Reflections of An Immortal Waitress: Buffy
1998: In a Los Angeles diner, a friendship with Buffy during her "Anne" phase brings back ancient but still painful memories for the Immortal Waitress, in more ways than one.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer and all affiliated characters are the intellectual property of Joss Whedon and the people of Mutant Enemy, and the copyrighted property of 20th Century Fox. Rhonda the Immortal Waitress was Joss Whedon's original conception for the character who would later become Buffy. The connections I draw between Whedon's Immortal Waitress germ of an idea and Greek mythology are my own, and in turn are based on an idea that has rattled around in my head for over 30 years (geez, I'm old!). "Hugo" refers to a character created by Phillip Wylie. I will also make a reference to characters created by Robert B. Parker (who will be greatly missed). I use all these characters without permission for my enjoyment and hopefully the enjoyment of others.
One last thing. I have already written a Reflections of An Immortal Waitress story involving a meeting between the narrator of this story and Angelus. The difference in narration styles between the two stories is meant to reflect the differences in time period. Also, this story will be considerably longer. More happens in it.
With that in mind, here we go.
Chapter 1
Anne
I arrived in Los Angeles from San Antonio in July. It was getting harder, in these days of computers and background checks, to change identities. If I had become immortal as someone between the ages of 30 and 60, I could hold onto an identity longer, but when you are stuck as a permanent 18-21 year old, it doesn't take long for people to notice that you don't appear to be getting any older. And I don't like being noticed. It's been my ambition in life to escape notice, and I have been working to fulfill that ambition for over 3,000 years. It's kind of an ongoing thing.
So, ironically, I moved back to LA, a place where people go to get noticed, in order to become just another face in the crowd.
For old times sake, I applied for a job at "The Diner", an eggs, burger, and grease shop close to Hyperion and Titan. When I worked there last, the place was known simply as "Eat". Back then, it catered to laborers who were building the first freeways. Now it catered to the truckers who traveled I-5. In fact, The Diner was under a permanent shadow from the freeway.
The name may have changed, but the place smelled the same, a mixture of cooking grease overlaid with axel grease and human sweat. My kind of place, at least for this century.
My hopes for just another dull way station on the road of my endless life, though, ended as soon as I saw the waitress on duty.
She was blond, short by today's standards, which still meant that she had an inch to an inch and a half on me. Pretty, maybe even beautiful. She looked like the thousands of would be actresses who came to Los Angeles in hopes of being discovered, or the hundreds who were lucky enough to fail, leave, and ultimately go back where they came from.
In other words, she looked ordinary in a very attractive way.
But she wasn't ordinary. The way she moved told me that.
When you possess literally supernatural strength, there is a gross imbalance between your physical power and your mass. Most living organisms derive their strength from their muscle mass, so there is a balance. For those of us with supernatural strength derived from a mystical or divine source, however, there is no such balance. If I exerted the same amount of effort most people use to walk, I would propel myself twenty feet high every time I took a step. My movements have to be very small and gentle for me to pass for human.
Over the last four or five centuries, the only breathing human beings I'd seen who moved like this waitress did were myself and a guy I once met on Coney Island who went by the name of Hugo. There were slight differences. I could lift a city bus, maybe even two. I suspected that Anne might be limited to a Hummer. Hugo could have lifted the diner with the bus and the Hummer on top of it.
She didn't seem to notice the careful way I moved, however. In fact, she didn't seem to notice me at all. Usually, of course, I was OK with that. This time, however, I actually did want to get noticed a little.
She looked in my direction without really looking at me.
"You can sit anywhere you like," she said.
"Actually, Anne," I replied as I looked at her name tag. "I was hoping to see the manager about a job."
Since I went off script, Anne now looked at me rather than just towards me.
"You'll have better luck if you order something first," she said. "Mitch likes applicants who order his food before they interview."
Anne then looked at me a little more closely. I wondered if she was now noticing that I moved carefully too.
"You know, Mitch is pretty much a creep. Are you sure you're interested in working here? You don't look as desperate as I did when I came here..."
She let her voice trail off, and I realized she was waiting for me to tell her my name. I wasn't wearing mine on my chest.
I hesitated for a brief moment before remembering I was Martha in San Antonio.
"Rhonda," I said, putting out my right hand. Anne took it. Both of us pretended to give each other a firm handshake.
Anne, I realized, was like me in more than just the superhuman strength in a petite body kind of way. She, like me, was wanting to escape notice. To pass for human.
"I'll take a slice of apple pie," I said. "And an application."
"The apple pie?" she repeated. "You really do have guts."
Anne walked towards the kitchen. Then she looked back at me over her shoulder.
"He'll hire you," she said. "You're his type."
She was right. Twenty four hours later I was working alongside Anne, wearing a matching white dress with a red checked apron and, also like Anne, carrying glasses like they were made of old sugar cubes.
I was told it would be a week before I got my name tag. In the meantime, I would have to remember that I was now Rhonda without having a reminder pinned to my chest.