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Do you have a second job?

No, no, not right now. I'm part time here but I like it, I tell her.

You should totally get into serving. You're so good with people, she says.

I have been thinking about bartending, I confess. A half-truth. I bite down on nothing, and run my tongue along the seam that my teeth make.

God yes, like, you'd do so good at a bar, she says.

Something in Chinatown, those speakeasies, y'know. You have the look, she tilts her head at me — an almost imperceptible movement. Her eyebrows knot up like she's trying to conceptualize something.

I don't know what to do, so I smile and go shy and say thank you. I scan the rest of her shorts through, and stare hard at the blue-white screen on my till. In the last four years, I've gotten really good at pretending to be enamoured by neatly folded clothes and very crisp paper bags.

We should do something, the three of us. Hang out some-time, I say, earnest.

When we were kids, I'd sit at her table and eat her mom's breakfast. I'd watch her cat climb on her shoulders, push my glasses up my nose, and try to make her laugh so she would like me. This feels easy, what it is now — asking for something, I mean. It makes me wonder how much in my life could have happened if I had just woken up one day and decided that I wanted it.

That would be so nice. You know, we've all changed so much. It would just be nice to catch up again, now, she tells me. It's earnest, too. I walk her out with a promise, and lock up behind her.

When I'm in the work bathroom, I look her up on my phone and hover my thumb over the follow button on Instagram. It's only been 15 minutes since she left. Is that too early?

———

I watched Mulholland Drive on my IPhone in the bath. They filmed it on 7400 W Franklin Avenue in West Hollywood. I cut my losses. I heard my neighbour start to fight with her boyfriend through the walls just under 20 minutes in. I couldn't really make out what they were saying.

I don't really have an answer as to why this matters so much to me. I think it's just the fragments of a wish for something to feel entirely mine. I don't really like sharing. Let me have this, just this one thing, and I will stay down. I can be obedient. I will not ask for more.

———

In all honesty, I don't even know if I've been thinking about bartending. It feels like a moral falsehood to word it like that, I have been thinking about bartending.

I just don't know if casual conversation at my job is the best place to say that well, candidly, I thought about being a bartender once eight months ago, but I'm undeniably sure that ██ ███ ███ ████, and I didn't know if I would have been able to parse through that thought at the time, so I ultimately came to the conclusion that it would be in my best interest to give myself just one single, final thing, and nothing more. I shut my eyes as hard as I could, let my fingers brush along the frayed edge, and then never really thought about it sustainably again.

And sorry, yeah, I realize that this is too forward and kind of socially inept to tell someone that I'm having a conversation with for, well, now that I think of it, the first time, actually, but I find it shameful to lie to anyone. Or, not lie, sorry, I'm not lying to you right now — I guess I mean I find it shameful to not tell the entire truth.

I have eroded myself with this biblical fear that I am not good if I do not make a conscious effort to be honest. I have not been granted the privilege of abrasion. Oftentimes, I find myself on the other side of my own ever-thinning veil — a grand gnashing disturbance, the outside force, biting through something I wove together with bleeding hands. I bled for this. I did. The ten horns I see are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom.

There has been a conscious effort on my part. I shall not weaponize my words, for those words do not prosper. But it's hard to tend to (and weep over) this polished shield, to not say half-truths, and also turn these kinds of things into warm, palatable sentences primed to be arranged in casual conversation. And honestly, it's just bartending, so maybe it isn't that intrinsically linked to who I am/will become, so please forgive me if I was a little bit much there.

Anyways, were you paying with cash or card today?

Whatever. I guess what I'm trying to get at is that this statement, I have been thinking about bartending, isn't an untruth. I mean, I probably could be a bartender. It's not an impossibility. I sigh, and try to superimpose myself onto that one bartender I met last week — the one with the pin-straight hair and mandala tattoo sleeve and bright, bright blue denim overalls.

There's this drink you have, like, it kind of looks like Windex, I shouted rather ungracefully over the music, both hands palm-down on the bar top. Sometimes when I drink, I drink too much too fast. That night, and every other night, was one of those nights.

Oh, yeah, it's a seltzer we have on tap, she said, It's way too sweet, honestly.

Oh, okay, I said, nodding absentmindedly, I'll just get a vodka cranberry, please.

When she slammed the machine on the bar, I realized that she poured me a half glass of the seltzer when I wasn't looking. I stared at it apprehensively as it burned a hole into the mat, right next to my drink.

Try some, she said, smiling with her hands clasped together under her chin, her elbows on the bar top. I wolfed it down, and she leaned in just that much further to watch me. After I swallowed, my face scrunched up, and I laughed. She was right. It was way too sweet.

She was really, really nice. Maybe I would be a nice bartender, too.

———

Shuffle, and cut the cards into three decks, the psychic in front of me asks. I can barely hear her, and have to lean in every time she says something.

We're sitting in her tent — long panels of red velvet fabric are draped along the PVC skeleton to shield us from the cold. She has the face of someone who's been doing this for longer than I've been alive. I guess that means I can trust her.

You're not someone who wants expensive things — millions of dollars, or fancy houses, or anything, she says, you just want someone who sees you.

———

████?

Yeah? She says.

Could I ask you, I shake my head, and push my index finger into my left eye, something. Is that okay?

She doesn't respond. As much as I hate it, I'm very prone to take any long stretches of silence as a resounding yes.

How do you know when enough becomes, like, too much?

She sighs. It's a puff of breath that diffuses over the microphone, sharp at the crest.

I think when it becomes a chore, she says.

Yeah. Yeah, I guess, I say, and move my phone to lay flat on my sternum. I guess I've just been doing a lot recently.

You have to take it all day by day, right? She says. Something whistles, and howls, and rustles deep into the trees outside of my window.

I think I'm going to get a new laptop with my tax return, I tell her, after an inhale that catches twice. My words come out a bit brasher than I'd like them to.

As much as I hate it, I'm also very prone to try to fill any uncomfortable moments with whatever I can manage to find — a constant reroute, a shuddering divergence, a full stop. Breathe, open, talk about something.

Oh wow, she says, feigning surprise. She's really bad at it. It's just a computer, after all. What are you going to get?

I think I'll do something refurbished, maybe, I tell her, and twist my plastic phone charm between my index finger and my thumb. My cousin only gets refurbished things, too. She told me so when I was twenty-two.

Sometimes, I think about booking round-trip tickets to Stockholm just so I can give her a hug in the airport, and board the next flight home. Sometimes I think about telling her that I think about that. I usually don't. Logistically, the baggage carousel at Arlanda is too sprawling and clinical for any human emotion other than stock-business-formal. It also just feels deeply, deeply juvenile.

My dreams lately have consisted of incomprehensible emails, deep mid-January Northern European cities, and the staggering realization that I actually have two days left before I have go home and I really don't think I'll have enough time to get on a train from London and fall asleep in █████'s office before I do.

In these dreams, I'm usually with a British Airways representative on speakerphone, and their voice is a pitch too loud and garbled to an impenetrable degree. They tell me to try and change my ticket date through my booking tab, but their website user interface is non-human and incredibly obtuse, so I sit down on the floor of a very clean and very empty Liverpool Street Station, and cry instead.

The plastic is hard and lukewarm between my fingers — a characteristic of something that is remarkably dead, and invisibly sterile. I let it go.