to do with all of these?"

"Ask Jerrica," I called back. She had worked there all her life. She would know what to do. She was the floor manager, after all. And that was the end of the scene for me. I went back Off-Screen. Artie and I just stood around waiting. He was by the back door, smoking cigarettes again like he had the first time I'd met him, and not paying a lick of attention to me. The guy only made pizzas when I was falling behind or we were being watched.

I didn't mind, since this was basically role-playing, but if it were a real job, that would have me livid. I had brought my headphones so that I could easily put them on and listen to what was happening On-Screen. What I heard was Isaac talking to Jerrica.

"Six pizzas," I heard her say. There was frustration in her voice.

"Put the deluxe ones on the buffet line," she said.

"You can put the plain sausage in the employee lounge." The plain sausage was the only one I hadn't made. It was one that just appeared in the oven, which my character had to assume was made in the front kitchen. That mystery still needled my brain. What was the deal with the extra pizzas? That day at work dragged on and on. I swore that the clock wasn't moving as fast as it should have been. Luckily, I could take regular breaks because I knew when I would be On-Screen next.

The employee lounge had plenty of seating and a pinball machine, one we already had a copy of up in the arcade. I spent my time playing it, although I wasn't trying to get a high score; I just needed to look busy. I wore my headphones and listened to whatever was happening On-Screen. That was the beauty of being a side character; I had a lot of time just to observe.

About halfway through my lunch break, someone I had only seen from a distance arrived, and she became the central figure of everything that happened On-Screen for the rest of the day. We didn't learn her name when she arrived. She didn't show up on the red wallpaper. She was just the "partner" or the "investor" all day. I made sure to glance out into the front-of-house area to get a good look at her. I half expected to have another company meeting, but we didn't. She wasn't the type for meetings.

She wasn't the type for speeches. She watched closely. She waited until after she had observed you before she pounced. She was watching Isaac at first, of course. He would be the guinea pig. She watched him for fifteen minutes without saying a thing. Carousel gathered footage, but I didn't know what it was filming if not her piercing gaze, her pursed lips, and the gray hair rolled into a bun tightly against her head.

It was the same woman I had seen, the one in charge of the demons, and I had to assume a demon herself, so "woman" might not have been the right term. After fifteen minutes of watching Isaac, she laid into him. It was possible Isaac really wasn't that good at the job. It was also possible that no matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried, she was going to give the same speech.

She must have used the word slovenly six times: to describe the way he talked to employees, the way he boxed up pizzas, the way he retrieved pizzas from the oven.

"You peck away at the cash register like a caveman who just discovered a spaceship," she said.

"All of this is time. You see that line of customers?" she said, pointing to the customers I assumed, but couldn't confirm, because I was just listening in.

"That's money waiting. Every customer who gets fed up waiting for you to slovenly peck number by number is money that doesn't end up in the till. Do you understand that?" I knew she was making part of it up. Electronics in Carousel pretty much operated properly, no matter what button you pressed, unless the narrative demanded you struggle with them. The cash register would have worked no matter what Isaac did. Either he was acting intentionally obtuse for laughs, or she was just a jerk for a similar reason.

Isaac, to his credit, was pretty good at playing a kicked dog.

"I understand," he said nervously.

"I'm sorry. It won't happen again." That was an unfortunate choice of words, because then she apparently stepped back and waited for him to tend to the next customer. As soon as that customer was finished, she stepped up and spoke to Isaac in a whispered tone.

"Evidently, it will happen again." And then, suddenly, she was off Isaac and on to one of the NPCs who worked the buffet. She critiqued everything: from the arrangement of the pizzas, to how cold the salad bar was, to one little speck of parmesan cheese that had been on the counter too long. I listened as she went through. There were no bombshells; it was all petty stuff. That was probably the point. Carousel was collecting footage that would likely end up in a montage.

I even had the foolish audacity to smirk, as I found her gimmick quite funny from an outside perspective. She was very good at it. For a long time, I actually forgot that she was a literal demon and thought of her as just a metaphorical one, which, somehow, was worse. But of course, after she was finished criticizing how the arcade was arranged and how cheap the prices were on some of the high-traffic games (which was a valid critique, actually), she made her way to the back kitchen.

I went On-Screen against my will and started working my butt off on a new ticket just as she walked in. Since I knew when I was supposed to go On-Screen, she couldn't surprise me. Unfortunately, Artie wasn't as quick as I was, even though I warned him. When she came into the back kitchen, he was still at the exit with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He made a big show of putting it out quickly, washing up, and jumping up to the line to help make pizza, but by then the damage was done.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. I was very happy to be a side character. She largely ignored me. She stood right behind Artie as he made pie after pie. I wanted to yell at him and tell him he wasn't supposed to make it directly on the pizza peel, that he was making the pizzas too big, using too many ingredients.

I could almost see her mind ticking away as she watched him, but he was doing things the way he had done them for longer than I had been alive, and it had all come to this. After fifteen minutes of piercing eyes and pursed lips, she finally spoke, as he was placing mushrooms onto a pizza that was about ready to go into the oven.

"Half that," she said.

"Half what?" Artie asked, genuinely confused.

"Half of the ingredients that you've been using. This is food waste. No wonder this establishment can't make a profit." Artie just stared at her.

"We're supposed to put the same amount of ingredients as there are in the pictures, see?" he said, pointing up to various Polaroids of different pizzas that were pinned above the counter. Artie was putting in too many ingredients, sure, but half of what he was doing would be far less than what was in the pictures. It was downright stingy. This wasn't the kind of pizza place that could afford to be stingy.

"Half," she said.

"We aren't running a charity." Artie complied, grumbling under his breath in a language that sounded like Italian, but a version of it that only had curse words.

"Wash your hands," she said out of nowhere.

"I just washed my hands," he said. He had.

"Wash them again," she responded. And so he went back to the sink and washed his old arthritic hands again. Sure, he wasn't doing a surgical amount of washing, but he used soap and water and dried them on a paper towel. It was about as much as you might expect from a fast-food place, and more than you would expect from a fast-food place in the '80s. He went back to start working on the next pizza, which I had already rolled out on the counter and sauced.

"Wash your hands again," she said. I had no idea what she was getting at. I continued making the pizza on my own as she continued to hound Artie over his hygiene. She talked about his shirt having flour on it because he let the top half of his apron hang down, and how he smelled of cigarettes. She even walked over and grabbed a cigarette butt that had missed the trash can. I couldn't really fault her on the cigarettes thing, but it was pretty normal at that time.

"Okay, I'll be more careful, miss, is that what you want?" Artie asked.

"I want you to wash your hands," she said. Artie looked around and said, "You already had me wash my hands ten times." He held them up, and they looked about as clean as they could be. Even his nail beds were clean. And then I saw it: a small splotch of sauce on his elbow. I saw it right before she commented on it.

"How can you be clean when you have food dripping off of you?" she said, grabbing a paper towel and wiping the sauce from his elbow, then putting it right next to his face as if she thought him nearly blind (and maybe he was).

"I didn't see that," he said. I continued making pizzas as I processed what was happening. The only way this business partner, or investor, or whatever she was, would be this openly evil already was if the audience already knew what she was. This wasn't a the-fun-is-over scene; this was a demons-run-amok scene. This was way too over-the-top. She was doing this for fun and humor. Maybe not the audience's. Her own.

While I was trying to understand the scene, the way it ended jumped out at me as I heard her say the words, "You're fired," to Artie shortly before walking over to me to watch me work. Artie just stood there, unsure of what to do, leaning on the sink still. I knew what I was supposed to do: I was supposed to be terrified at what I had just seen, or at least terrified in the I-might-lose-my-job way. My character would have no idea she was a demon. Or at least, not that kind of demon.

"How long have you been working here?" she asked me.

"About a week," I said, though I wasn't actually sure.

"We'll see," she said. That was her only response. She turned to walk away as we went Off-Screen. Artie still stood over the sink, and he looked like he could cry. He might have been crying, I couldn't tell—poor guy. As soon as we went Off-Screen, she stopped walking away. She turned around and looked me in the eye. She didn't say anything, but I was using Method to the Madness trope so that we could speak in character Off-Screen, and she was liable to speak out of character, too, as had happened to me in the past.

It was like she was expecting me to say something. She wasn't the no-nonsense businesswoman she had been playing; I could see a fire in her eye, like she was daring me.

"You know," I said, "if we really wanted to save money around here, we should discontinue the buy five pizzas, get a sixth one free promotion. I don't know what we're getting from giving away all that free pizza." She smiled. A devious smile. If she were wearing a skin suit like the other demons, I couldn't tell.

"It's not about what we're getting from it," she said.

"It's about what we're offering." She thought that was funny. Then she turned and walked away. After the partner or whatever she was finished making the rounds, we gathered for another team meeting, but this time in the employee lounge. It was Gus Junior's idea. He liked meetings. Only then did he decide to introduce us to her. I couldn't see her on the red wallpaper, so I had no idea what her name was, even if it was fake. On-Screen"This is Miss Verity Pryce," he said.

"She is going to help us whip things into shape. I want you to give her your respect and help work with her to make this restaurant the best it can be, alright?" He looked nervous as he stared at her. He was trying to be positive, but that was bouncing off of her like rubber balls off cement. She spoke up.

"I know that a lot of waste occurs here, both inadvertently and purposefully. During the busy season, such waste can be missed. But when we are struggling for our survival, everyone must be precise. We are going to have to tighten the belt around here, and to some of you, that won't be terribly comfortable. I just hope that you—" She stopped her speech, her attention immediately stolen away by something she saw at the back of the room.

"Why is there product back here?" she said. I followed her eye line and saw that she was looking at a pizza box on the back table. It was the same one that Isaac had been instructed to leave for the employees. It was a sixth pizza. No one answered at first. But then Isaac got brave and said, "We had an order cancelled. We put most of the pizza on the buffet, but this one we brought back here because it was only sausage, and we already had sausage on the buffet."

"So you thought that you would just take it and eat it yourself, then?" Miss Pryce asked.

"No," Isaac said.

"I asked Jerrica." Jerrica, who was at the front of the room, then spoke up.

"I told him to put the pizza in the break room for the employees. We didn't need it out front, and there was no use letting it go to waste." Jerrica must have been in her late thirties. She had a slender frame with curly hair hanging down from a ponytail. She was used to dealing with unruly customers, and she didn't back down when Miss Pryce stared daggers at her.

"Of course," Miss Pryce said.

"We would hate for anything to go to waste." She paused for a moment and then said, "Isaac... your name is Isaac, right?" Isaac looked down at his own name tag, as if to check.

"Yes… yes, ma'am," he said.

"We would hate for that pizza to go to waste. So could you go make sure it gets eaten?" He nodded. She paused and stared at him.

"Now," she said.

"We don't want your pizza getting any colder." Isaac looked around the room. No one said a word. Then, compelled, he walked to the back, opened up the box, and saw the room-temperature pizza, untouched.

"You want me to eat it?" he asked.

"In what other ways could one use a pizza?" she responded. Isaac knew that there was something wrong with these sixth pizzas, but this did seem to be a scripted moment, and it was looking like this was where the plot was headed. He looked at me, and I hated having the decision in my hands. I had to weigh the odds. We didn't know what these strange pizzas were. Cassie had worked her psychic powers on them, and while she didn't like the pizzas, she thought they were evil, she didn't see them as being cursed.

It was my call. I was the so-called director, and we needed to know what these pizzas were about. If I hadn't been there, he would be eating it. I couldn't protect him from his role in this story; I could only make sure that he got the best shot. It was looking like Carousel wanted him to be front and center anyway. I nodded subtly. Isaac turned back to the pizza, picked up a slice, and took a big boy bite. And then he took another bite, and another until the whole slice was gone.

And then, his mouth still full, said, "That was good." And he seemed sincere.

"That's wonderful," Miss Pryce said.

"Perhaps in the future we will find ways to make sure that the customer is the one who eats our pizza. After all, you do get free rein over the leftovers at closing time. And while Isaac is quite thin, I don't think he needs any more fattening up, do you?" She wasn't talking to anyone directly, but she did glance over at Jerrica. And then again at me. Off-Screen Miss Pryce smiled. I got the sense that she wasn't just playing this character because the script told her to.

She was playing the overbearing authoritarian for fun. She enjoyed this. I didn't care what they said. Demons just weren't good people.