Back at the restaurant, just reopened. And so familiar - and yet -
Not where I'm meant to be.
In misery there's comfort, the comfort of numbers, the joy of familiar faces disappeared over the winter, old customers, staff, of new faces - I'm 3 days a week, they've hired a new waitress. My age, maybe older, short, plump, career waitress, you can tell pretty quick she knows where her hands are and what's up. A perpetually stretched smile across a weather-beaten face, she's wintered in California, Arizona, someplace. And so you balance the familiar with the new, when it's slow - and it's always slow in April, but never fear the rush is coming up quick - I introduce her to...
Well, Ken of course. Who else. Start by telling her about the six pack of gerbils he picks up at the Superette every night, about how he's got the best supply of what's-it-called-that-date-rape drug GBH that's it and the time I was in the basement partying and I woke up with a PICKLE in my...
And so on and so forth
It's mindless, this, and I have to escape, time now to plan it, in the meantime the comfort of the other bad habits that accompany it, Vodka, Cigarettes, I'm never sure which one is going to kill me first.
Not this year.