Shift Change

By Deborah Stoll

A large woman in a muumuu catches the evil eye for not tipping. An Asian girl looking out of place plays songs nervously on the jukebox. Old men sit next to each other without speaking and I sit at the end of the bar alone as always, drinking my Maker’s and trying not to stare at the bartender. She looks tired. Maybe it’s from all the shots she’s done with me or maybe it’s from something else. Everyone except me seems to have a reason to be tired, like they work a lot, or have kids, or have a job they can’t stand so that they can do the stuff they really aspire to. I wish I aspired to something. I try to remember if I ever did, but I can’t remember wanting to do anything except drink. Settlement or not, I’d probably be sitting on this same barstool in this same bar, in the same hazy light of day, drunk.

The bartender bends down to wash the glasses and her breasts sway from side to side like pom-poms…

This is an excerpt of an article originally published in Slake No. 1. To read the entire story, purchase or subscribe at shop.slake.la.