1-2 Avery

Avery saw the job advertisement one Thursday evening on a bit of newspaper stuck to his shoe. The tryouts were scheduled that evening, and Avery put on his best jacket and went to the address.

Avery was the third Gnome in line outside of the building, but he had decided that he was the only of the three who was well dressed, and he thought that meant he had a good enough chance to get a long look inside. That’s all he would need.

The line was not too long. Avery looked around the street while he waited, but no one came whom he recognized. He sat in the line for twenty minutes before he could move past the doors of what used to be Martine’s Metallurgical Masterworks.

Avery knew this building very well. Three years before, the building was bustling with dozens of Gnomes who were busy pressing, sorting, and boxing screws and flag poles with the various machines, while the Dwarf, Martine, watched from the balcony of his office above them all. The machines were gone, replaced with chairs and tables, of which Avery’s competition was making use. Fresh tiled walls partitioned a third of the room, with two swinging doors as the only hint that there was more to the floor. Avery absorbed all of this and thought that the owner must’ve had a lot of money, which was better news for him.

“Name?” called a Dwarvish woman. The woman sat at a booth that controlled who could enter through the front door. She pushed up her glasses and looked at him sternly. Avery felt nostalgic.

“Avery Woodhill,” he responded.

The woman nodded and gestured to the tables. “When you hear your name, go through the kitchen doors for your interview.”

“You’ll call for me?”

“That’s how we do things.” She turned her attention to a brutish lizard behind him.

Avery quickly stepped into the seating area and found a corner seat, which was not too difficult for him to climb onto. He watched the people walk from the front booth and sit in the seats across from him. Three Dwarven men were arguing about the cost of the tables. They were the only Dwarves Avery identified, and they looked pretty well off. The rest of the competition were the lizard folk, wearing patches of slick cloth around their waists and chests. With these people sitting so close together, Avery imagined the setting to be the start of a very lame joke.

He heard his name announced loudly over a hovering speaker. Avery looked back at the booth to see the Dwarf woman waving him forward. Avery got up from the table. As he walked to the kitchen doors, out came a Human woman. The woman wore a white and black dress, and she did not have any shoes. She was wiping her eyes with her sleeve when her foot came by and knocked Avery on his ass. She barely spared him a glance before she continued her way out of the building. Avery watched her leave, licking the space where his tooth was missing. On that occasion, he had landed on his face, and it hadn’t been an accident that sent him there.

He could not help thinking unkindly of the woman. Of the people in Eastport, Avery abided Humans the least. Avery hated the way they piously talked down to people like him. Humans were the ones who named his kind “half-pints.” The term was so popular that most of Eastport’s newspapers used it, even the more sympathetic journals.

“Quite a fall.”

Avery heard the voice over him. He turned and saw the face of a blue-scaled lizard smiling softly. The lizard extended a well-manicured hand. Avery took it and, as he came from the floor, he could not help staring at the man’s soft features. Most of the lizards of Eastport were laborers. With his white button shirt and green tie, the man looked more like a banker than any of the box pushers down at the docks.

“Not too rattled, I hope,” the man said. Avery blinked back his awareness, and he averted his glance. He made his way past the lizard and through the door to the kitchen. But, as he walked, he felt unnerved as the lizard followed closely behind him.

When he came inside the kitchen, there were three empty wooden chairs surrounding a black cooking pot. Avery took a spot on top of a chair, and the lizard sat in a chair across from him. On the chair, Avery could look into the pot. Inside the pot was a brown concoction which bubbled bright blue potatoes, yellowish chopped carrots, and occasionally chunks of fatty meat Avery assumed was beef.

While the smell wetted Avery’s mouth, he was more focused on the dazzling pink flames dancing along the underside of the pot. Strangely, Avery did not feel too warmed by the flames. He was no stranger to magic fire, and he had once conjured such himself, but he had not seen it shaded pink before.

Avery looked across the bowl to the lizard. He smiled and nodded at the bowl. “Smells nice,” he said. The lizard nodded. His once manicured fingers had taken up the bestial claws of Fallen ancestors amidst the spell. This was unsurprising. When Avery attempted his spell, his nails had sprouted an inch, and his palms blossomed into a hairy forest. The lizard closed his hand into a fist, and the fire dithered and died. The hand unfolded and looked more or less the same as before the spell. Fallen parts ceased as soon as the spell was finished, so there was no risk of permanent damage. But ever since the day Avery tried that spell, he had often dreamed of that foreign hand spreading its malice up his arm and to his face. He had never tried magic after that. Matches were, of course, very cheap.

The lizard sagged back into his chair. He reached into his pocket, pulled a pair of white gloves, and began slipping them on. “You’re Avery, then?”

“Yes,” Avery said. After gauging the lizard’s posture, Avery added a quick “Sir.”

“And you know who I am?”

“Yes, sir. You’re the boss.”

The lizard smiled, and Avery knew who he was talking to. He wondered why the paper didn’t say that the owner was scale-skin. “You are for the cook position?

“Yes, sir.”

“You understand the nature of what I may be hiring you for.”

Avery was waiting for this question. “To some degree, yes.”

“Only some?”

“I have questions as to the work. Specifics.”

The lizard stared at Avery calmly. “You are aware that you haven’t been hired yet, no?”

“I am very aware, sir, yes. But I find that it’s more useful to ask questions before I jump into something.”

“To save time and effort?”

“Yes, sir. You understand.” The lizard invited Avery with a wave of his hand, and Avery then asked, “My biggest concern is designation. The ad I saw in the paper made it clear that this wasn’t a restaurant.”

“Just so. Restaurants require customers to pay for food. We will not do that.”

“So food is to be earned by other matters?”

“Not in the sense that you mean. You would agree with me that poverty is a laborious state?”

“I might agree with you,” Avery said.

“This business seeks to recompense such labor.”

“As in, you are going to be giving out food to people who can’t afford it. Charity, then?”

“Yes, but it’ll be more accurate to say that we will be feeding everyone. Feeding everyone we can.” Avery nodded, licking the ghost of a tooth. “Is that all?”

“I had other concerns. Well, I have more concerns now.”

“Such as?”

“Such as sustainability. I don’t see how this operation could last. Unless you’ve discovered some way to conjure soup from thin air.”

“It will be sustainable for some time.”

“The question is how?”

“That doesn’t concern you.”

“Actually, it concerns everyone who’s working for you. One of the biggest problems in this town is reliability. I mean, people can hardly keep a job for a week. If the people working for you don’t get any of what they need, they’ll find someone who will give some of what they need.”

“Need I remind you that you haven’t been hired yet?”

Avery raised his hand. “Hear me out now. You’ve got yourself a good start. I saw those tables and chairs. Custom built by Richard and Daughters. Hell, you bought this whole joint and flooded out the equipment. You’ve obviously got some wealth.”

“But?”

Avery sighed. “I’m not wealthy, but I know enough about wealth. Wealth makes a bridge. It allows you to walk across scarcity. It makes things easier. But that bridge is long. You forget the harsh land on the other side of it.

“Let me ask you something. When was the last time you were hungry?”

“You ask a lot of questions.” The lizard chuckled. “I’ve been hungry.”

“Pardon my frankness, but I don’t think you have. True hunger takes away something. It agitates and desperates, and that combination isn’t good for a place crowded with people. And, another thing, it also causes problems. Have you heard the tale about the man who wandered aimlessly for weeks across the Crakpon desert, only to stumble upon an oasis?”

“The man climbs the highest tree and picks the ripest fruit. He quickly devours it only to find the fruit, rejected by his stomach, trapped in his throat, and there he dies hanging from the highest branch, surrounded by the things he wanted.”

“I fail to see the moral of the tale.”

The lizard nodded. “I see your point.” Reluctantly, the lizard added, “I had not considered that.”

“There is also the booth. The Dwarven woman at the speaker, is she to act as an admittance?”

“Yes.”

“Do you understand that, in Eastport, not everyone speaks Dahmekian standard?”

“Careful now,” the lizard said warmly. “Don’t take me for a fool just because I am a comfortable man. Mirram speaks four other languages fluently.”

“That is good. But that speaker! It won’t just be the speaker, will it?” The lizard nodded and bade Avery continue. “Obviously, you realize that there are hundreds of thousands of people in Eastport. I, for one, can’t go down the street without meeting another Jimmy from Giving-Ford, or a Bob from Newbeach. Verifying tables like that is just not sustainable.

“What you really need is an assigned seating system. Each of those tables can seat fifty people, right?” The lizard nodded again. “Designate each table with a color and hand out a matching ticket. Rotate each table every half-hour or so.”

“I can see how that would be more...One moment.” The lizard got up from his chair. When Avery began to move, the man waved him back into his chair. The lizard opened a cabinet and pulled two blue mugs as wide as a bowl. He handed one to Avery and stood with his cup next to the soup pot, and he hovered his hand over the pot and brought a thick stream of broth to his and Avery’s mugs with a Fallen hand. The lizard sat back into his chair, holding his mug in his lap. “Indulge me,” he said.

Avery took the mug, which was heavy in his hands, and put it to his lips. He tasted sweet peppers with an earthy, meaty taste. Although there was steam, the soup was not too hot, and it was easy to enjoy. Avery finished half of it in one long sip.

“Thoughts?”

For the first time in the conversation, Avery felt stupid. He gave up any complicated criticisms and simply said, “It reminds me of something my mother made. When I was a kid, I mean.”

“Is that a compliment?”

“It is. It seems like a simple recipe.” The lizard raised an eyebrow, and Avery added, “Simple isn’t bad. It just means that it will be easy to prepare, which should fit your bill nicely.

“Have you a lot of culinary knowledge?”

“Yes,” Avery lied. Although he had previously been the one to cook for the gang, he only knew a few recipes.

“If it were up to you, what would you change about this recipe?”

Avery took a breath and thought. Then, he said, “Noodles. Pasta noodles.” It was an easy answer because you could add noodles to anything without ruining it.

The lizard seemed satisfied with this response. “What is your schedule?”

“I have no schedule.”

“Any complaints about the pay?”

“I think thirty-five scripts per week is generous.”

The lizard pointed at the Mug in Avery’s lap. “Are you going to finish that?”

Avery looked down at his mug and then slurped down the rest of it. He handed the cup to the lizard who placed it and his own full mug down on a counter. Avery got up from his chair and waited for the lizard to walk him out of the room. “Is that it then?”

“Is what it?”

“I mean, do I have the job?”

“Of course not,” the lizard said. “You’re quite a disruptive thing, and you asked too many questions. I hardly had a chance to ask for your bona fides. You, sir, would not do well as one of my cooks, and it is fortunate that I already have enough recruits.

“No, sir. You will not be a cook. Come this Thursday and be my assistant manager. You can come to my office at eleven o’clock this Thursday?”

“What will I need to bring?”

The lizard smiled. “Questions.”

“I can bring that.”

Avery was guided out the door before he could offer another word. The door was closed, and another name sounded over the speaker. When it finally dawned on Avery exactly what his orders were, an energy exploded from him, and he went out of the building, down the street, and to the alleyway, which he had made his home. Although he did his best to suppress the deep laughter within him, Avery smiled wildly and sat down against the alley wall.

What a fool, Avery thought. A rich fool, true, but a fool still. I go there to stake out a score, and I get hired to continue staking it out. He’s practically paying me to rob him.