And the other Italian Waiter, the new one, wants to go for drinks, celebrate my return, a week back in hell, but even hell can become monotonous...
Drinks at an old watering hole, I owe the bartender this, she's related to the jeweler who declined all my "diamonds", they've recovered their old manager, a genius of the food and beverage industry, it's good to see him, we chat, he buys us a drink...
...then onward, gay bar, same-old, same-old, he likes it, likes how free everyone is there, I'm a bit bored...
From here, hungry, now to dinner, Chinatown, not U-And-Me this time, but the Golden Inn, classic late-night pit stop for the service industry...
It's the Mos Eisley of dining out...
Every despicable member of every notorious nationality is here. Every visible minority without declarable means of support, income, or otherwise justifiable existence have found outlet for their late night hunger...there are beautiful girls of every nationality and suspect morality, their pimps and clients, there are the innocents who've strayed after one too many (and nobody here can walk a straight line), there are the dealers and gangstas, the late-night Casanovas and their expensive prey, the too-fashionable nightclubbers, the cocaine vampires who never sleep and seldom eat, this, this is service hell...
The waiter, he doesn't take this shit, a larger Asian, he ignores the snapping fingers, gestures, he's got it down. They've their own mafia, and while it isn't as slick as John Wick be sure that if you cross them they'll fuck you up. We order, watch the show, the innocent late-night-after-the-club-drunkards, the "business people", the shitheads and dickheads and think to ourselves that we've got it easy...
We do. No kidding, we work in hell, but compared to this we're in paradise...
Dinner comes, we eat, watch, eat, pay, tip, well, we're not tipping for just ourselves, but for the probabilities of a decent tip off of all the tables surrounding us, for the assholes and whores that surround us that in all probability won't be leaving a dime, our tip, it's our apology for our tardiness, for humanity, fucking bloody hell...