Silver / clay

⊱ 9 ⊰

Under the cold blue light, Caleb filled the rack with another load of encrusted dinner plates, squeezing on a smattering of discoloured salad bowls. He sprayed the visible blemishes, at least what he had time for, a few shards flicking back onto his wilted skin, before sliding the batch through.

The machine was really a glorified sanitiser. You needed to do the hard parts yourself: the loading, the cleaning, the unloading, returning the disinfected results to stacks that left as soon as they arrived.

The chatter from the mess of mouths in the front of house, mixed in with mercurial chinks of cutlery, began to dwarf the already raised din of the kitchen. It was an all-you-can-eat restaurant, but to Caleb it was closer to all-you-can-use when it came to dinnerware. Caleb knew intellectually that the margins were slim if they didn't pile the punters in, but that was mild comfort to his sore cuticles and tired muscles.

He rarely bore witness to the great devouring, chained instead to the moist air. He sprayed another rack and slid it across, noticing an all-too familiar sight. A hissed groan exuded from his body as he bent his tired back, plunging a hand down into the rising water, using numb fingers to burrow the sink hole clear. The owner ran three chains across the city, but his sons all plead poor whenever the topic of an automatic waste disposal system came up. Caleb mused that they already had a manual version, they just didn't pay him enough.

"Those dishes won't clean themselves," said Tony, dumping another full tray onto the nearby bench.

He was one of those sons, normally sticking to the front of house, fluffing about customers with that second-hand car salesman smile, the better looking women remarkably needing the most assistance, but was now actually doing a bit of work.

"It must be busy out there," said Caleb, successfully hiding his contempt, as the water level receded.

"Always busy," said Tony, the gleam of money in his eye, "so hurry up, mugpuddle."

Caleb's eyes only reflected the build-up of work. He checked his watch while grabbing an empty rack. Every minute was excruciating. He wasn't sure what was worse: the muscle fatigue, the repetition, the disrespect, or that unique stench of food scraps and sweat, quickly overwhelmed by cleaning detergent. It was an unenviable role.

At that Amala's bright face filled his imagination. The neon light warmed its hue and the dishes became lighter, somehow cleaner, as if the customers had done the hard work for him. Despite his earlier mindset, he couldn't be stuck here because, as a slave, he had the capacity to genuinely serve only one master, and it was clear, without a doubt, who that was.

He wanted desperately to ask her something important, but had to wait until his break, where he composed a message -- I'm just checking if the money went through -- and was about to hit send when the implications were clear. I'm not looking for credit, he added, this is all about you, so please don't take it the wrong way. He read it over one more time, and deleted it immediately, since most of the message was about himself. It wasn't right for him to ask her for his own sake, but he did genuinely want her to receive it for her own. If it didn't make it through, if he'd got some of the details wrong, she'd be the one to miss out, and it wasn't incumbent on her to badger him for money.

It was a quandary.

He decided he would check with the bank and make sure it was sent to where it was meant to be sent, then leave it be.

Back from his break, Caleb slung the dishes onto the small cart and wheeled them nimbly to large stashes, ready for another round.

From now on he would revel in plunging his arm elbow-deep into the tub in order to clean out organic detritus, hoping to smear his skin in a veneer of grime, all for her glory. His serrated cuticles would be offerings to her beatification. He hoped the lingering aches in his feet would resonate as a constant reminder of his duty, of his purpose, and his master.