“Can not smoke here”. He was my boss.
“Nobody comes back here, man, except you, and you only come back here to see if I’m smoking.” I took a load of dishes out of the machine, put it on the rack, and loaded another. “If you stop coming here to check on me and assume everything is fine, we can both be happy.” Look, the bus guys slide their buckets of dirty dishes through a hole in the wall with a shelf through it, handing the buckets to me. I slide the empty tubs into another slot and the racks of clean dishes into a third. No one but me ever had to come back here, and I tended to think of the space as mine.
“It’s a health code violation. You have to go out on your break.” He just stood there with his hands on his hips waiting for me to turn it off. He took another drag before tossing it to the ground. No need to step on it, the ground was soaked.
“Okay,” he said triumphantly, “if I catch you smoking again, you’re fired.”
“Which.” I said, but the water drowned out the sound as I started rinsing more dirty dishes.
As soon as it came out, I read another cigarette.
Of course, I was fired before my shift was over that same night. I didn’t care that much. It had been three weeks, the longest he had held a job in at least a year. Anyway, I didn’t care much except for the food. I had always managed to eat two large meals during my shifts, taking care of myself during the day. As you can imagine, I didn’t make a lot of money in a job like that, and what little I had left over after the bills I saved mostly for when I was looking for another job or spent on booze, so free. Meals were a big plus. Of course I was stealing them, and if they had caught me they would have fired me, but I guess I didn’t care too much about that.
Actually, I stole a lot from that place. Plates, cutlery, glasses, napkins, just about everything that wasn’t nailed down. I didn’t care too much; they also had shitty, low-paying jobs in jail. The food wasn’t that great and I couldn’t smoke or drink so I tried to avoid it if I could. Really, I think, if they let me smoke and drink in prison, I wouldn’t mind so much. You know, go for a score and if I get it, I’m good to go, and if I don’t get it, I get a year or two off. It is not a big thing. When I get out, my parole officer assigns me another crappy job and I can start over. Just take care of my sweet virgin ass for a while.
Anyway, I was out on the street later that night, walking around with some money in my pocket since the boss had paid me what he still owed me in cash because he was afraid he would come back and steal everything. Maybe he wasn’t so stupid after all.
It was too late at night for the bus. Normally I didn’t mind walking, but my left boot had a torn sole and my sock was soaked from washing all those dishes. The wet foot wasn’t too bad, really, but he hated the squeaky, squishing sound it made when he walked. Oh well, the old gooey sock.
People could also hear me coming. I felt like a cow with a bell. Maybe I could get that pretty girl across the street to milk me.
I laughed out loud at this as I walked by. Everyone probably thought he was crazy. I probably looked homeless too, so it wasn’t that much of a stretch.