Things I wish they told me after graduation

Sometimes, life moves at a crawl, and sometimes it moves really quickly. For the last few weeks, it has moved quickly.

For the last few years, my defining struggle has been to find my first full time job. 40 hours. Big paychecks. Rent due. Grocery shopping. Health insurance. It was the big hurdle, which when cleared would finally let me see some purpose, some direction, with clarity.

In the last few months, I came to appreciate that time. In the years after college, I obsessed over getting health insurance and income, seeking the definition and direction in a career. Life crawled.

But simultaneously, I lived a few pretty incredible memories. I spent a summer working in Orlando and got my work into a nationally-distributed publication. Later, I would see my name in a magazine on the rack in a bookstore in Grand Rapids. I went to Africa, slept in a tent with shreds of nylon between me and some hungry, loud hyenas. I climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. I learned phrases in Swahili, fought a wildfire, showed films to burgeoning crowds in the waning daylight before the skies glittered impossibly with the Milky Way. I saw that life in ministry, though unspeakably difficult, was full of joy, meaning, purpose. I came home, got really good at delivering pizzas, answered the call to go back to summer camp and be the old guy on staff. And I loved it.

I didn't notice this at the time, but: I lived. While I was waiting for a career, I found ways to fill the cracks in my life, and they became life, became memories. I wouldn't trade them for a cubicle.

But life sped up. A few weeks ago, I got a call for a job. Come down for an interview, they said. I did. And suddenly, a job offer. I took it. Years of struggle, at times painful and exhausting, shaking my fist at a God whose patience dwarfed my own, met with solution.

I liked wondering, waiting. I became accustomed to it; it became a familiar, comfortable foe. And now it's... gone. I miss it.

Can you tell that I'm sliding into cubicle life with a touch of restlessness? If this is the thing you're looking forward to, for meaning, for life, I can tell you that this is not where you will find it.

Lest you worry that I'm miserable, be assured, I am not: Restlessness is not misery. The last few years of my life, I was restless at times, but I was never miserable. I am not worried about where I am. Man has had to till the fields since the first guy screwed it all up for us and I'm eager to put in my work. And to be honest, today was only day one and it was good. This will be a good place to work and I'll probably enjoy it.

If finding a career, or a beginning to one, was a hurdle, I've cleared it. But there are a bunch more hurdles. There's a lot to figure out about where to go from here. That familiar, comfortable foe isn't totally gone.



(In the meantime, I'll just bang on me drum)

Game 163

I can’t fault anyone for not caring about baseball. It probably has the least action of any team sport, especially out of the ones that are nationally televised. No other sport has stretches barren of action like baseball. Ground out. Fly ball. Foul. Foul. Foul. Foul. Pickoff move. Pickoff move. Pickoff move. Foul. This is not the hard-hitting, breakaway touchdown-running game of football. It’s not the fast-paced head-to-head contest of basketball, hockey, or soccer. It’s a bunch of guys who spend the majority of three hours standing in the grass between opportunities to wave a piece of wood at a little piece of hurtling cowhide.

To be sure, my attachment to baseball is purely sentimental. I couldn’t pick this game up now. But I’ve been with it for years. I fell asleep to Ernie Harwell’s voice as he called games when I was a kid. All I knew was that the Tigers were the good guys, and if they won, I won. I didn’t know anything about pennant races or playoff rotations or magic numbers then. They were awful for years, but loyal fans stayed with them, assured that winning seasons would return, and they did. So I’ve got emotional stake in them, my team.

Today, I consider myself as big a baseball fan as I have ever been. Never have I cared, thought, or known more about baseball than now. Last week I went to a game when the Tigers had a chance to clinch the division, to ensure a playoff spot, and I literally dreamt of baseball the night before.

Tonight is their biggest game of the season. And unfortunately, it’s drenched in disappointment. If I would have written about the Tigers last week when I wanted to, this blog would have been a lot different. But much has changed since they were up three games with four to play. The reality is: they shouldn’t have had to play today. They shouldn't have needed game #163. They should have clinched long ago. You can count on one hand the teams that have dropped a seven game lead in the last month of the season, and none has ever blown a three game lead with four to play. No team has ever failed to make the playoffs leading their division since May 10.

Tonight, they have to win to get in, and they have to do it at the Metrodome, potentially the last Major League Baseball game ever to be played there. And they’ll have to play with the off-field drama of Miguel Cabrera, the MVP candidate who went drinking with the opposing team over the weekend, during the most important series of the season. Not only did he go drinking, he went heavy-drinking. Like, blow a .26 on the breathalyzer heavy drinking. (If I remember my Responsible Decisions classes from middle school, that means something like 26 beers.) He went home and got into a fight with his wife. She called the cops, and the general manager had to pick him up at the police station in the morning. That night, with scratches on his face from his scuffle, presumably still drunk or hungover, he went 0-for-4, just like he did the day before, and the next day he went 0-for-3, effectively ending any MVP talk. He’ll play tonight, and he’ll get booed. He’d get booed at home, too. I’d boo him. I don’t know why he even played on Saturday. He should have been benched. Hungover, scratched – the guy shouldn’t have been batting cleanup.

But all of that aside, they still have to play the game. They’ve still got a chance. And I’m still going to watch, because it’s my team. While they were fading away over the weekend, epic-failing to end the season, Tigers fans everywhere gave up on them, groaning, mourning the end of a season filled with, apparently, false hopes. But if they win tonight, it’s all forgotten, the season will be a near-miss but a success nonetheless.

I don’t know what’s going to happen, but if they can win, there’s a great story in there. If Rick Porcello, the 20 year old rookie, can win the most crucial game of the MLB season so far – not just for the Tigers, but for any team – it all wraps up nicely. The Rookie comes through, the story continues, and that knucklehead Cabrera gets off the hook for nearly killing our season. We’ll begin to think about the Yankees, who clinched weeks ago and haven’t really played a meaningful game since. We’ll talk up our pitching staff, we’ll look ahead to the ALCS, the World Series, and we’ll dread a rematch with the Cardinals.

So, the game starts in less than an hour. Maybe you’ll be into it, maybe not. I assume that by the time you read this, it will be long over and we’ll be looking at the Yankees or we’ll be looking at firing and trading a few select staff and players.

UP

While you were all busy trading in your 1989 Geo Prizms (with the rebuilt motor, and the scraping brakes, and the rusty wheel-wells, and the dashboard that gets the awful convulsing seizure every time you drive faster than 55 mph) for a suspiciously large government subsidy to buy a car that, let’s face it, you really can’t afford because your college loan payments are due and you couldn’t get the hardship deferment, which you wouldn’t need if you’d forego a latte here and there, that –

Anyway, while you were all recklessly buying cars thanks to Cash for Clunkers, I took off for the U.P.

I flew solo. Not my first choice, mind you, but my potential fellow journeymen backed out (disclaimer: They did it for legitimate and understandable reasons). So I could have stayed home and watched TV and sat around and sneezed because of the cat, or I could have gone out to see a small woodsy part of the world. Naturally, I opted anti-cat, pro-road-trip. So last week Thursday, I left.

My only locked-in plans: a reserved campsite for Saturday and Sunday night at the Porcupine Mountains in far west of the U.P. Other than that, I had only my slightest whims to obey. Of course, I had plans in the back of my mind.

Pictured Rocks. Never seen ’em, that I can recall. The Porkies, of course. And, probably, I thought, a ride back through Minnesota. I had at that point only been to 28 states, and Minnesota was not among them. Social rounds in Chicago. Then home.

A while ago, I learned that driving alone was actually kind of fun. There’s nobody to dispute musical choices. Or routes. Or pit stops. Or anything else. Nobody to grip the door handles nervously when you narrowly miss an exit. You have complete control over the radio and the route. But no one to banter with.

No one to chip in for gas money.

Okay, flying solo isn’t ideal. I never said it was. I only said it was kinda fun. Five days on the road/in the wilderness all by yourself can stretch you. You’re the crazy guy in camp, the one the other campers wonder why he’s out here all alone, the one roasting hot dogs each night, the one trying desperately to dry his boxer shorts on the picnic table before the sun sets (they didn’t.) You’re the one who, when the sun goes down and you hear funny noises outside the tent, there’s no one else to shove awake for fight-off-the-bears-with-a-hatchet-duty.

And the UP does have bears. I just didn’t see them with my own eyes. When I got to the Porcupine Mountains, I asked the mustachioed guy at the ranger station a question. I phrased it this way:

“Okay, naïve city-boy question… Are there bears around here?”
“Ha! Well, what do you want the answer to be?”
“Well… I kinda want to see a bear. Just not at 2 am.”

He told me they hadn’t seen a bear in this campground for a while, but there were plenty in the park. And I might hear some wolves at night.

Bears are bad enough, but…Wolves? That’s not how I want to go. If I’m going to get eaten, I want to be enjoyed by one single animal, not ripped to shreds and evenly distributed by a pack of wolves. I’ve heard they’re sloppy eaters. They’d leave my various pieces strewn about the park. Perfectly tasty pieces of Jim, left for the lowly turkey vultures, then ants, and finally fungi to finish off. No, I deserve to go in one whole delicious piece.

Well, my food supply was pretty sparse. And I kept it in my car anyway. And besides, I heard the hyenas outside my tent in Tanzania and they didn’t eat me. Maybe I’m just not appetizing to wild animals. Moral of the story: I did not get eaten by wolves or bears. God must need me around for something else.

I have this one other fear when I travel: Leaving stuff behind.

In my head, I’m leaving something behind unknowingly everywhere I go. At first, it’s a few candy wrappers. Then, a few miles down the road, it’s actual food. Then money. Then camping equipment. And clothes. And finally, essential car parts. I picture myself driving down the road, items of increasing importance hemorrhaging from the automobile, leaving a trail like Hansel and Gretel so when my parents get worried in a few weeks and need to find where the wolves left my body parts, they need only to follow the trail of junk. I lose things until I finally arrive in my driveway in my underpants and hiking boots, steering wheel in hand, running along inside a frame Fred Flintstone-style.

Of course, I don’t really leave anything behind. I just worry incessantly about it. It drives me nuts. But that’s part of the beauty of car-camping. You can just cram everything into your car, and if you don’t see anything on the ground of the campsite, you can safely assume it’s all stowed somewhere among the pile of indiscernible stuff in your back seat. To the best of my knowledge, I didn’t leave anything important behind. I just felt sick each time I left a campsite.

I went to Minnesota. Have you been to Duluth? This guy has. Nice area. The downtown is unique, a strip of buildings, shops, and ports narrowly spread near the shore of Lake Superior. I didn’t stay there long. I went on toward Minneapolis, also a cool city. But I rode the light rail. Paid for my ticket, and apparently there’s nowhere for them to check it. Everybody just kinda gets on and off, like an old trolley. Honor system, I guess. I went to a Twins/Orioles game at the Metrodome. My first indoor baseball game, and one of the last in Minneapolis because they’re moving to Target Field next summer. It’s my hope they won’t need the Metrodome in November, as the Tigers should be in the playoffs. But that’s all beside the point.

From Minneapolis, I rolled through Madison, Wisconsin to see Mark, then to Chicago to hang out with Kyle and Linda. I came home Wednesday afternoon and promptly collapsed on the couch in the basement. I just don’t get enough sleep when I’m in a tent, fearing for my life, gripping a hatchet inside my sleeping bag so the bears don’t get me.

Would I do it again? I probably would. About half-way through the trip, I realized that the scale of this adventure was considerably small, and it was more of a practice for a bigger adventure someday. We’ll see what that ends up being. And next time, I probably won’t fly solo. Though it’s worth it, the experiences are all a little better when there’s someone to share them with, even if they’re going to protest your musical choices, veto the random roadside memorial visits, and grip the handle nervously when you narrowly make your exit.

Pictures:

Pictured Rocks - Like the Smokies, but next to a ginormous lake

Dear self,

No time for witty banter on the blog today. Let the pictures do the talking.

sincerely,

self

Jim is back.

I know what you’re thinking.

You’re thinking “Jim hasn’t updated his blog in months. Months, I tells ya. What happened to him? Did he quit writing? Did he abandon this blog and start another one without telling us? Is he avoiding me? Why hasn’t he told me anything about camp yet?”

Well. I have answers.

You see, when I moved up to camp May 15, I stayed pretty busy. Soon, a month had gone by before I had a chance to even think about writing any kind of delightfully informative blog entry. And I got to thinking, I can’t really do justice for this much of the summer with one hastily written blog entry. And then I thought, maybe I just need to take a break from the blog and any kind of creative writing anyway. And I decided to take the rest of the summer off from this blog. And not tell you. Specifically you. It’s not because the blogging would have been stale, but on the contrary: I think it would have been mind-blowing. You’d have been rapt, knuckles white around the mouse, scrolling desperately to the end of the page while you inched toward the edge of your office-chair and/or folding chair and/or couch cushions. You’d have reached the end, found some brilliant epiphany, and never have been the same. Still, regardless of your need for depth and discovery, I decided a few months of mental rest would do my written acuities some good. Recharge time, if you will.

But now I am home from camp.

And I am back.

For two weeks.

Sort of.

September 1, I’ll be going back to volunteer for that month, and maybe a little bit longer if they can keep me busy. But I think I’ll blog then. My three month break is over. And the Tigers are still in first place. And I haven’t broken any bones. And gas is cheap. And the interwebs are still functioning. Ergo, I’m here to blog. Maybe summarize – nay, shed the tiniest bit of light on – the summer.

I don’t know where I’ll be going from here. Both in the blog and in real life. I want to take a road trip. I was thinking about going to the UP. But I’ll probably have to fly solo up there.

Fender-bender

Not long after I got my new wheels, I joked to my brother that I needed to christen them with a fender-bender. I don't know why I made this joke, because it wasn't all that funny.

And it was a joke.

But now it's not.

Tonight, on my way to work, I took a classic spare-myself-a-wait-at-the-light-and-get-to-work-on-time maneuver, turning right and making the so-called Michigan left to avoid the stop-light left. It went smoothly. Except. Except: after I completed it, I had to wait at the stop light. It turned green, and people started to go. So I looked down at my iPod, presumably to find Kenny Loggins or Elvis Costello or some other such artist too old for my own good. And once I looked up again, there was a rusty old pickup much closer than I had remembered, much more stationary than I had remembered. I slammed the brakes too late, christened the new Honda, and muttered a few choice words.

I haven't been in many accidents. Actually, I've never been at the wheel for a significant bumper-thumper. So, I told myself there probably wasn't much damage, even though I knew our collision was sound. I got out, checked everything over - I'd show you a picture if I had taken one - and saw the great big scrape on top of my bumper, and a big dent in the grill. Thankfully, the Honda H was in pristine condition - how else do you know it's a Honda? The other driver got out and looked it over. He seemed unmoved by it all. No damage at all to his pickup. He handed over his information and I wrote it down nervously.

He seemed cool, collected. But if life is anything like the movies - and I have no reason to believe it isn't, because the cinema is the fount from which I tap my whole reality - then this guy was probably on his way to a diamond heist. I bet that when I bumped him, he assumed I was from a rival faction, attempting to keep him from getting to the big exchange. He probably took a pistol from under his seat, loaded it, screwed on a silencer, and tucked it into the back of his slacks. He wouldn't have hesitated to take me out, get back into his truck, and get back on his way to a private jet to Liberia where there would have been a few a few shady characters in a limo with suitcases full of Benjamins and Euros, and the guy's girlfriend, taken hostage and tied up on the floor. This was never about the diamonds, it was about getting his woman back. He got sucked away from his career as a semi-professional softball player and into a complicated web of lies, deceit, and pretty diamonds. He would have handed over the diamonds and waited for them to unshackle her - did I mention she's shackled? - and when they finally unlocked her handcuffs, she PULLED A GUN ON HIM. SHE WAS IN ON IT THE WHOLE TIME, AND SHE NEVER LOVED HIM. But I digress.

The important thing is that he wasn't mad, and we didn't have a beef. There was no damage to his truck. And I'm not surprised, because it was made of metal and my car is made of, like, old laundry basket plastic. It folded right up.

Anyway. I got his info, let him leave, and filed a police report and a claim with my insurance. It was all my fault. So now Kenny Loggins has cost me, I can only assume, at least my $500 deductible.

I spent the rest of the night wondering why I didn't just do something differently to avoid the accident. If I had just waited at the light or gone straight or been five minutes faster or slower or left the iPod at home... But then I thought, How many times have I done it right and not realized it? The six years I had my car, not once did I have so much as a bump, or a scrape, or a busted mirror. You never know when or how often you've escaped danger or humiliation. How many times have I taken the right way and, say, serendipitously avoided mowing down a troupe of girl scouts helping elderly folks cross the street? Then I would certainly have spent the rest of my life in jail with that hanging over my head. But no... I just got into a fender-bender. And it's just kind of expensive. I'm going to drain my checking account, but if that's the worst thing that happens, I think I'll be alright.

By the way, I would name the movie something with a diamond pun. And it would star Nicholas Cage.

Tornado

I'm sitting here watching PBS after midnight. They're showing a BBC documentary about Tornadoes.

I have always, always, always wanted to see a tornado. I have a suspiciously large number of dreams about them, and in each one, I decide that I'm actually finally seeing a tornado in real life and I'm not dreaming anymore. And I always stand outside and gawk and marvel at their hugeness, soak up their sheer destructive power. And then I wake up and awkwardly realize that I still haven't seen a tornado in real life.

Whenever we get a really violent storm and I get the chance to watch it, I scan the sky in morbid curiosity, hoping to catch a glimpse of a funnel cloud forming. They never do. They're rare in Michigan, where our weather is buffeted by Lake Michigan.

My dad has seen them, I think. I've asked him before. He grew up in Iowa. I'm not sure he ever wants to see another one. Iowa is in the tornado alley where, I learned via PBS - and stowed away somewhere in the section of my brain allotted to fifth grade science class - warm winds from the south rise up over cold winds from the north, drifting up into the jet stream where they begin to rotate. The supercells spin and funnel downward toward the ground, and berth the twisters, and throw train cars around like toys and destroy trailer parks. It's a classic joke to make fun of the people who get on the news and stand in front of where their trailer used to be.

This documentary is showing the destruction. You always see it on the news in the spring when a particularly bad one levels a neighborhood somewhere in Kansas. A particularly bad storm occurred in Oklahoma in 1999, and they showed a lingering shot of block after block after block of skeletal remains of houses, acres and acres of garbage and debris and walls and bricks and sinks and typewriters, and trucks where living rooms used to be. A team of storm chasers from England arrive late. They miss the spectacle, and see only the aftermath of entire neighborhoods and towns left completely destroyed. They leave feeling a little... depressed.

And I think... I don't really want to see a tornado all that badly.

The first days of the Honda Civic

A few weeks ago, sensing the beginning of the end of the Escort, I began to look for a new car. I didn't find anything.

Bethany did.

About five minutes after I told her I was looking, she pointed me to an ad on Craigslist for a Honda Civic. I looked up a few reviews, did a little research. People say Honda Civics run forever. I saw a story about one that made it to 900,000 miles. A friend told me yesterday he knew someone that just bought one with 400,000 miles on it. A guy at work bought one from 1997, and said you can expect them to reach 300,000. So since this one was almost in my price range, I emailed the owner and asked to check it out.

I went out to her house a few days ago and took the car for a test drive out on the freeway. It handled well, had a sunroof and A/C and cruise control and a CD player, veritable luxuries in my book, but I didn't necessarily feel love at first sight. I didn't know for sure. I thought... I want it, but I haven't driven anything else.

But another couple was driving down from Mount Pleasant that night to check it out, so I had to make a decision. I asked my brother if I should pull the trigger and he told me to go for it if it seemed right.

After I test drove it, I stopped and applied for a loan. When they called and told me I was approved, I called the owner and told her I wanted her car. She was happy, and called... the others... and told them not to bother with the trip. Meanwhile, I had another friend run a Carfax report. He called me and gave it a really positive endorsement.

So... I bought the Civic.

I've been driving it for a few days, watching the miles tick up, permanently away from the 64,000 mark at which I bought it. We're getting to know each other. I still reach down for the shifter when I'm slowing down. There's nothing there... My hand doesn't know what to do while I drive. And my left foot gets bored looking for the clutch. But I'm sure they'll get over it soon. It's road-trip worthy. It's in good shape... It's nice.

It's an adjustment. With the Escort, it was paid off. It outlived my expectations. There was no pretense, no pressure for upkeep. That car was supposed to die with me. And I have to baby this one.

Picture for you:

The final days of ZX2

Thursday. I'm driving on a busy street when I begin to feel a shake from the front of my car. It feels like a flat tire. I stop to check it out. All tires are present and full of air, nothing is dragging underneath, nothing is awry under the hood. I return to the car and pray that I make it back to the store.

It does not make it back to the store.

The vibration begins immediately. In the back of my mind, I'm thinking: Is this the end? Since I'm not well-versed in vehicular snafus, I grip the steering wheel and beg the car to survive two more miles. But soon, the shaking intensifies, and quickly, and suddenly I come to a dragging, grinding, screeching halt, leaning forward and to the left. Cars lean forward and to the left when a wheel comes off.

And sure enough, I see the emancipated wheel, keeping all of its momentum upon liberation from the weighty car, rolling and bouncing across the street, through a suspiciously large gap in traffic. It jumps the curb, rolls up a driveway, and barges through some poor homeowner's screen door.

I will have to deal with that later. For now, I'm sitting in traffic, near rush hour, at a busy intersection. On three wheels. I get out, inspect the damage, and pop a squat in the grass by the street.

Huh.

I call work. I'm outta commission for... at least an hour, I say. I call dad and hurriedly, anxiously explain the scenario as best I understand it. Soon, an old friend rolls up and helps find the lug nuts. A cop pulls up behind me and we fill out an accident report. We inspect the damage at the house and retrieve the wheel. No one lives there, the cop tells me. Abandoned. Foreclosed. Thank God.

A wrecker comes, dad comes, the boss comes, and we agree that all of this came about because the lug nuts weren't tight enough after the new tires I got on Saturday. The wrecker charges $20 to put the wheel back on. The car is good enough to drive back home, so dad takes it and I finish the shift in his truck.

Saturday, I drive the car again, the wheels polished and brushed up by the tire dealer. They did their best to make things right. But by 11, a strange noise is coming from under the hood, and the bitter smell of burning rubber. My AC compressor, I later discover, is seizing up and has an appetite for serpentine belts. When I drive it home later, tense because it's loud, I hear the belt snap in the driveway, and rubber-smelling smoke pours from under the hood when I get out.

Sigh.

Sunday morning when I get up, I look for a new car.

Sunday afternoon, Dad and I replace the belt. When we go to buy a new belt, an old friend is there who offers to look at the car later in the week. It takes four hours for dad and I to replace the belt because we can't get to the darn thing and we don't have hands the size of a three-year-old girl. Another friend stops by to help us, and this is when I discover it's the AC compressor, and it's hungry for another belt, at least until it's replaced.

Monday, the old friend we saw when we were buying the belt offers to buy the car for $700. I'm not sure what I could get for a maybe-running car with some real issues, but he knows how to fix cars and I agree to the price, because it'll be in good hands. A few days later, he comes to get it, and swaps out the AC compressor with one from the junkyard. He slips on the new belt in five minutes, roughly three hours and 55 minutes faster than Dad and I did it.

I sign over the title, find the keys, and drive it to his house and say a strange, brief good-bye.

It patiently taught me to drive it's stick shift, suffered through that long drive to Florida after its air conditioning gave out, rolled over the 200,000 milestone a few weeks ago.

It's weird to get attached to something. You ascribe a personality to it. I never named it, nothing seemed right, but I did like it. When I paid it off, it was mine, and I had pride in it even though it never really fit me. Little red car, no head room... just didn't seem right for me.

But it was. Every time I drove, and that was often, it was there with me. Everywhere that I would go, the Escort would surely follow. It felt so wrong leaving it in Florida when I flew home for a week. We adapted to each other, conformed to each other. It was truly my space.

And now it's not my car anymore.

But I've got a new one.

short - really short - fiction

(Not my style I know. But I wrote it, and there's not sense in writing it unless someone reads it. So here you go... Thoughts?)

Baby Grand

She lies in bed each night and drifts into sleep, under personal symphonies from the room above. Each night, same time, when the news has finished with the important stuff and switched to sports and weather, the pianist sits down to his instrument, anchored firmly to the wooden floor, and plays dreamy melodies, unknowingly serenading the girl below, the one with the tired feet. She’s come to expect it, to miss it if it’s gone, because the tones resonate through the floorboards and down the walls, into her ears and pull her slowly from the waking day into the soft, short night. It’s a fine way to end a stressful day, full of books and classes then dishes, trays and glasses full of beer, and customers who demand more, so much more, than she can deliver. And as she drifts, she forgets them.

Tonight, it’s the woman with the Prada sunglasses who visits every Wednesday to sit silently with her husband and reveal nothing, only that she and he hardly talk, and that she lives in Cicero, and always keeps the glasses where she can see them.

And she forgets the man in the tux, with his bowtie hanging limp over his lapels, who asked for drinks she’d never heard of, and had it in for her and let her do nothing right and made her fill the break room with awkwardness when she cried to the cooks. And when he left, he signed his name on the credit slip and drew a line through the tip and went home to watch the news and practice his baby grand.