The Battery-Acid Babe takes one look at the joint and knows she's in for competition. She's no young chick anymore, and these silicone girls can sling drinks like no body's business. Of course the Babe has more experience--and the tattoos to prove it. Sometimes Jimmy would give her a free tattoo if he didn't have the cash to pay her for her week's work at The Lizard, Bar and Tattoo Parlor. Her favorite has always been the intertwining flowers that ring her upper arm. But the Battery-Acid Babe knows she won't get paid in needle work if she gets the job here. This is a classy joint. They probably even have a direct deposit option. "Yeah, and the tips will keep me in tuna for months," she smiles to herself.
A guy with way too much body-hair is walking toward her and twisting a brandy snifter around in a white cloth. "You say somethin' doll?"
"Yeah, l'm here about the job."
"Sorry, we ain't hiring."
"Trish sent me. Said to ask for Kirk."
"Yeah, well, l'm Kirk and we ain't hiring." He turns his back to her and walks towards the bar, rubbing the snifter's stem now.
"Look, Trish told me you need a cocktail waitress bad 'cause one of your girls is prego and Catholic. Now, I've worked at bars all across this country and in ones a hell of a lot more swank than this joint. I have more experience and could bring you more cash flow than any plastic bimbo you have here waiting tables."
Kirk turned back towards her while she was firing her speech at him. Now he sizes her up, her muscular thighs, her taut abdomen, her low but still decent breasts. Maybe he notices the lines at the corners of her fuchsia mouth and the veins that show through the paper-skin of her neck. But she is thinking that he seems more concerned with the depth of her cleavage and that maybe she shouldn't have lied about across the country. Really, Detroit, Philly, and Colombia, South Carolina don't make for coast to coast. But there's no way she's backing down now. He's got her feathers up.
"How old are you?" he asks, apparently satisfied with her body.
"None of your damn business. How old are you? Maybe I don't want to work for someone in his heart-attack years."
"You know you've got a mouth on you to shame you mother."
"Not possible. She taught the sailors how to cuss. Plus, she's dead." She puts her hands on her hips. Babe's getting impatient. "So've I got the job or what?" She's pissed she doesn't have any gum, knowing a working jaw would calm her nerves and speed his decision.
"Well, all right. But if it don't work out, you're out the door. No two weeks. You start tomorrow. Be here at three for set-up. It's minimum and forty percent tips to the house. You bus your own station. Don't be late." Kirk watches the Babe walk out. She knows this, but it doesn't make her uncomfortable or make her worry that she should alter her stride for something more swaying. She doesn't have to. Long ago her movements became professional without her having to think about them. Better tips that way.

Ted Sugar is a lawyer and is one in all the cliched ways. He likes to fly from city to city instead of driving, says it saves his clients money since his hours don't stack up as much. Truth is, he likes the name of the small aircraft company, "Cherry Air." Some think of Ted as a drug lawyer. He's gotten a few big name dealers off. He likes to think of himself as "Teddy Bear" and "Ted Bundy" intermittently, depending on his mood. In either case, he always sees the world as his virgin.
This afternoon Ted's getting a shave. He goes into Baltimore to do this, not because the shave's all that much better than what he can get in Macnamera, which itself boasts many fine barbers, some of whom trained in New York City, but because his barber in Baltimore is the Best. Ted gets only the Best, wherever he has to go to get it. People know this about Ted Sugar, usually because he tells them. It's his business to be associated with the Best. "My Clients demand that," Ted assures any who show concern at his expense account. "I have to maintain a certain image for them."
But this afternoon Ted himself is expressing concern to his barber over his image, in spite of the forty-five dollar shave he's getting. "I gotta stop taking the drug cases, Bernie. I'm getting a reputation. And I'm getting calls from across the country from people who won't leave their names, only how to reach them. This is not a racquet I want to get tangled with, you know? They leave even fewer loose ends than I do. I don't want to be anyone's loose end."
"That's tough, Mr. Sugar. Turn." Ted turns his head so the foamy cheek is facing up. Beneath the white cloth spread over him, Ted counts on his fingers the number of years passed since he graduated from Southern Mississippi's Law School.
"Bernie, l tell you I've been in the personal injury game for seven years now. Imagine that, seven years. And p.i.'s definitely been good to me, sure, l mean, it's only March and I've already pulled sixty thou."
"You don't say."
"No joke. But I'm tired, Bernie. I'm thirty-one now and tired. Feeling like I should settle down some." Ted continues talking even though his barber is now shaving his neck. Ted knows Bernie's blade would never slip. He's the Best. "Yep, gotta get me a family. And I can't have drug lords calling me up all night long with a little tyke sleeping in nursery next door while me and the wife are getting intimate, if you hear what I'm saying."
"I hear you, Mr. Sugar; I hear you." Bernie is finishing up, patting down Ted's neck and face with a eucalyptus balm.
"Thanks, Bernie. Put me down for next Wednesday. Great talking to you. Oh, hey, how's the family?"
Bernie nods and smiles as he towels off his hands.
"Great to hear it. See you next Wednesday." Ted strides out onto the sidewalk, feeling like a new man.

It's three a.m., and Babe's on edge. As she peels off her work uniform, she curses herself for not wearing the teddy with wider straps so the left shoulder tattoo wouldn't show so much. Every time she turned her back this evening, some slobbering pig would grab at her and shout something like, "Let me feel you acid, Battery Babe!" She hates being reminded of the time Jimmy begged her into letting him tattoo his nick-name for her across the back of her shoulder. He was so plastered that night she knew his needle might shake, and she was scared. But she would've done anything Jimmy asked. He knew that and only begged her as a matter of good form. Soon, she caved, and he titled her. The swelling didn't go down for days, and few have called her Elaine since.
All in all it was a good night at Kirk's Klub. She did over two hundred in tips after the house cut. After a week-and-a-half of big nights, Kirk has finally gotten off her back. Because she knew he'd be watching her like milk about to boil, she's been wearing her best uniforms. Tonight she wore the black teddy and Iycra bikinis, fishnets, and the Italian stilettos. Those punish her feet more than her regulars, but to win Kirk's confidence, it was worth it. She realized his trust was successfully paid for when his eyes lit up at the cash register's drawer. He counted out the results of this evening. "Nice work, Babe. You really know how to keep 'em thirsty," he chuckled and patted her behind. Babe hardly minds his inappropriate advances in the workplace; she doesn't even really feel his hands on her. When she's in her uniform, she doesn't think of her body as her own. Rather, it belongs to her customers, who are allowed at it, within certain limits. When the Babe prepares for work at seven each evening, she visualizes herself pulling on a weighty latex body stocking before she puts on her uniform. Through it, the pressure or hear of no man's hand can pass. This keeps Babe focused on her work yet her tips still at a premium. It also helps her keep her temper in check.
"OK Kirk, l'm taking off. See you at six." She is sitting on a bar stool and pulling off her stilettos so she can ease her feet into her sneakers for the walk home.
"Babe, it's only three. Why don't you take a load off, have a drink. On the house." Kirk grins. He does not hide his eyes which travel the curve of her fishnetted calf and the inner arch of the foot she hasn't yet sneakered.
"Sorry, Kirk. Can't. Have to be up by seven."
"What, you got a day job?"
"Nope. I help my kid sister out with her paperwork. She's not so hot in math."
"Hey, forget about her. You work for me. You got a boyfriend?"
"Go home, Kirk. It's late. I'm tired, and I'm going home."
"Not so fast, old girl. You've got plenty of time for home. Right now you're with me." Kirk comes out from behind the bar and slips his hand to the small of her back. The Battery Acid Babe tries to stifle the shudder of disgust that threatens to travel through her body. But she cannot help but look at the plethora of chest hairs poking out the neck hole of Kirk's tee-shirt. Before he can lower his hand any further, Babe hops off the bar stool.
"Back off, Kirk. I'm married." This, technically, is a lie. But Babe figures she owes it to herself to get something useful out of her six-month marriage. In a pinch she could produce her former husband, prop Ted up under Kirk's nose and instruct Ted to pretend that the divorce hadn't happened. Of course Ted would then exact some sort of unthinkable payment for the service.
"Makes no difference to me, Babe. I wasn't planning on offering you a ring."
"Yeah, well, it does to my husband," she says as she makes for the door.
To her surprise Kirk turns his back to her and walks towards the kitchen. Even though she quickly puts distance between them, she's still close enough to Kirk to hear him mutter, "Aw, go home ya old work horse."

Jessie is wiping down the counter in front of the Blue Parrot's espresso bar, but the crumbs and coffee grounds are just making a wider and wider arc across the black counter top, pushed further out by her repetitive circular motion. Eventually she quits, leaving the rag and the crumbs behind. She thinks there might be toast burning because a customer at the bar has said he smells something funny and saw smoke coming out from under the door to the kitchen. This information makes her rumple her forehead because last week the mall's security people sent her a letter saying that if they see smoke coming form her cafe again, they will have to fine her and possibly revoke her lease agreement. Smoke does not encourage feelings of consumerism in mall patrons, they say. The toast has caught itself in the toaster several times.
"Don't you think you should hurry? Look at all that smoke." Jessie's customer seems concerned.
"That's so nice of you to think about my kitchen. It's OK. I'm sure it's just the toaster. I really have to get it fixed. The mall people are going to fine me. Things keep burning." Jessie grins and turns toward the kitchen and the smoke. Inside she sees it's not the toast that's burning but a hand towel she left too close to the stove. When she diagnoses the problem, she says, "Oh no. The towel is on fire." For several seconds the cafe's proprietor is befuddled and stands with her hands on her hips. Finally, she opens the kitchen door, sticks her head out and says, "Help please, The towel is on fire." The alarmed customer leaps off his bar stool, scurries into the kitchen, and quickly yanks the towel onto the floor and stomps on it. Jessie giggles and begins to stomp on it too, holding her waist-length hair away from her face.
Her customer is aggravated and says, "Hey! What are you laughing at? It's not funny. This could have burned the place down."
"You looked so silly, hopping up and down in my kitchen." She smiles at him.
"Yeah. Right. Well, you're lucky this didn't get out of hand."
"Don't you mean, 'out of foot?"' Jessie laughs into her hand at the little joke she made. She laughs especially loudly because she hardly ever thinks of jokes, and she's proud that she did today. Her customer leaves the kitchen and heads towards the Blue Parrot's exit, which is marked by the glass-block half-wall that's lit by a blue light Jessie had specially installed. Sometimes she sits and looks at the bent shapes of blue inside the glass.
"Wait!" she calls after him. "I'll give you some coffee."
"No thanks," he shouts without turning around.
Coffee pot in hand, Jessie stands in the middle of her cafe, her eyes squinting up into tears and her mouth curving into what, in another situation, might be mistaken for a smile. She has done it again. She's scared away another man. And this was handsome, too. Oh, she'll never get married. "I'll never get married!" she cries to the ceiling and sobs.

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