Boy, did it look different when we walked in though. It wasn’t that they redesigned it or that it had even suffered any damage, it’s that it was painfully quiet. A man in a white apron was still at the service counter, cleaning the surface and occasionally doing something to the cash register, but there were only a couple other people there eating. And they were quiet. Really quiet.
“Jesus, who died?” Priscilla noted as we entered the silent room. She must have realized that this was, in fact, the result of many people dying and added, “Oh, right. My bad.”
Nice to know there was a sensitive side to her. Even if it was well hidden. Gosh, Dagget, keep it together.
“I feel like when we talk to the guy behind the counter, he’s going to tell us we’ve inadvertently stepped off into another dimension,” I joked.
“Is that supposed to be some kind of Twilight Zone reference?”
I smiled, and proudly said, “You know your pop culture.”
“What human being doesn’t know what the Twilight Zone is? Oooh, Priscilla caught that reference, she must be a geek goddess,” she mocked.
“You’re so feisty,” I commented. I must have had hearts in my eyes by now.
She rolled her eyes and groaned. “Are we gonna ask the dude about Cora or what?”
“After you,” I said and gestured toward the service counter. Since Priscilla didn’t have any notable skills to help us in our search, I let her lead our mini-investigation. I think it gave her a confidence boost. That, and it was hard for me to talk to strangers without the inevitable Pokemon reference popping up.
Priscilla sat on one of the stools and sort of threw her upper body across the counter, which immediately got the waiter’s attention. I had seen him working here countless times but never got his name.
“What can I get you two?” he asked. I smiled because he probably thought we were a couple.
“We’re looking for somebody,” Priscilla announced.
“Not many people in here this time of night. Just spin in a circle, and you’ll have seen everybody.”
“Yeah, well, if I could see her, I wouldn’t be asking you where she was. We’re wondering if maybe she swung by in the last twenty-four hours. She’s about yea high,” she began, raising her hand to just an inch above the counter, which would make Cora about the size of a large dog. If that. “She’s tiny, reddish-brown hair, talks like a Disney character.”
The server tilted his head at her. “I don’t know about the talking part, but I did see a girl who I didn’t recognize come waltzing in here a few hours ago. She was all skittish-like.”
“Skittish?” I asked.
“She kept her voice real low like. I got the impression she was looking over her shoulder, like she was expecting someone to walk in at any second. I think she was hiding from something.”
Priscilla and I exchanged glances. I don’t know what was going through her head, but I knew what was going through mine. It was a relief to know she was alive and in the city where we could find her, but the guy’s description didn’t sound too promising. If she was on edge and acting like she was being followed, odds are she was.
I also couldn’t help but notice how quickly Priscilla clammed up.
The man scratched the back of his head and very calmly said, “The weirdest thing might be what she ordered.”
Both of us turned and looked at him. “What’d she order?” I asked.
“A rare steak. She wanted it super juicy, super bloody, and she had me put it in a to-go bag. I like a rare steak as much as the next guy, but that was all she ordered. It felt like a drug deal,” he added with a laugh.
“Why would you say that?”
“It was all so secretive, you know? She kept insisting I make it ASAP and throw it in the bag.”
I looked at Priscilla again, and at this point, I felt like we were telepathically communicating. We both wondered what any of this even meant. If she was in some kind of danger, why wouldn’t she tell anyone at the restaurant? Why take the time to order a meal and then run off into the night without saying a word? I wondered if the steak was even for her. It almost felt like it was an order for a dog. Or a lycanthrope.
Did a werewolf take Cora?
Our worry must have been dripping off our faces, because the man at the diner (whose name I never did catch) swallowed hard and asked, “Your friend’s not in trouble, is she?”
Before I had a chance to cover it up, Priscilla cut me off. “No, she’s fine. It’s a messy breakup, is all. She got drunk last week and got this really ugly dragon tattoo across her ass, and we have reason to believe she might be on the brink of chopping all her hair off and becoming a Buddhist, so we’re trying to find her. We’re all terrified.”
Wow. Just wow.
“My sister-in-law is a Buddhist. She seems pretty happy. It might do your friend some good,” the man said, smiling.
“Our church wants her to come back. The Church of Latter-day…” I can feel her struggling to remember a religion. Any religion.
