"Good" sleep. More than four hours.
A kid comes up to the bar and asks for some Jack. I call his mother and ask, because it was after midnight, to please collect her child. He apologizes and blames the noise, the door knocks, on "the black kids." He doesn't mean to be racist, he says. He cannot be older than twelve. His parents are wasted, watching basketball.
I am lucky.
The black kids aren't doing anything except updating Facebook statuses on lobby computers. The girls have won a state sporting tournament. Pizza and ginger ale to celebrate. I go to clean it up and they rush over, explain they will take care of it. Real sportsmanship off the court. Some of them will no doubt win scholarships out of small Ohio towns because of their performance tonight, to say nothing of grades. Textbooks on the tables. Some ask for Red Bull.
I have jobs.
The brief lull between late night and breakfast. I vomit into a trashcan. Again. My eyes water and blur. Possibly a gall bladder attack, although I do not have one anymore.
"Oh, you studied history?" Big Cable VP asks. "That's your problem right there." I make him another vodka tonic and he lectures me.
"My two Master's degrees didn't get me anything," declares Cop. His salary is public. He makes 70k a year, and in his primarily white, tiny, affluent township, does very little to earn it.
I can call, I guess. But I know how this ends. Vial after vial of blood drawn with no results. Beginning to reverse words in sentences. Memory problems. Headaches that never truly go away. No sleep. Feet that I'm sure are no longer part of my body, separate from me and unsteady. And worse, no energy to apply for work to end the cycle.
A man tells me to smile. I have been smiling, did smile at him. It was not big enough.
I am grateful to work.
A storm is passing overhead now. My stomach is at war again and by the end of this shift there will be another trashcan full of untouched meal and alien bile turned foam.