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traffic light by the parking lot exit she played with the dials on the console. Her car’s air conditioner hadn’t worked for over two years, but she still tampered with it every day. Finally, she gave up and pressed a cassette into the tape deck. Sure, most people had surpassed CDs and moved into the age of iPods, but Annalise liked to think of herself as vintage. Besides, she was too broke to buy a CD player for her piece-of-crap car. It was a ninety-two Chevy Beretta. The windows worked when they wanted to, the passenger door never unlocked, and her rear taillight was covered in duct tape. She secretly referred to the car as the Steaming Turd but would never say it out loud. She couldn’t afford to offend the car. She needed it to keep running for just a few more months until she finished school and got a job as a medical assistant. At that point she would have a more-dependable income and be able to finance a newer automobile.
    Her speakers moaned what at first sounded like a slow motion war call and then fell into the normal tempo of Elton John’sgreatest hits . She would have to remember to keep her cassettes under the seat on hot days so they didn’t keep melting. When the light changed to green, traffic eagerly poured onto the freeway. She made it about a quarter mile then traffic slowed to a sluggish crawl that would keep up for the next few miles of intersections every three hundred feet.
    By the third light her mood had improved substantially. She ignored the looks neighboring drivers gave her as she belted out the chorus of Tiny Dancer. There were two weeks left until graduation. She had completed her lab and now just needed to study for finals and turn in her final project. She had started E-filing her resume with local doctor’s offices. At twenty-three she was falling nicely into the second year of her five-year plan.
    Annalise hoped to get a job with her degree by the end of September. By October she hoped to turn in her waitress apron at Jimbo’s. And by May, when her lease was up, she hoped to get out of her cockroach-infested apartment complex and move to a nicer area. Sometime in the middle of all that, she would be replacing the Steaming Turd as well.
    For a Thursday night Jimbo’s was hopping. The corner sports bar was a fixture along Street Road that somehow managed to stay afloat during all the redevelopment that had taken place in the past decade. There were bigger and better bars in the area, but Jimbo’s catered to a specific clientele. The torn pleather stools of this saloon were reserved specifically for the regulars. Usually those regulars showed up wearing denim jackets and grisly, graying beards. They liked to use the F word and play darts. Jimbo’s never kept any fancy beers on tap because the regulars stuck pretty much to the same menu year-round, hardly even opting for a light beer. No, light beer was too girly. These men were men.
    Her evening usually consisted of flirting with men twice or three times her age, emptying ashtrays, refilling drink orders, and delivering plates of greasy food to booths. Once in a while a younger crowd would come in appearing lost. She preferred the older crowd. The regulars didn’t overtip, but they took care of her, where the younger patrons just stopping by were notorious for stiffing their waitress.
    As Annalise pressed through the heavy wooden door, she suffered a moment of sun blindness. Her eyes adjusted as her flesh cooled, welcoming the tobacco-scented air conditioning. Stashing her bag under the bar, she said a quick hey to Kyle and ran to the bathroom to change into her shorts and tie her apron.
    By six o’clock the kitchen was bustling and she had nine tables. She navigated her way through the bar in a way that weaved her in and out of crowds so she could check on all her customers. After the dinner rush passed, the pool tables and dartboards occupied the patrons. ZZ Top played from the jukebox, and a low roar of chatter filtered through