You waitress nine friggin years, you lose the desire to please. The new kid starts and I'm talking, I say I hate people, and he looks at me, wide-eyed innocence, says, You hate people? I think, Give it time. My boss tells me to smile more, I tell him it's extra. He's on another waitress's ass about her clothes, sends her home to change into something "more respectable" and she comes back! Maybe her clothes are ironed, whatever, any respect I had for her is gone. I tell my boss he's an ass.

He looks unhappy, maybe I could start making extravagant promises, like, I'll start saying the specials or I'll pretend I want to be here, I can't. Still, I've never been fired, and like I said, it's been nine (friggin) years. I've lasted three times longer than my guinea pig, twice as long as Marilyn Monroe's marriages to Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller put together, the money I've made I could've bought JFK's golf clubs at the New York Historical Society.

I know he's anglin on how to get me out and momentarily I'm actually trying to figure how to hang on, except it backfires when he tells me that last time, Smile, and I say, Lick me, and the schedule doesn't go up straightaway, I figure, Day off. The phone call comes, it's never said out loud (kind of like how my mother whispers 'mafia'), he just says, You know. I say, I know.