Twenty

After thirty years with the company, they told me attrition and these hard times had forced them to make tragic but necessary cuts.

I was the only one from my department they fired.

For the next two weeks I lived on nothing but a diet of alcohol and grief.

But a different hunger brought me here. No one talked to me in the bars, where the bright lights make it obvious I reek of cowardice and discontent.

Here, the others are too busy staring at the women on the stage. I ignore the others as well. I wait until the girls walk by and then I look at my face, reflected on the grease that pools around their breasts. Some of them talk back; others just run their fingers down the swellings of my spine.

I ask the prettiest one how much for ten minutes in the curtained room. Her dark hair flows in ribbons from the edges of a tilted trucker’s hat. Her body radiates softness.

She tells me it’s forty-five.

I reply that last night it was twenty.

She winks, unsympathetic, and tells me tonight is a special night. I only have twenty left.

I don’t watch her leave. I tell myself that tomorrow I’ll buy food and eat a real meal.

But should I have pasta, or celery, or carrot cake? Or pickled strawberries and pumpernickel jam?

I buy two more shots to help me decide.