I’m thinking about ordering myself a second Grand Slam as she launches into another long rant about her mom. I mean, what the hell, why not? If this is the way she’s gonna play it, promise me anything off the menu and then practically hold me captive at the Denny’s for the better part of an evening, then I should at least get something out of the deal. Slams’re on sale, anyway, not like she’s gonna be out a bundle because of it. Not at all. I put my hand up in the air for the waitress while holding eye contact. I mean, I’d like to look away, check out the whole staff because the girls in here are pretty cute—that one with the hair dyed candy-apple red especially—but I’d better not because she’d notice a thing like that, this gal would, notice it right off and probably say something about it. And not just something, either, but a twenty-minute riff on me and guys in general and us being like animals in the field and never opening up or being worth her time and some big essay on the current state of mankind, and so I figure, Fuck that, I’ll just signal with a finger and keep listening to this fat sow go on about her mom’s failing eyesight and the like. I’m so close to grabbing the syrup container or the bottle of ketchup there and just going to town on her fucking skull that I don’t know what, but I’m trying my best to keep it together. I don’t honestly think a court in this great country of ours would convict me, but you can’t just go around whacking the shit out of people. That’s what my mom used to say, anyhow, and I’m doing what I can to live by it. It’s fucking hard, though, lemme tell you. Right now, especially.