by Nina Post
Stheno raised her voice and gestured wildly. “You could take the money and do whatever you want after that. You could make donuts anywhere. You could start another shop. In Bali, if you wanted. Why don’t you realize that?”
Kelly thought Stheno had an excellent point.
“The only thing that makes any sense is that you’re being stubborn just to spite me.” Stheno tightened her lips and turned away.
“Right,” Medusa said wearily. “That’s my main decision-making criterion.”
Kelly admired a gigantic fryer in the corner, named, ironically, ‘Pequito,’ according to the label on it. Officially, it was a Mark 90 Super-Fryer, a floor fryer. Its production capability for churning out yeast as well as cake donuts had to be impressive. It would have to be, considering the hundreds of donuts sold at PCD on any given day.
“What do you care?” Medusa said. “United Donuts has a state-of-the-art dry mix facility that we made together. And you have your own mixes and proprietary recipes. So I have the Cluck Snack Dry Mix, so what?” She raised her hands in a shrug. “What’s the big deal?”
Stheno narrowed her eyes. The snakes on her head opened their jaws and hissed. It was one of the creepiest things Kelly had ever seen, and she had seen more than her share of creepy things.
“The big deal is that customers like your donuts more, and it has to be the mix.”
Medusa’s mouth quirked in a smile, probably because her flavoring skills were superior.
“OK,” Medusa said.
“OK?” Stheno said. “What do you mean?”
“That’s why customers like my donuts more. It couldn’t possibly be anything else.”
Stheno looked affronted, and turned her head as though looking for witnesses. Kelly feigned intense interest in a bucket on the floor.
“Why are you so mean?” Stheno asked Medusa.
“All I did was agree with you,” Medusa said in a reasonable tone. “How is that being mean to you?”
“She saw it.” Stheno pointed at Kelly, who tried to affect a ‘Who, me?’ expression.
“Saw what?” Medusa said.
“How you operate.” Stheno gestured for Kelly to come over.
Kelly kept her distance from Stheno and tried not to recoil in an obvious way, or to put Medusa’s petite body in front of hers as a shield.
“I didn’t―” Kelly started.
“What do you think?” Stheno said.
“Um, I don’t―”
“Leave her out of this,” Medusa said.
“My donuts would be just as good as hers if I had the dry mix. I know it.” Stheno crossed her arms.
“Archie signed an exclusive agreement with me.” Medusa’s serpent skin rippled into a steel-gray shade, like a tank. Kelly backed into a shelf and a large stainless steel bowl clattered to the floor. The sisters stared.
“Oops.” Kelly smiled, all charm and innocence. “I’ll just leave.”
“No, you stay,” Medusa said. “Stheno, you leave.”
“What? We’re having a conversation. I want to use that dry mix.”
“Sorry,” Medusa said, not sounding sorry at all. “I guess you’ll have to start putting more love into your donuts to make up for it.”
Kelly stifled a laugh and Stheno floundered for words as her snakes hissed. If she ever saw that again, it would be way too soon.
“Bye, sis.” Medusa waved, and Stheno stalked out of the kitchen, three-inch heels clacking in outraged petulance.
“Ugh,” Medusa said after Stheno was gone. “Every time I see her, I think, ‘Why do I put myself through this?’ She’s never going to change. She’ll probably just get worse.” She shook her head and Kelly could swear the snakes smiled.
Medusa picked up the remote control and powered on the TV screen to the roller derby channel. She flipped open a mirrored compact and checked the paint job on her fangs, turning one way and then another. She snapped the case shut and faced Kelly.
“You must be the fryer tech.”
“I―” Kelly stopped and took in a long breath. Her instinct was to be the fryer tech, or the health inspector, or a potential strategic acquirer. But she had to get used to being herself. “I’m the interim manager of Amenity Tower.” She held out her hand. “Kelly Driscoll.”
Medusa took Kelly’s hand gently but without hesitation. Her claws were a little difficult to handle, but the Gorgon’s scaled hand felt cool and smooth.
“Like Archie Driscoll?” Medusa tilted her head.
“You mean the person who let you use the dry mix your sister pretends to blame for your success?”
“Exactly.” Medusa’s grin faltered, then a cloud of sorrow passed over her face, and even though Kelly didn’t really think Medusa had anything to do with Archie’s disappearance, she believed it now. Without Archie, Medusa felt lost. She knew that feeling. No matter what, if that person wasn’t with you anymore, you felt incomplete.
“Forgive me, but did we have an appointment, or―”
“I was wondering if you needed some help back here.”
Medusa clapped and jumped up and down, then gathered her composure and feigned indifference. “Nah, doing fine by myself. I don’t need more than four hours of sleep or my sanity. Or, wait, how about yes please.”
Kelly met the bald man, also known as He Who Watches, at the Konigsberger Klops Kafe, a traditional German restaurant.
She had only recently learned the Kafe still existed, since it was nowhere to be seen on her initial survey of the post-apocalyptic landscape. It remained unscathed, mainly owing to the thick outer coating of hot sauce that enveloped the tiny, one-story building. That same coating also made it hard to spot from a distance.
Though originally a tactic to repel Pothole City alley cats, the hot sauce method worked in their favor when the restaurant owners realized the sauce happened to be effective at scaring away Pothole City monsters.
She pointed to the table she wanted, and the server nodded. The bald man hadn’t shown up yet, which was fine with her. She didn’t want to talk to him, and didn’t want to have lunch with him, but felt obligated to. Seeing him just reminded her how misguided her actions had been, how she spent so much time and energy trying to kill him over the years to get her revenge, and he wasn’t even the right person.
It made her doubt herself, doubt her decisions, and that wasn’t like her.
She ordered Hoppel-Poppel for herself and Wiener Schnitzel a la Holstein for him. She didn’t know if he’d like it, and didn’t care. If he wouldn’t eat it, then she would eat it, or he could order something else and wait for it.
If he couldn’t be punctual, she wasn’t about to not eat. She dug into the scrambled eggs, frankfurters, mushroom, and onion while she looked at the dessert menu.
When the bald man got to the table a few minutes later, she said, “Nice of you to show. What do I call you, anyway?”
“Stan is fine.”
“I ordered for you, Stan.”
He pulled up a chair in front of the Wiener Schnitzel a la Holstein and glass of Riesling. “What’s better than a slab of veal covered with a sunny-side up egg and anchovies?”
He attacked the veal with fork and knife. She eyed him warily. “Mm. So. You want my help.” He grinned around a mouthful of veal and egg.
“I wouldn’t put it like that.” She grimaced and scratched her ear. “They’re different things.”
“How would you put it?”
“You could be of help.”
“Is that a different thing?”
“Completely different.”
“It sounds the same to me.”
“Because you want it to sound the same.”
“Maybe you think it sounds different only because you want it to be different.”
Stan raised his brows and wavy lines creased across his forehead.
“I didn’t say it sounds different, I said it is different,” she said. “They’re two different things. One implies I want help only you can give, and w
ould have to go to extraordinary effort if you didn’t provide that help. The other indicates, if you’re of help to me, good, and if you happen to not be helpful, that’s fine, too.”
He wiped his mouth with the cloth napkin, dropped it on his lap, then spread his arms in a magnanimous gesture. “How can I be of help?”
She flicked her gaze to him with annoyance and shoved a forkful of Hoppel-Poppel in her mouth, speaking as she chewed. “The president of Clucking Along Holdings is missing and I’m looking for him.”
“Archie Driscoll?” Stan’s expression was unreadable, beyond his revulsion at her manners. Kelly sat back and nodded once.
“You know him?”
“Not really.”
“Is he a relation of mine?”
“Don’t know.”
She gave him a look that said she didn’t believe him.
“Really. I don’t know.” He gave a fast, wistful half-smile. “Wish I did.”
“Is there anything you do know? At this rate, I’m tempted to leave you with the check.”
He shrugged. “I’m taking the check anyway.”
They sat in silence. Kelly, squirmy with discomfort, checked out the huge stained glass window behind Stan. A tableau of Hansel and Gretel? Not the best choice for a restaurant.
“What about the SSI files?” he finally said.
“What SSI files?”
“Are you telling me that you’ve been living in the SSI headquarters for weeks now and haven’t bothered to look through their files?”
“Are you kidding me? There are no files. I would know if there were any files.”
“Huh.” He leaned back and put his hand on his head, which looked like a squid had landed there to penetrate his skull. She made a mental note to search for the SSI files.
“Have you been to his house? Archie’s, that is?” He affected a cheerful tone.
“Oh, yeah.” She leaned back. “Plenty of times―to play Jenga, watch Elaine May movies, make sugar cookies…”
“Hardy har har.” Stan took a sip of his Riesling, not the long gulp she would expect of someone who had to spend any time with her. She gave him a little credit for that one.
“Well, I went to Archie’s birthday party once.” Stan let this piece of information slip ultra-casually, like it wasn’t information that could be possibly be of any interest to her.
And at the moment, Stan’s information paled in interest to the absolutely towering and very hairy creature right behind his chair.
“I thought it was a little odd that Archie held it at the Hell Lodge Number Three amusement park,” Stan said.
“Hey Stan…”
“We had his birthday cake on the kiddie train. Passed the slices down car to car.”
“Hey Stan…”
“He was a killer at Skee-Ball.”
“Hey Stan, turn the hell around.”
Stan turned around and eyed the creature. “Don’t even think about it, Bob.”
Kelly pressed her back against the booth. “Don’t even think about what?”
The monster had to bend its neck under the ceiling and hunch its enormous shoulders forward. How he had managed to get to that particular spot without her seeing him or without footsteps that registered 5.0 on the Richter scale, she had no earthly clue.
“Nothing.” Stan scrunched up his face and waved dismissively. “Don’t worry about it.”
A server passed by on the way to another table, carrying a tray covered in platters of food.
The creature looked delighted. He reached out, snatched the tray, and swallowed it and the plates in one gulp.
Upon hearing the brief crunching, Stan turned around in his chair. “Oh, good, you’ve eaten.” He gave Kelly a look that said, ‘What are you gonna do?’
“I’ll be just another minute,” he said to the large monster. “Thanks for waiting.”
She leaned forward on the table, not taking her eyes off the monster, who gazed at her with eyes the approximate size of prize-winning 4-H apples.
“Who is that?” She spoke in a whisper.
“My ride. And you don’t have to whisper. Anyway, it was a strange party.” Stan furrowed his brows. “Very strange.”
“Hell Lodge Number Three?”
Stan signaled for the check. The server threw it to him from across the room, affixed to a beanball with a rubber band. Stan slid his credit card under the band and tossed it back. The server caught it overhand.
Not even a minute later―the restaurant seemed eager for them to go―the server threw it back.
Stan signed the receipt, took his copy and card, and tossed the beanball back again.
“Keep me informed.” Stan slipped the card into his wallet. “And I’ll let you know if I think of anything else.”
With that, Stan shrugged into his sports jacket, kissed Kelly on the head like she was a child, and walked out with the creature.
When the server dared approach, she ordered dessert on Stan’s tab, feeling despondent.
“What was that?” the server asked in a quavering voice.
Kelly handed him the dessert menu. “My guardian and his chauffeur.”
nited Donuts Co. was located in a graffiti-covered storefront in a crumbling brick building in the far southwest corner of Pothole City’s business district.
The white marquee sign in front read Donuts, vertically, and Transients Welcome, horizontally, both in red letters. The top three floors served as a seedy hobo motel for monsters―mainly locusts, cockatrices and giants, it seemed―who liked to loiter around front, drinking from paper bag-covered bottles, cackling or mumbling at any passersby, depending on their mood and energy level.
In the early morning, she waited outside on the cracked and jutting sidewalk until an employee approached.
“I’ll pay you to go home and come back here in exactly one hour,” Kelly said to her. The employee agreed with a listless shrug and handed her the key to the door.
She stepped over the monsters sleeping in front and opened the door of United Donuts, at ease in her disguise of a blonde bob, blue contact lenses, and a touch of theatrical makeup around her nose. Nothing elaborate, but she needed something; the Gorgon sister had seen her before, at Pothole City Donuts.
As long as she cloaked herself in aliases less frequently and didn’t feel as though she needed one to function in the world, she got a sense of some forward progress.
“Who are you?” Stheno said as Kelly walked in. “Where’s Dana?”
The difficult Gorgon sister stalked over to Kelly. Even though she ran a donut shop and was presumably on her feet all day, she wore a different pair of three-inch heels. The red snakes on her head writhed and whispered in a foreign language.
Kelly shivered in repulsion, but steeled herself. “I’m Dana’s cousin. She has food poisoning and asked me to take over for her.”
“We only hire people with donut shop experience,” Stheno said, giving her a critical once-over. “I don’t see why that policy should be any different for a temp.”
“I have a lot of experience.” She wanted to smack Stheno at the condescending use of ‘temp,’ but shyly presented her utterly false resume, printed on the vintage bond paper she found in Mr. Black’s desk.
Stheno glanced at the resume with undisguised disdain, as though Kelly had nothing remotely worthwhile to offer United Donuts or the world in general, and handed it back. “Why don’t you read it for me. I have a raging headache.”
“Yes ma’am,” Kelly said, holding her resume behind her back with clasped hands like a good donut soldier. She had already memorized her legend. “As a teenager, I lived with a host family in Oman, who put me to work at their bread bakery. I managed to escape to Austria, where I learned yeast pastries, and then returned to the States. I spent one year in Bascule City as fryer intern at Donutty! while pursuing my AA degree in Yeastery. Following graduation, I spent one year in Crisis City at Donut Crisis working in batch fryer team C, then spent three years at Gutter City Donu
ts as lead donut technician. While there, I attained my Automated Donut Systems Operator certification from the union, and completed a two-month training course in the Mark 80 Super-Fryer training from the leading midsize donut production system company. And three nights a week, I lecture on yeast donuts at the Pothole City Technical Institute.”
Stheno nodded in scant approval despite Kelly’s fake stellar resume, and pushed through the swinging saloon-style doors to open the front. “That’ll do, at least for the day.”
Kelly was offended. At least for the day? She was clearly some kind of donut savant and consistently exhibited a driving passion for donut creation as well as a stellar work ethic. She was qualified to be in charge of donuts at the White House. Did Stheno get applicants with CVs like her fake one every day? She was close to telling Stheno to stuff it, that she was going to start her own chain of donut stores that would crush United Donuts within a few weeks.
“We make the finest just-in-time fresh donuts in Pothole City. The mayor loves to come here.”
“That’s what I hear,” Kelly said, meaning she had heard the opposite. She fumed on behalf of her cover. Was Stheno implying that her work wouldn’t be good enough for United? Outrageous.
Stheno narrowed her eyes and headed back to the kitchen. “Have you been to an inferior shack called Pothole City Donuts?”
She shifted her eyes to the ceiling as though rummaging around in her memory for any mention of this obscure reference. “Mm, I don’t think so.”
“That’s my sister Medusa’s place. She used to run United Donuts with me, but then she left to start her own place, the traitor.” Stheno gestured with a finger. “Why don’t you start mixing?”
She mixed.
“I tell people they should feel sorry for her,” Stheno said, with an air of superior certainty that made her want to rip those snakes off her head.
“Oh, why’s that?”
Stheno unwrapped a chocolate and popped it in her mouth. The snakes leaned over like they wanted one, too. Kelly tightened her face in a grimace as subtle as she could make it―more of a look of keen interest.
“Well, she had a miserable childhood, for one,” Stheno said. “Our parents showed a clear preference for me and were always dropping her off at camps and relative’s houses. She was so unpleasant they couldn’t bear to have her around. Then when our parents passed after thousands of years of existence, they left me all that was most dear to them.”