Sourmouth Read Free Page B

wasn’t working towards
what it was meant to but the owners couldn’t be arsed to care.
    The couple couldn’t locate a “please wait to be
seated” sign so they opted to help themselves to a seat, even though it made
them look like entitled snobs just rushing to be served. But they figured that
was the better option instead of looking like fools just standing around for no
reason for someone who might never come.
    Quickly though they were flanked by an older Caucasian
woman holding an unlit cigarette between her fingers and a pad of paper, “Hi
there folks, my name is Helen, I’ll be helping you today”.
    The woman was a bit shorter than Violet and was
probably in her early-sixties. She was noticeably slim in her old grey Sunday
church dress that was miraculously wrinkle-free. She wore a set of gold and
silver rings on each of her hands, which gave away nothing in terms of clues as
to whether she was married. Her hair more white than grey and was worn high in
a bun behind her ears, still in curlers. As the waitress bent down to hand the Tylers their menus, Violet couldn’t help but notice the
tired smile plastered across her face that read how much she hated the job and
all of the people around her but had to pretend like she cared for the sake of
a paycheque .
    The waitress started to rattle off special daily
options with as much zeal as her soul could manage having done it countless
times before, “Your specials today are the Canine Chowder, the Ravenous Retro
Burger, the-”
    Violet interrupted with a small smile and sympathetic
eyes, “We’re fine without hearing the specials if you’d rather not bother”.
    With a visible deflation the waitress’s arms fell to
her side, causing her to nearly drop her other menus to the ground, “Thank you.
If I need to read out these godforsaken specials one more time I’m going to
burn someone with my fag. Please let me know when you do actually need
anything”. And with that almost psychopathic confession she departed to take a
seat in a corner booth, with her head rested upon her crossed arms on the table
as she played with her cigarette.
    “I remember being a waitress in high school. It’s one
of the worst jobs on this planet aside from the people who clean up crime
scenes and telemarketers,” Violet confessed as she laid her menu down on the
table without even bothering to open it.
    Riley was well into the little booklet by the time he
responded, “I like the sound of the Retro Burger. I wonder what makes it retro
though. Is the cheese from the ‘50s or something?”
    “No, I’m pretty sure that would make it a rotten burger.
Retro would be if it were made out of Brontosaurus meat, like in the
Flintstones. I guess though if you’ve got Bronto meat
that would have to be pretty old, too”.
    “You remember that one movie that we worked on...the
dinosaurs in space one? When for some stupid reason we decided that it would be
a good idea just to drive halfway across the country to the shoot?” Riley asked
her.
    Violet nodded, “I think we had scheduled the drive to
take six straight days. We had it meticulously planned out from the routes to
the stops to how long we could rest and sleep”.
    “I’ve never admitted it...and I don’t know about you,
but it wasn’t the trip itself that was the most fun about it. I mean, I
obviously had the most fun just being with you. But aside from that the most fun
I had was just putting it all together. It was all of the planning that we did
beforehand. I remember all of the maps that we borrowed from the library that
were sprawled across the floors as we paced around the apartment trying to
figure it all out like we were solving an ancient puzzle to get to the
treasure. When all we got to was the set of a really bad movie”.
    “I remember. I can’t say that the preparation was my favourite part. We were still really young in our
relationship back then. I think we were only dating for a few months. And I
recall thinking