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“There really has been some kind of mistake. I barely know how to microwave a frozen pizza.”
Macy handed the big spoon off to another woman who was heavily pregnant and made a back-up gesture and kept making it until Rory was almost at the doorway she’d entered from. “Stay out of the way.”
“I could help with clean up, or do delivery.”
“Not my crews. If you were meant to be on clean up or delivery, you’d have been assigned to them.”
“But I don’t know the first thing about food prep.”
“What did you do in the decay?” Macy’s hand came up to forestall an answer. “Office work I’ll bet. Useless. They never know what to do with the office workers.”
“I worked in an art gallery.” Zack and Rosie had no specific skills that a new community would need and that was a deliberate proof point that becoming a Continuer was only about having the money to join.
Macy’s brows went up. She had something white smeared on her brown cheek and Rory desperately wanted to wipe it off for her. “More useless. They don’t normally put useless people here.”
“I’ll try not to be useless if you give me a chance. I’m sure I can be trained as well as the next person.”
“You think I’ve got time to train you? You think I’ve got time for injuries and accidents and food spoilage. I don’t. This whole place runs on the food that comes out of this kitchen. I’ve got no time for people who can’t contribute.”
“Can you get me transferred? I’ll do anything else.”
Macy slapped her hands to her thighs. “Can I get you transferred? That’s not how things work around here. You think we get a choice? Everything is done for a specific reason and you can’t just go altering things to suit one person because she looks like a fashion model.”
“I can’t help how I look. Same as the next person.” Nothing Rory wore was special, the barest lick of lip gloss, her hair pulled back in a tail. This had to be the first time in her life her looks were a disadvantage. Oh, she’d used them to disadvantage others, but this was a novelty. “I don’t want to cause trouble.”
“You are.”
Had to admire a woman who knew how to roadblock so effectively. “It’s my first day here. How can I make this work?”
“Tell me you were lying about having no skills.”
No skills that made sense here. “Why would I lie about that? I really will do anything else. I’ll wipe goo from people’s faces if that’s what you need.” She couldn’t help herself and gestured vaguely at Macy’s cheek.
Macy took a swipe at the smear and missed. “Crap, girl, I don’t know what to do with you, but if Orrin wants you here, that’s where you’ll stay. Doesn’t mean I have to like it.” She pointed. “You stand in that corner by the window and watch. Don’t move from there until the cleaning crew arrive. Then at five bells you be standing right there again, watching and then at five bells in the morning, same thing. Got it?”
“That’s all?”
Macy’s back was already turned when she said, “That’s all I’ve got time for.”
Rory went to the corner by the window, conscious of all the eyes on her. So much for blending in. This was either a mistake or a lesson. Either way it was uncomfortable. What were they doing to Zeke? She stared out the window at a row of buildings housing the bakery, the general store, the laundry, the clinic and other town square structures and tried to recall what he’d checked on his work skills form and how that might make him the vegetarian working in a slaughterhouse.
She stood there while the noise level in the dining room grew as people started arriving for the first seating, as the action in the kitchen shifted from preparation to serving meals in a canteen assembly line. Her stomach growled. She’d not had breakfast and the food smelled good. No one spoke to her and after a while they stopped looking her way.
Was Zeke out there, was his voice part of the laughter, the deep rumble of male conversation? Her hand went to her back pocket again. That habit was going to die hard.
She stood by the window while the volume from the dining room turned down and the action in the kitchen shifted again. There was more cooking, more preparation, not at the level of before but to keep the meal choices topped up, to serve the right amount of food for everyone. Macy was right, this was the nerve center of the settlement. Good food made waiting for doomsday palatable.
Her feet were protesting by the time the delivery crew arrived. They carried hot and cold packs, a little army of people loaded up with meals to take out to work sites. They were the Uber Eats of Abundance without the choice of restaurants or tips.
Meanwhile her stomach hollowed out and kissed her spine, and she considered marching out to the dining room, grabbing a plate and getting in line. Except maybe she’d score more points with Macy if she asked permission first. Trouble is she couldn’t see Macy anywhere. This was a torture for newbie survivalists.
If she had to design a torture for Zeke, something to unsettle him, to break down a man less aware of what was going on than he was, she’d find a way to make him irrelevant. Starve him of company and activity and purpose. He’d be a growly bear in a couple of days and since she was feeling pretty growly herself, that would only be fair.
She’d put him somewhere he’d be bored rigid, where he had to wait long hours with nothing to do for something inconsequential to happen that never did. That would test his patience. He wasn’t good at sitting still, Mr. Perpetual Motion. He was always neck-deep in a project, making plans for the next one, or being extravagant with his leisure time, trekking, or skydiving, or spelunking. He could surf and skate and ski. He had friends all over the world to go adventuring with, and he was never short of company.
He’d hiked the Inca Trail and cycled through Vietnam, climbed Kilimanjaro, went dogsledding to see polar bears in Canada. He once went off the grid for a month to live in a tree house in Brazil or Argentina or wherever. He was the ultimate variety junkie and every time he went on vacation, he came home with a new save-the-world project for the bank of Sherwood to finance.
You could see that in his long cons as well. They were elaborate ruses where he played character roles and there was always a risk he’d be discovered and exposed. An art appraiser, a paleontologist, a wine merchant. He did it so that he could extract the maximum amount of money from wealthy douches to fund his environmental crusades.
