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one cloudy eye, and pours more gin than tonic into your glass. Carlos and Lola stumble through the main entrance, so you dash off without tipping.
Seated alone in the back of the hall, you study your phone with counterfeit zeal, then accidentally make eye contact with Nan, a part-time cashier at the dollar store you co-manage. She spies you right away and rushes over.
“Hoped you’d be here. Didn’t see you at the ceremony.”
“Weddings depress me,” you say with a cheery smile.
“Becky and her husband are Goth. I thought that was kind of the point?” Nan drums the tips of her fingernails—obsidian, newly lacquered.
You don’t bother trying to explain the irony and instead mouth off about the hideous row of black Raven’s eggs decorating the head table.
“We painted them last night,” says Nan. “I did the three on the right.” She clutches your forearm like a bird on a branch. “Did you hear about Choolie?”
You shake your head. Stupid little Choolie. The unkempt woman who’d quit the store last month at the beginning of her second trimester. She was your first hire as a freshly minted assistant manager three years ago, a stringy-haired, mousy little suck-up who brought you fresh flowers for Boss’s day, shared her lunch when you’d forgotten yours; depressed over puppy-mill orphans on late-night tv, three year’s worth of community college debt, another wedding invitation, your mother’s advanced cervical cancer, a dead bird in the road, to make one.
“Broke her leg in a car crash four days ago,” Nan says as she taps the face of her phone. “There’s a fund for Choolie’s hospital bills. I sent you the link. Her baby’s okay.”
You marvel at the graphics on the site; the sizable amount of cash already raised; explain about the unpaid repair bill your local garage is taking you to court over; ask Nan to help you with a crowd-funding page of your own. She explains how rude it would be if she didn’t return to her date and excuses herself from your table.
You stand at the edge of the bandstand eating cake, watching the guy with the spikey dog collar tune his guitar, check his foot pedals, and dial in his