Life as We Know it [Five]

Two

Go out or stay in on a Friday night?

Wandering down the streets of Dallas in another time period was like a weird fever dream. Like how he felt one time at an all boys camp where they sent you off to the middle of the woods for a week to play tug of war and sleep in musty cabins. It didn't feel real, to say the least.

He got multiple strange looks as he passed but everyone kept their mouths shut and carried in with their day. Emery decided he like Dallas for this reason. That and everyone he passed has yet to pull out a shotgun and impale him to death with bullets.

Emery passed multiple street vendors looking to sell their items. Restaurants, bars, houses, even a hair salon that only cut black women's hair. It was sad to see all the signs posted outside shops saying how they only served whites or don't permit people of color and Emery found his mood steadily dampening on a quick decline.

He must have been staring idle for too long because the front door of the restaurant he was standing in front opened with a jingle of bells and a man donned in a white apron and towel cast over his shoulder peeked out.

"You gonna bug out or come in? You've been standin' there for the past twenty minutes." The man said. He sounded like he had a grudge against Emery though they had never met before but he assumed that was just in the mans nature. He shrugged  after a moments contemplation and then found himself stepping through the door just as it was about to shut in his face. The man with the apron smirked upon seeing him and then retreated back to the kitchen.

"What can I get for you?" A different man at the counter said. He didn't house a customer service bone in his body and his barely-there smile looked like he had stayed up for the last eighty hours and would rather be anywhere but here.

"Do you have any copies of the paper from the part few years?" He asked after a moment.

The man frowned. "You'd be better off getting those from a newspaper vendor don't you think?"

"Yeah ok." Emery agreed. He was hopeful.

"Can I get you anything to eat? Drink?" The man pressed.

"I don't have any money." Emery said.

"A job then. Noah has one for you as a busser. Think you could handle that? Can you work with those hands?" He asked, catching sight of Emery's uncovered palms. Up until now he thought he had done a good job hiding it by tucking them into his pockets or folding them behind his back. He looked down. The burn cream helped. He would assume it would only take a few weeks or perhaps months for all the layers of skin to grow back and given that it was uneven, it wouldn't be pretty.

"Yessir." Emery nodded. The opportunity was right in front of him. He had always wanted to get a job back before all of this had started. What better time to start than in the past?

They started him that very afternoon, shoving a wad of too-large uniform parts in his arms and whisking him off behind doors so he could change. Noah- the man who had called him in, gave him an hour's worth of training in two minutes and then a pair of gloves that he donned with a thanks and then a cloth was being put in his hands and he was directed to an empty table.

They worked him tirelessly but it was enough to get his thoughts away from all the whats ifs and maybes and wondering after the Hargreeves and all the unfurling problems that were hurling themselves at him. After a while even those thoughts subsided and he was on autopilot, working without thinking,

He forgot how bad the wages were in the 60s. He cleaned and cleared tables, took dirty dishes to the back and loaded them in their colossal sinks, set tables, and helped refill drinks- otherwise becoming an assistant to the waiters who muddled about.