coyote pt 2 (rewrite)

After the last of the customers had finally gotten the memo that they had long been closed and left, Reina took the opportunity to change back into a regular shirt. They had to wipe everything down and have it ready for opening tomorrow, but she hardly had to wear the hideous stifling work shirt to do that.   

Especially since Dave had finally left- he’d taken the evening off for himself. He didn’t trust anyone to have done a decent job, so he was coming in early the next day to check all their work. But luckily, he trusted Eric and Jaclyn, her older coworkers, just enough to screw off somewhere else for the night. She felt better without him hanging around, to be honest. He liked finding problems and talking for a really long time about things that she already knew. 

Ugh. Reina eyed Jaclyn's back. Her stomach twisted. Talking to people. That was a normal thing, that did not cause her any stress. She was going to do it. Right now.

She felt a little nervous. But it seemed at least relatively likely that her coworkers would agree with her plan to try to fix the coyote. 

“Hey, guys,” she approached them cautiously. They’d been pretty cool thus far- two college graduates biding their time until their Master’s programs started up.   

Also, the bonding over complaining about Dave had been promising. It was worth it to try.   

“Yeah?” Eric asked, poking out his head from the walk in cooler, where he was stocking and organizing. Also, escaping the disgusting heat of a pizza restaurant.   

“The coyote has a spoon stuck in between the arm joints.” Reina said, tracking his face. It was completely impassive. “It's preventing the coyote from using the full range of motion. It might end up dropping a pizza or something if we don't get it checked out.” 

“Well, I can see why you didn’t tell Dave.” He scrunched up his nose at the name. “Dude’s useless. Can’t believe he put fucking carpet on that thing. Looks like a B movie horror monster.”  

It did. It really did.  Reina sighed.   

“Yeah, but I can fix the spoon thing, I think. Hopefully it hasn't broken anything. Do you guys mind if I run home and grab my tools after we’re done cleaning?”  

Most of Eric was obscured by the cooler door, but she would guess that he shrugged. “I don’t care if you go now. You handled most of the customers today, anyway. We’ll get the kitchen and wipe down tables- just make sure you mop everything before you leave.”  

“And you’ll let me back in?” Reina asked, feeling a bit stupid. It was the only part she thought that they might have a problem with. She hadn’t technically clocked out yet, and wasn’t planning to for the five-minute drive home and back unless they made her. Shanisha had kindly lent Reina her car for the day, so she didn’t even have to bike it or anything.   

He hummed in assent and disappeared behind the closing cooler door.   

“Thanks!” Reina called to Jaclyn, who just smiled and nodded.   

“Don’t take too long,” she called after Reina, “Dave does weird stuff like coming back sometimes to see what we're doing. And this isn’t going to be a usual thing.”  

Ick. The need for speed was evident.   

Reina flew out of the restaurant and into Shanisha’s van. At least driving home and back was quick- five minutes by her estimate. And her toolkit was basically all in the same place, even after spending her weekend tinkering with an old project.  

She parked on the curb and hurried into the house.   

“What are you running for?” Minh asked, from her perch on the couch. She and Ameera were watching something on the television. Reina compared their Friday night to hers and came up extraordinarily short.   

She was also surprised to find herself somewhat winded.   

“Gotta grab something from my room and get back to work.” She huffed, barely pausing before ascending the stairs.   

She could hear Minh hum at the back of her throat, and could still hear her say, “Just make sure you don’t get fired, Rei.”  

In her first couple of weeks at work? That would be an achievement. She’d have to erase the memory from even her own mind, just so her parents would never hear about it.  

Unless she wanted to be shot out of the family in a cannon- perhaps literally.   

Reina swept up all the tools she could find, and dumped them all into her bag. It was full already of extra materials- chips and gears, tinier bought mechanisms.   

She rushed back down the stairs, past Minh, out the door and back to the restaurant. She hesitated to knock for a moment. Sweat rolled down her neck, behind her ears. She shuddered at the sensation.

What if Dave had come back and they'd told him that she was in the backroom or something? If she knocked, he'd know she had been outside.

...No, it was more likely that he had returned and found out that she was gone. And when she walked in, he'd tell her that she was fired.

Ugh. She tried to adjust her toolbag. The strap was painful where it dug into her shoulder, and she was sweating. Okay, she just needed to knock. She rapped her knuckles against the door, put her hand down…. And then started worrying that she had been too quiet, and no one inside had heard her. Her hand drifted up again. Should she knock again, just to be sure? Or would that seem annoying and demanding?

'Maybe I should leave the state and change my name. I can start a new life.'

Jaclyn opened the door with a smile.

Oh. Reina relaxed, shoulders slumping. Her bag slipped down precariously.

“That really was quick!” Jaclyn eyed the massive leather bag over Reina’s shoulder. Her eyebrows drifted upward. “And that looks intense. You said you were what major again?”  

“Mechanical engineering.” Reina said. When Jaclyn moved to the side, she hurriedly stepped into the air conditioning. The sweat that had built up on her chest and on the small of her back suddenly made her feel cold. “I like to build things.” 

“Cool!” Jaclyn sauntered behind her, then disappeared behind kitchen door. It flapped open and closed a few times before settling. Reina watched it with more interest than it merited.   

After it was closed, and no one seemed to be coming back out, Reina looked over to the coyote. It looked limp when it was deactivated.   

“Ooookay.” She said to herself, examining it carefully. “First step is to turn it off.”  

There was an on/off switch on the base- though she could have used the tablet, it seemed like a better idea to use the option that couldn’t be reversed by accident. The coyote wasn’t on the charger yet, either. She’d have to turn it back on to move it back to the docking station, but that would be a good test to see whether her work had paid off.   

Reina flipped the switch and lugged her bag over. She was likely going to have to remove at least some of the disgusting fabric, and remove a multitude of parts to get out that spoon.  

...May as well take the carpet entirely off. She'd be able to better see what she was looking at. And honestly, the poor thing deserved better than these rags. Being bare was better than being badly dressed. At least it was honest, and the solid mechanics were visible for admiration.

An hour later, she was working away in a pile of metal parts. Gears and pins were all meticulously lined up in a sophisticated sorting system according to location and size.  

“Still not done?” Eric asked, wiping the checkout counter down.  His tone was still mild. She didn't know if that meant anything or not.

“Not yet…” Reina sighed. “I probably let myself get carried away, to be honest. It’s a fun project.”  

He made an understanding kind of sound. “I get that. I have the same problem with my major. I go in to work on one specific thing, and just turn it into a full project. It takes forever.”  

Eric then moved to the soda dispenser, unscrewing each nozzle and dropping them into a water and soap mixture. It was evident that he was in deep-cleaning mode, though that should be done every night. It was official policy that the soda machine should be cleaned weekly, but it was apparently an acknowledged fact that nobody cared enough to do that regularly.   

But in the summer it would become obvious if it wasn’t cleaned- all the sugar attracted flies. And nobody wanted to go through a gauntlet of insects to get a soda. Or find one in their drink.   

“I did get the spoon out.” She offered, holding up the mangled piece of silverware.   

He looked over at her. “That’s good! Now all you have to do is put that all back together again, yeah?” There was a little bit of a friendly warning in his tone.  

She laughed. “That’s where I got stuck. I started to examine how it’s put together, and I changed out a part here or there…”  

“Should you be doing that?” Eric asked, sounding mildly serious. “Dave will explode if that thing stops working. Apparently it was really expensive.”  

“Then he should be thanking me for fixing it.” Reina said, shrugging. “I’m not going to leave it broken. It’s like camping- if I take something apart, I leave it nicer than I found it.”  

“Just don’t stay too late.” Eric grunted, as he vigorously scrubbed the inside of the machine. “Dave would not like it- and your hours are capped anyway, right?”  

That was true. So she needed to be faster on this puzzle. At least Dave was good enough to account for two hours of cleaning, because he expected everything to be spotless.   

“Just a couple more tweaks, then I’m done.” She said, more to herself than to Eric.  

The animatronic’s processing power was much more than she would have expected, or than it should ever need. That was weird.  

Maybe the company just had a lot of really expensive processors around on discount? That, or were trying to take over the world with sentient robots based out of children’s restaurants and theme parks. Which was… one hell of an idea, but not likely their intention.   

In any case, she added memory into the slots, because she had an idea. This wasn’t her first foray into robotics engineering, but she hadn’t yet taken the extra classes. She was only a beginner in coding, but hell. It wasn’t like she could screw this up any worse- it wasn’t even on a networked system, and couldn’t leave the set of tracks it was on.  

In any case, she’d say that it was obvious Dave had already done worse to it. The cheapness and mustiness of the fabric was even worse up close.   

“You’re gonna be my first little baby,” she told it, quietly. Eric was still in the room. “And I’m going to take great care of you.”  

After beefing up the already awesome power with memory enough to handle what she wanted to do, she quickly reassembled the machine.  

“Eric, can you bring me the tablet remote?” She called as she tightened one of the last tiny screws. She didn’t trust herself to not lose one of the damn things if she got up.  

She got no response, but did hear the kitchen door open and close a couple of times.   

“Here.” Eric said, putting in on the floor near her leg. “I’m going to finish wiping down the buffet line for the last time.” 

“I’ll be ready to mop everything up in a minute.” Reina answered. She tightened the very last screw, and took a second to stretch a bit. She was sore from hunching over for too long. She didn’t put the ugly-ass fabric on, though.  

“Okay, time to see how you do.” She leaned back down to flip the switch on the base of the animatronic, and grabbed the tablet.  

The power was on, technically. So she turned the robot on from the tablet.  

It shook to life in stages and with some difficulty- Reina noted the spots where the range of motion was less smooth and spritzed them carefully with WD40. It was obvious this thing was going to need more maintenance than Dave had realized. The restaurant was filled with food grease and the air was alternately really dry or incredibly humid. That presented a chunk of maintenance issues that someone should really be hired to watch.  

But Reina was all there was. She didn’t even think that the store owner knew this thing existed, so that was not likely to change soon.  

“Here goes nothing!” She pressed the button to command the animatronic to do its introduction speech.   

Right on cue, it raised its formerly broken arm. “Hi! I’m Buddy the coyote! Welcome to Tumbleweed Pizza! My favorite pizza is pup-peroni, what’s yours?”  

It waited for the programmed five seconds for a nonexistent group of children to shriek their favorite kinds of pizza.   

“That’s great! One of my friends will come by in a minute to take your order. Have a good time, and don’t forget to tumble on by again!”  Then it clacked back on the tracks into the docking position.   

Reina followed it, back past the entrance to the kitchen and to its charging station. It docked properly, and deactivated. It was still on, but unless she pressed another command, it wasn’t going to do anything.  

“Great!” She congratulated herself, and the animatronic as well for the hell of it. “We’re a great team, Buddy.”  

Reina turned back around and grimaced at the hideous fabric piled on the floor.  

“Guess I gotta put that back on you,” she said, feeling resigned. It wasn’t like there was any other option. “Even though it’s gross, and not nearly as cute as you deserve.”  

“Are you talking to it, now?” Eric asked, from a booth. He was evidently done with everything he needed to do for closing.  

“Yes, because he is my baby now.” Reina lightly patted the base of the robot, with love. “I am going to teach him everything.”  

Eric laughed, not unkindly. “Fair enough. I’m sure every robot needs a parent.”  

He stood up, and rolled his shoulders. “Let’s all go home, some of us have to be back here tomorrow morning.”  

Her heart dropped. All the relief building at the thought of going to bed dissipated. She had to come back and do this all again in the morning. And it was Saturday tomorrow.   

…She had a thought, and avoided looking at the clock. It was Saturday now, if barely.  

Depressing. She didn’t have to be told to know that Saturdays were the busiest days, and the longest. They were still understaffed and Reina and Shanisha were still training, so all of them would be coming in tomorrow. Reina made eye contact with Eric and managed not to sigh. She didn’t want her coworkers to think that she was a whiner.  

He did not feel the same restraint. “Eugh.” It was almost clinical for a groan, like it was being said for her benefit. 

“Saaame.” Jaclyn groaned, emerging from the bathroom with a bag over her shoulders. She had clearly washed off her makeup in the sink and changed into jeans and a green boatneck shirt.  

Reina glanced down at her own grimy uniform and considered it. She had an undershirt on that should have caught all the sweat, but she still felt gross. And there was something on the hem that she couldn’t identify. She should probably get out of these clothes as soon as possible, but she really just wanted to leave. 

They all clocked out and parted ways without another word. Reina wondered if she should say goodbye, but the more experienced staff members seemed to consider the interaction over for the day.  

Whatever. She’d see them again at 11am. 

Despair crept back up.  

She was so tired that she didn’t really register the drive home. She got in the car, sat for a moment, and then she was parking in the cracked driveway. If it hadn’t been so hot, Reina probably would have lingered in the car out of inertia.  

Minh was still up on the couch, now alone. It took her a moment to register Reina walking into the room. Her head tracked over only when the noisy metal door flapped shut. Her eyes were bleary, but she managed a half-smile. “Rough day, honey?”  

Reina snorted. Her numb fingers took a moment to drop her bag of tools on the floor. It made a louder thump than she had anticipated. Minh gave her a sharp look, but didn’t say anything about Reina collapsing on the couch next to her. 

After a second, her roommate’s attention went back to the brunette woman on the TV.  

She found herself watching Minh. Her friend's face was a little vacant, her mouth hanging open. It sounded like it was a rerun of one of her favorite sitcoms. But she looked tired, overfocused on the television. Probably too sleepy to stay awake, too tired to go to bed.  

“Everything good?” She asked, lightly poking her friend in the side.   

Minh jerked away and sighed. Then she laughed a little under her breath.  

“Lots of shit at my internship today.” she explained, as she readjusted to lean back onto the couch. “There was some big meeting and I had to do so much running around, some important papers got lost in the mixup and I had to find them and copy them all for all 23 attendees while my boss breathed down my neck to go faster so that they could start.” 

“That sounds like a pain.” Reina sympathized. “But hey, at least it pays?” 

She pushed down an ugly tinge of jealousy. Copying papers sounded better than ringing up orders. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t hard work, Reina reminded herself. And she should focus on what was in her life, not begrudge what her friends had.  

“Yeah. I’m glad I didn’t do all that junk for free.” Minh looked down at Reina and made eye contact with a mildly confused sort of frown, like she’d just remembered someone was sitting with her. “Speaking of, how was your job? I know I kind of just asked you, but groaning isn’t actually an answer. Please engage zombie to human translation.”   

Reina sprawled out more on the couch before answering. She dug her toes into the crack between couch cushions. “It was ok. It was a long and messy day, I still am not trusted to sauce anything unsupervised which feels pretty undignified, but I fixed the robot at work.” She couldn’t help the way her tone lifted at the end there. Huh. That had been more of a high-point than she’d realized before just now. It was good to get to do something that engaged her mind.  

Minh was giving her a skeptical look. “You fixed the robot? You have a robot? That’s a weird thing to do at a pizza place. Oh- an animatronic thing.” She made a face. “You mean there’s not like a maintenance crew or something- or you just wanted to poke at it?” Her tone went flat at the end there, but she started to smile.   

Reina sat a little taller and tried to look responsible and impartial. “Both. Some kid stuck a freaking spoon in it, too. These customers are animals, Minh.”  

“Oh, wow.” Minh ran her manicured nails through her hair and flipped it. “How mad were the parents? Are they going to pay for repairs?”  

She snorted. “Of course not. That would require some manners. No one even told us, I think they just hoped to leave before we knew there was a problem.” She wrinkled her nose. “Where are these parents’ parents? I wanna know. Who raised them?”  

Minh laughed. “Obviously, they’re nothing like our parents. I can’t even imagine how my parents would have handled that.”  

The thought of what Reina’s parents would do made her flinch involuntarily. Their disapproval would be unending, and la chancla would be swift. At the same time, thinking about them made her feel a little homesick. She hadn't seen them for months at this point. Maybe she should try to call, soon…

“I’m tiiiiiiiiiiired.” Reina complained, knowing that complaining wouldn’t help, but desperately wanting the change the subject. She also knew that her friend would not appreciate it, but it was hard to tamp down on her tendency to whine.  

Minh just gave her a Look, with her perfect eyebrows pulled inward in disapproval.  

Reina slunk into the couch a little more in defiant dramatics. She wasn’t going to be reasonable. She was having a moment.  

After a few seconds of silence, Minh picked up the remote and flicked off the TV. “I’m going to get to bed,” she said. She sounded unenthused about the prospect. “You should too.”  

That was hard to argue with. But god, moving was unreasonable. “Yeah.” Reina summoned the immense will to lift her horrible, tired body off the couch. She stared at her bag for a minute. It was heavy. Not super heavy, but she didn’t want to carry it all the way up the stairs right now. And she’d probably use it at work again tomorrow, so what was the point? She was less likely to forget it if it was already downstairs, she justified.  

“Take that up with you,” Minh said, following her gaze. “You don’t want someone to trip over it. Also, most of that stuff is worse to step on than a lego. Have some respect.”  

Fair point. And it was hard to argue with a person who had, in fact, stepped on one of her screwdrivers in a dark dorm room before. Reina hefted up the bag and considered how much more pleasant a hobby like collecting stamps might be. It would be kinder on her back.  

There were more stairs than she remembered, and her footsteps were loud and slow. Reina grimaced. She didn’t allow herself to sit down on her bed, because she wasn’t going to get back up if she did that. 

Virtuously, she plugged in her phone, set an alarm, and then peeled her clothes off and left them on the floor outside of the shower.