Everything felt off, and Sherri’s nose was out of joint as she began her Thursday-night shift. A week earlier she’d suffered a bruised rib at a charity basketball tournament for the Boys Club in Waupaca, when the Bunnies played against the volunteer police department. An officer who must have weighed three hundred pounds fell on her. Everyone thought it was hilarious. She winced when she zipped her costume, and she had to suck in her breath every time she had to lift her tray or dip to deliver a drink.

Beyond the big windows in the Cabaret a big thunderstorm inched closer on the horizon. The trees swayed in unison, and the golf carts zoomed back to the clubhouse fairway, small as Matchbox toys. Sherri spied Danny with a big bag over one shoulder, his blond hair almost as white as his golf shirt and standing straight up off his head. Off to the side the surface of the pool was rough. Only a few brave souls swam laps. The light was slant and hazy. It was just after six o’clock and already it was getting dark, a darkness that seemed to press against the windows and make Sherri’s life feel small in a place where she’d expected it to be large.

Carmen and Sherri were rolling silverware into napkins. “Gloria only gave me seven lousy shifts this whole week. How many are you working?”

“Five,” Sherri said. “And she took me off the schedule for tomorrow.”

“What’d you do to piss her off this time?”

“I breathed.”

Carmen spoke in a quiet voice. “Have you noticed she seems different, like she doesn’t care as much lately? She didn’t even weigh me in today.”

“Probably because it’s all old people coming to the Don Ho show tonight. Who wants to listen to a guy in a Hawaiian shirt playing the ukulele? We could look like pack mules and they wouldn’t care.”

“The cane-and-crutch crowd can’t even see us. Do you see how they have to hold the candles to their menus? And they always complain it’s too loud. I have to repeat the specials over and over and over.” Carmen pretended to stab herself in the chest with a butter knife and dumped another tray of silverware on the table, where it landed with a clattering thunk. “Tina was here looking for you.”

“Tina?”

“Yeah, before you got here. She wanted to say goodbye. She called off her engagement, can you believe it?”

“She did? What about her grandfather?”

“I don’t know. I guess she told him to go to hell. She and Bunny Starr are headed to LA to work at the club there. Tina is next-level pretty. I’ll bet she’ll make mountains of money. Sounds way better than getting married and joining the Junior League.”