Misty Rose: Nature
Chapter 34
Dinner Roll was a stupid name for a delivery service, but it turned out to be a great job for a vampire chick who still needed to earn a paycheck. It was a lot like other crowdsourced delivery services, but it had some things I liked better. Like uniforms. Sounds stupid, but I kind of liked having a uniform because I knew from working at a stupid Hooters knockoff that people would see the uniform, not the person wearing it… or almost wearing it, anyway. Second thing was that while the pay was about the same — minimum wage, of course — the pay at least was an actual check instead of direct deposit and… I don’t know, I guess I was feeling paranoid about giving anyone more personal information than I had to. Oh, and Dinner Roll let you keep your tips instead of skimming like half off the top. Third, this wasn’t some local wing of a big company because the guy who owned Dinner Roll also ran a courier service in the metro area, and I could even do that stuff which paid better if I wanted to become a bonded courier. Which I didn’t, but the option was nice. And my information wasn’t in some kind of national database, just a local one. Which was kind of stupid since I still had a Social Security number and a bank account and cell phone plan and credit cards, but… like I said, being paranoid was kind of part of being a vampire. Even if it was a stupid way to be paranoid.
Other than that, Dinner Roll was pretty much the same as the other things like it. I log into the app, see what’s on the list, take whatever deliveries I want, and get paid based on how much I worked. Start and stop whenever, which was perfect for the way my vampire stuff seemed to want to intrude on having an actual life. Plus the fact that I was going to be up late at night and didn’t really have to worry about the stuff girls usually have to worry about being out late at night was a definite bonus. There weren’t a lot of late workers, so I had a lot of deliveries I could do. Or that’s what the guy I interviewed with said. He also tried to really nicely get me to not take the real late shift because he was worried about me being safe, but I told him I wasn’t worried and could take care of myself. I was probably going to have to come up with a good excuse at some point because I didn’t think he’d react real well if I told him I was starting to think of muggers and rapists as snacks. Only problem I saw was that I’d have to borrow Kaitlyn’s scooter, which meant I couldn’t start work until she got home. Which wasn’t really a problem long as she didn’t stay out all night… or she didn’t take it with her when she went to visit her parents. But I could deal with that if it was an issue.
I got to be honest, I don’t know how much of my delivery job I really need to talk about. Mostly it was boring which was nice. Pick a delivery, go a restaurant, sit around a little while they make whatever, take it to the customer, smile and make small talk, and go on to the next delivery. Having been a waitress for a couple years made being cheery easy, and most of the customers ordering something that late at night weren’t really in the mood to talk. Or listen. Sometimes I’d get frat boys ordering food for a party, and they’d sometimes want to invite the cute delivery girl in. Maybe because they’d watched too much porn, I don’t know. I said no. Other people were, I don’t know, computer tech types working late on something. The techs usually didn’t want to talk because they were thinking about something else. I didn’t usually ask why people were ordering so late. Not my business.
Another good thing about the job was that it kept me busy without making me not be able to hang out with Kaitlyn at all. I’d wake up at sunset, and she’d be home, or would get home pretty soon, and we’d talk for a while or whatever, then she’d start getting ready for bed and I’d go to work. Was a hell of a lot better than sitting around on my ass all night like before. I also figured out that if I needed to hunt, I could take orders that took me into less good parts of the city, zip up my hoodie over my uniform shirt, and wander around for like an hour. Well, if they didn’t volunteer, anyway. Being on the clock didn’t seem to matter to assholes lurking in alleys.
Dinner Roll paid twice a month, and since I started early enough in October, I actually got my first paycheck after about a week and a half of deliveries. Kaitlyn picked it up from our PO box on her way home from work. I know this because she’d left it on my head while I was sleeping one day. Having gotten enough of the glitter glue off me to start sleeping in my bed didn’t really change her liking to do weird stuff while I was asleep sometimes. I suppose if being a vampire turned me into metal, she’d stick things to me with fridge magnets too. Least she wasn’t waking me up during the day.
“Mph,” I said, sitting up and grabbing the… envelope? I don’t know what the printed out things you got to rip tabs off to open are called. “Y’know, you can just ask.”
“This way’s more fun,” Kaitlyn said from one of the stools where she was sitting.
“Uh huh,” I said, carefully opening the paycheck.
“First paycheck?” Kaitlyn asked me.
“Yep.”
“Cool. What’d you make?”
I stared at the check. “Hang on a sec,” I said, getting out my phone and pulling up the calculator. I’m not so good at math, and the total on the check seemed too high. I messed with the numbers a bit, trying to figure out how much I should have earned based on my hours at the wage I’d agreed to… which wasn’t much, basically minimum wage not counting tips. And in a week and a half, I’d earned more than twice what I’d been earning working for Mr. Lewis for a week. So it had to be the tips. “About six hundred dollars,” I said. “Not bad for my first week or so.”
Kaitlyn got up and took the check out of my hand and looked at it. “Huh,” she said. “Guess you’re earning more than me now.” Then she smiled and hugged me.
“Yeah,” I said, hugging her back. “So I can help with rent and pay you back. And put some money into all the debt I ran up the last few months.”
“Whenever you can,” Kaitlyn said, sitting down on the bed and leaning against me. “I’m not hurting for money right now, so there’s no rush.”
“If you say so. Still want to pay you back.”
“That’s fine.”
We sat there like that for a bit, not saying anything. Then Kaitlyn squeezed me. “You going to work tonight?” she asked me.
I thought about it for a bit. “Prob’ly should,” I said. “Show the boss how good a worker I am.”
“That’s fine. But shower first. You smell like scooter exhaust.”
“Your scooter needs a tune up. And I’ll just smell like exhaust again.”
“Well, we can afford it now. And you can shower again, silly.”
I squeezed Kaitlyn again and got up to shower. When I got back out, I found Kaitlyn holding up one of my uniform shirts. She looked over and me and grinned.
“Thought so,” she said. “Since when do you wear a men’s small?”
I grinned back. “I don’t,” I said. “But that’s the size I picked.”
“So that’s why you’ve been wearing your hoodie when you leave.”
“Actually, no. It gets cold in October, and I figured I should prob’ly at least pretend that cold bothers me. So I wear the hoodie and pants and unzip the hoodie when I ring doorbells.”
“And show them how you barely squeezed into the uniform top.”
“Hey,” I said, pretending to be mad. “They actually have extra small shirts. But I didn’t take one of those ’cause I was afraid I’d bust the seams if I tried to breathe.”
Kaitlyn tossed me the shirt. “Sure,” she said. “Go on, let’s see it.”
I pulled the shirt on and settled it as best I could… because, yeah, it didn’t technically fit. Because of the way guy’s shirts are cut, this one ended up tight across my chest and hips, and since it was a polo shirt and didn’t stretch all that well, the bottom tended to ride up. And since I wore low rider jeans, it left some skin exposed. Not exactly professional, yeah, but I figured it’d help with getting better tips, and it seemed like I was right. I figured the job was going to sometimes not pay as well because I wouldn’t be working, so something that meant more tips when I was would be a good thing.
Kaitlyn looked at how the shirt fit and grinned again. “Yeah, I see where the tips come from,” she said. “Dinner Roll doesn’t have female uniform shirts?”
“Not yet,” I said. “Boss says they haven’t needed ’em. I’m the first girl to apply. Be a few weeks before any come in. Meantime I can get some altered if I want.”
“I can do that,” Kaitlyn said, looking me over again. “Sorta baggy around the waist.”
“True,” I said. “You don’t mind?”
“Nah,” Kaitlyn said. “Won’t take long. How many shirts you have?”
“Um… seven, I think. They also don’t have a lotta size small guys workin’ for ‘em.”
“I bet,” Kaitlyn said, going for her costume gear. From there, Kaitlyn got the measurements she’d need so she could adjust the shirts I didn’t need to work that night. I finished getting ready and went off to work. And yeah, the tight shirt helped with tips, but… a lot of the job was just being perky and cheerful. Like being a waitress. Lot of the people up that late liked seeing a cute girl being smiling and bouncy and nice. The resting dumb face helped, too, because people seem to expect delivery people to not be the top of the ladder, I guess. Or something. I’d also overdo my blush a little, which’d make me look a little flushed and excited, which worked just fine in colder weather.
About the only other thing I got to mention about the Dinner Roll job was that Kaitlyn did more than just altering my uniform shirts. Couple days after my first paycheck, I woke up to find one of my uniform tops laid out next to a pair of my short shorts that matched the shirt… and a matching windbreaker and track pants set. The track pants were the kind with snaps all down the sides, quick to get in and out of. Not going to lie, the new track suit looked better than what I’d been wearing and it’d work for a little while at least. Until it started snowing anyway. Figured I’d have to do some kind of snow bunny thing once the snow starts. Um… actual cold weather gear, not a bikini and boots. Of course, it wasn’t like the cold really bothered me because of being a vampire, but like I said, I figured I should play human while I was working at least. Doubted I could claim polar bear club very well, you know? And those people didn’t spend three or four hours doing deliveries.
Probably the best thing, though, was telling Pops and Ferret how well things were going. I mean, both of them had done a lot for me, you know? And it felt like… I was showing them I was actually going to be able to solve my own problems sometimes too. Ferret was definitely impressed.
Kaitlyn didn’t have it so good, though. She was still working for Mr. Lewis, and October at his club meant the girls had to wear costumes. Basically, sexy whatever, the kind of outfits costume stores don’t sell to minors. The girls would have to either provide their own, or use the ones that Mr. Lewis had, which usually meant something more embarrassing than the wait staff would usually choose. Of course, Kaitlyn had a few costumes of her own, so she’d come home from work wearing things that were… distracting in a lot of different ways. I still hadn’t gotten used to how being a vampire had… sort of changed what I found attractive. So I wasn’t always able to not look, especially when she had on one of her work outfits. The usual uniform I could ignore. But the Halloween stuff was harder, and her catching me looking seemed to encourage her to start making jokes at me again. Not that she’d stopped completely, but it’d gone back to normal, more or less. But now her jokes started up again.
Overall, though, the first couple of weeks of October were pretty good. I was earning a paycheck again, wasn’t sitting around on my ass as much anymore. I even managed to get the last of the glitter glue off myself, though it was still hanging around the apartment as usual.
