By the time Derek had been working for Mel for six months, he thought he knew the city better than most of the people who had lived there all their lives. When he wasn’t flipping burgers, he was walking the neighborhoods trying to see if anywhere sparked a memory. Or perhaps, that someone would see him and say, ‘Hey, where the hell have you been? I haven’t seen you in forever’. Neither had happened so far.
He did, however, have a place to stay now. After the first week at the City Diner, Mel introduced him to friend of his, an older man named Charlie, who was an occasional customer. He lived in a small house on the edge of one of the, as he put it, less than savory areas of the city, and had a spare room, which he was willing to rent to Derek cheaply. The only proviso was that if any of t
