Day 3

When I got to the restaurant for my shift today, the owner, Matt, actually had the decency to look guilty. Maybe he was actually regretting forcing me to work on my hands and knees last night. And he'd been a real bear lately so maybe he was feeling bad about that too. He even assigned me to work the front section of the restaurant which is typically the best place for tips. Or maybe it was just the 'put a pretty girl in the front to bring in the guys'. Regardless, it was paying off pretty nicely for me so I wasn't complaining.

As it got later into the evening, one guy dining alone caught my eye. He was ordering fancy stuff but not really appreciating it. Like a $15 glass of wine (which is expensive for us) which he just drained like it was water. Didn't seem to even appreciate it. In fact, I'm not sure he appreciated anything because he just kept nervously scanning the restaurant. He finished and I asked him about dessert. He asked to see the examples of everything, which is a pain in the butt because I have to go back and load up a whole tray just to have someone just decide they want their dinner mint and their check. Still, if the customer asks, you have to do it. Just as I turned and started walking away, he popped up from the table and started striding toward the door. I'm not sure what possessed me but I ignored the tray and whipped around to sprint after him. I didn't even make the decision consciously, my body just decided to move. My path around the tables was longer than his but I was really booking it and managed to get myself in the doorway just before he could walk out.

"I'm sorry. We're out of desserts. Did you want to go ahead and settle up your check?" I asked, pointedly making sure he couldn't push past me.

"Nope." He said and rushed me. That's when he hit the ground. Hard. So hard he actually bounced. Matt heard the commotion and quickly joined us up front. He helped the guy up and then looked questioningly at me.

"He tripped trying to pull out his wallet to pay. I was just going to help him up so he could try it again." I said. Then I looked at my escape attemptee. "I'm sure it will go better this time." The guy's previously nervous expression hardened into anger as his shoved his hands in his pockets and pulled out a wad of bills. He was about to start flipping through them when Matt grabbed the whole handful.

"That should about cover dinner." Matt said. I noticed he was still holding onto the jerk's arm. "But you forgot a tip for the pretty lady who made sure you were ok." He said in a very controlled tone. I noticed that this was the angriest I'd ever seen him, much worse than my first week when I dropped an entire tray of water glasses.

The guy grumbled and went back through his pockets. The only bill he found was a hundred. I'm not sure where he found the gall but he then asked Matt if he could break the hundred for him.

"Nope." Matt said, taking the bill, and tossing the guy out the door. "And don't bother coming back." He shouted after the guy as he crawled away. Then Matt turned back to look at me. His expression changed from anger to something resembling pride. He handed me the entire wad of bills including the hundred. "His meal is on me. All of this is for you. I was wondering when you were going to stand up for yourself. You came in here with your pride stomped into the floor. You just took everything I threw at you. You didn't even get pissed at cleaning those shelves last night."

"But I work for you and that's what you said to do." I tried to explain. "What was I supposed to do?"

"That job was degrading. I wanted you to tell me to shove it." He said, smiling but serious. "I've been trying to push you out of your funk ever since you got here and not even that did it. But I'm glad that today did and that asshole's meal is more than worth seeing it."

I looked at him steadily. "You're a weird boss." I told him, trying not to crack into a smile.

"Nah, we just live in a weird city. I see a lot of people come through here. Most of them are broken. You, you're just bent. There's still hope for you. So I've been trying to push you back into alignment. All it will take is a little bit of effort to get back to whatever you were doing before. You're better than this place but I'm happy to have you while I can. Go ahead, take the rest of the night off and celebrate a bit. I'll cover it and get Frankie to handle your section for the rest of the night."

I went in back, got changed and cleaned up. Then I took a minute to count the money I'd gotten. Knowing it had come from that jerk's pocket I almost didn't want to touch it but that changed when I finished counting it. It was $436 for 'dinner' and plus that $100 for my tip that Matt forced out of him. It was just amazing although I did wonder why anyone who would eat at our dingy restaurant would carry around that much in cash. Grinning, I walked out of the restaurant and then down the alley toward some clothing shops. This girl needed a new outfit.

I'd just turned the corner when something long and hard (please, no sex jokes) hit me in the stomach. I heard the jerk's voice as I folded up in pain. "I'll take my change now, you stupid little cunt!"

Then a lot of things happened all at once. I combined a flip with a spin with my body still wrapped around what I now saw was a piece of water pipe. All the twisting served to rip it out of the asshole's hands (and now I'm swearing but I promise it's appropriate) and it clattered onto the street with an oddly familiar clatter. Maybe I'd once worked around a bunch of guys laying pipe?

Shut up. The dirty minds you all have…

Anyway, the asshole was disarmed so any sane person would have taken this opportunity to run away. My brain screamed to do that but my muscles had other ideas. I jumped into another flip and this time my foot flipped across his face. I'm not sure if I heard or just felt his nose break; either way, the feeling was nauseating. He yelled and took a step toward me, stepping over the pipe lying on the ground. Seeing the opportunity, I crouched down and, reaching between his feet, grabbed onto the pipe. Then I jerked it toward myself as hard as I could, pulling the pipe right into both of his Achilles tendons. You know – the cordy things on the back of your ankles. He screamed and fell backward, completely out of control. His head bounced as his body hit the pavement and some part of me knew this would knock him unconscious. But my body was still in control and so I stood up, spinning the pipe in my hands like some sort of ninja. Then I swung it down toward his head with every expectation it would crack his skull.

Just like in the restaurant, I wasn't sure why I was reacting so violently. It was as if I was a passenger in my mind riding a crazy rollercoaster. And I desperately wanted off the ride so I could go puke in the trash barrel. But I was on the top of that very last drop and roaring down along with the end of my pipe toward disaster.

"Mindy!" I heard my name screamed and I flinched. The pipe hit the ground next to the bastard's head bounced away. My hands had already released it. Matt had obviously come running when he heard the fight and luckily kept me from killing this guy. I smiled tremulously and, unable to come up anything else to say, paraphrased what the guy had yelled at me right before this all started. "He said he wanted his change. So I gave it to him…." I tried to smile again and failed. Then realization of everything that had happened in those handful of seconds hit me and I started to cry. That was bad. Then I added vomiting to the sobbing. If you've never cried and thrown up at the same time… Let's just say that I don't recommend it.

By the time I'd completely recovered, the cops had come, taken my soggy statement, non-too gently tossed the asshole in an ambulance, and gone back to whatever cops do when they're waiting for crimes to be reported. Once I'd finished losing everything in my stomach, Matt had let me cry into his shoulder. He was big and soft and old, kind of like a father figure. Once the police had gone, he asked me if I was going to be okay and when I nodded, called a cab to take me home. "It'll all feel better tomorrow." He'd said.

On the way home, I looked at the money in my pocket. I couldn't really take any joy in it at this point. So I had the cab driver stop near a homeless girl who looked really down on her luck. I didn't say a word as I handed her all the money. Then I got back in the cab and told the driver to leave before she'd realized how much it was. I think I heard some sort of happy woot as we rounded a corner and she disappeared from view. At least the night wasn't a total loss, I mused. Once I got home, I dragged myself up the steps and went directly into the bathroom. I desperately needed to be clean. Once I was done, I pulled on some pajamas and took my laptop into my bed. Netflix automatically logged in with the account I had remembered earlier. As I did the standard Netflix search for something to watch, the violent movie suggestions unnerved me. Who was this person? For that matter, who was I? How had I done those things, those kicks and spins. And why had part of me been looking forward to seeing that bastard's skull crack? Unable to look into myself, I focused on whoever's account this was. Maybe he would have some of these answers. After an hour of pondering, I added a second profile to the account that they would see the next time they logged in. I was going to use the profile name to communicate. Ultimately, I had to add four profiles before I could get my message to fit. I focused on a basic question because I wasn't ready for big things yet. So what I wrote was "How do you watch these things?"