Chapter 10: Tip Jar

I read it twice on the sidewalk.

Effective immediately meant the rest of this semester's tuition was due in nine days.

Hudson read it over my shoulder and said a word I'd never heard him say.

"He did that between the bourbon and the door," I said.

"He did that before you climbed on the chair," Hudson said. "That email was written this afternoon."

The next morning Emmylou marched me down to Broadway.

She drummed in the house band at a honky-tonk across from the Ryman, three stories of neon and boots.

"They need a waitress," she said. "The last one quit because a bachelorette party bit her."

"Bit her?"

"Just a little. Wear long sleeves."

The bartender looked at my hands, then at my face.

"You carry plates?"

"I can learn."

"You've got till lunch."

I learned by lunch.

By Friday I was working doubles, ten in the morning until two at night.

I carried brisket and fried pickles and buckets of beer up and down three flights of stairs.

At four every afternoon the bartender let me take the stage between bands for a tip-jar set.

Three songs.

A pickle jar on the stool with a strip of tape that said WRITER, NOT A THIEF.

Emmylou had written the tape.

The first day I made eleven dollars.

The second day a guy from Ohio put in a twenty and asked me to marry him.

"She's taken," Emmylou yelled from the drum kit.

"I'm not taken," I said into the mic.

"She's being annoying about it," Emmylou told the room.

At the end of the bar, a tall man in a pale blue shirt kept his eyes on his club soda.

Hudson came every night at eleven and sat on the same stool.

He never asked when I got off.

He just drove me home at two, five under the limit.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Second Life: Dumping the Scum from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.