I walked out onto the street with my fists clenched.

‘Hey,’ I heard, and turned. It was the waitress who had been polishing the coffee urn, bottle-blonde with a liberal number of buttons left open on her shirt.

‘My cousin’s the bartender at a restaurant on G Street Northwest. The Olmstead Grill. Tell him Susie sent you. Better tips at that kinda place anyway. You’d be wasting your talent here.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, and she shrugged, returning inside and bumping the door shut behind her with her hip.

Susie was right about the Olmstead Grill. It was one of those low-lit places with soft music always playing and banquette seating, plush. Tables of dark polished wood, a menu stitched into a leather-bound book, a dessert cart. A bar with rows of coloured bottles sitting in front of a mirrored wall, a glass chandelier, a marble surface grooved from wear. I asked to speak to the bartender, and while I didn’t hide my accent I tried to say the r. Bartender. Not bartendah. A small man with a moustache came out from behind the bar, and straightaway I said that Susie had sent me.

‘How is that girl? I tell her to come work here instead of that piece-of-crap diner, but she’s got kids, don’t want to work nights. What about you? Can you work nights? What’s your story?’

I didn’t mean to tell him, but—whether it was the way he’d asked, or maybe the friendliness, the first flicker of it I’d seen—before I knew it I’d told him about Roy, about Roanoke, about things not working out. About how I was staying in a hotel for now, running out of money quick. About how I had decided just the other day that I would stay. I wasn’t going back.

‘I can work any hours you like, and I’m reliable.’

‘Alright, alright. Susie knows I’m a bleedin’ heart. Tell you what, we’ll give you a week. Doesn’t work out you’re on your way.’