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them before. This is
in keeping with the Respect Hierarchy of Names, which naturally progresses from
the reverential first-name-last-name-plus-
bonus-points-initial (John F.
Kennedy, F. Scott
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    Fitzgerald, Edward R. Murrow) all the way down
to the bottom of the ladder, the hazy description (That Guy from Safeway,
What's-His-Name). One step below that are the folks so little deserving of
respect you pretend their existence is forgettable. This is Bill and
Marty.
    Bill wears a camouflage baseball hat, which
might tell you all you need to know. Marty has a mustache, though no one has a
mustache anymore. Nick gives a little wave and smile that means I know you,
sure, but don't sit here. But Bill and Marty don't get the finer points of
social etiquette, because they head right on over to sit at Nick's table. Nick
isn't dressed that differently from them-- jeans and a short-sleeve chambray
shirt, but it's like a couple of Coors cans have just been set on the table with
a martini.
    "Hey, Killer," Bill says.
    Nick grimace-smiles. "It gets funnier every
time you say it," Nick says. "Ha, ha, ha."
    "I hope they've got corned beef hash," Marty
says. He takes his napkin and wipes his mouth, as if there's some layer of slime
there even he can't stand.
    "Excuse me," Nick says. "I was just heading
out."
    Nick rises and walks to the register to pay,
takes his wallet from his back pocket. He still wears his grimace-smile. "Should
I spit in their coffee?" I whisper.
    "Arsenic's better."
    I give Nick some thin mints wrapped in green
foil. Nick's face just makes you want to give him something. This is the
kind of shit he takes from these guys day in and day out. I'd love to tell them
off myself, but Jane says they're our customers. This means that we may
secretly hate them but still have to smile and take their money.
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    "See ya, Killer," Bill says one more time and
waves.
    "Ooh, boy, you got me again!" Nick says. He
pushes open the door and goes through it, his back looking sadder than I've ever
seen a back look.
    I give the idiot bookends their menus, but
luckily Zach (who works the afternoon shift) arrives, so I don't have to serve
them. Instead, I untie my apron and lift it over my head and grab my backpack
from the back. I cut a piece of apple pie with crumble top and wrap it up in
foil for Mom, say good-bye to the Irregulars.
    Trevor isn't there yet, but I see Jane and Nick
talking at the curb. Jack stands politely, alert as a secret service agent, his
eyes surveying the territory for any criminal cat, squirrel, or bird activity.
Suddenly, though, I can't believe my eyes when I look down at Jane's hand. I
feel a rising wave of anger. Now, I'm not what anyone would call
conservative--people at my school probably called me anything but that. I think
they thought I was weird, but I noticed that every time I changed my hair, a
bunch of girls would come the very next week with an attempted version of it
until I changed again. I didn't really care, which is exactly what my friend
Melanie said people loved and hated about me.
    But I'm straight about one thing, and that's
smoking and drugs, and I'm not sure why I'm so crazy about it except that drugs
fucked up Trevor's life for a while and cigarettes are just nasty. We had this
police officer come to our class in the fifth grade, and she brought us glass
jars filled with a healthy person's lung tissue (aside from the fact that the
lung tissue was minus a body, which is not generally a healthy thing) and a
smoker's lung tissue. The former was pink and spongy-looking and cheery, and the
latter was this desperate, dingy shade of gray that made you
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    think of motel rooms where crimes had been
committed. You saw this sad lung as a hopeful straight-A student who'd somehow
tragically descended into a life of heroin and prostitution and had died with a
needle in her arm. That's how gray and wretched it looked. I never forgot it,
and it frankly just