Need more to read before you return to your family?

Here ya go.

I warned you I’d do this.  Happy Election Day, by the way.  Is that a thing?

—

It was when I was really starting to see my writing turn to utter shit when Jazz called to ask me to pick her up from work. It was a believable ruse; her car was unreliable and needed attention. Even though I had pretty much stayed out of her business with the car, I knew she had to get it to a mechanic before too long or she was going to be bussin’ it to work. I told her no problem and slammed home my laptop.

Of course it was raining, and since my the passenger side of my windshield sometimes leaks, she got in and made a shitty comment about staying drier if she’d walked. Part of me wanted to let her walk, but I just drove on to the next light. Why do you always hit red lights when you don’t want to?

“I can’t work there anymore,” she began. She found some old mail in between our bucket seats and used them to sop up the saturated blackened area beneath her feet.

“What happened?”

“Well, you know how it goes, right?”

I did. But I wasn’t sure what could have happened this particular time.

“Wanna take me through Rally’s?”

“Sure.”

“It was Carlos and his stupid-ass way of running that place. He brings me in, right, and says he’s got twenty or thirty hours every week if I want them.”

“Right.”

“But what he doesn’t mention is that some of those hours are going to be hosting.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah, fuck that, right?”

“Exactly!” She’s pissed because hostesses make minimum wage and have really boring jobs. Standing at the podium and writing down names for four or five hours is as mindless as it gets. It’s easy money to some; to girls like Jazz, though, it’s a fucking nightmare.

“Well, what ya gonna do?” I ask absently. I meant it in a can’t-beat-em-join-em sort of way, but she didn’t hear that tone.

“I’m fucking gone, is what I’m doing.”

“Gone? As in, you quit?”

“Well, I didn’t storm out or anything. But I’m not going in Friday when I’m supposed to host.”

I found the restaurant she wanted and wheeled in. Two cars were in front of me, but at least the rain was lightening. She tells me the order without looking up from her phone. She’s scrolling through automatically, no real chance that she’s actually reading anyone’s status.

“You think he might let you have tables at all?”

“Oh…prob’ly not. There’s this new girl he’s been fucking obnoxiously flirting with all week.”

Jazz is too green to know this shit happens in all restaurants everywhere. At least, in my limited experience around this town it does. And we’re not a special town by any means, ya know?