Half her shift gone already, and she hadn’t so much as stopped for a cigarette, driving herself, finding things to do when there were no orders to keep her busy. No doubt Bunky would think she was just brown-nosing Russell, trying to make him look bad in front of the boss. But the night was catching up with her, Mr. Jack Baggysuit having somehow managed to unravel all her defenses, the rough mantra of movement and distraction that kept the crap in her head and the ache in her muscles from taking hold and dragging her down.

“I’m taking a cig break,” she said, stepping past Bunky, handing him the soppy rag she’d been using to wipe down the bar.

“Oh. Yeah, sure,” Bunky said, sounding sullen and supremely put upon.

“Try not to hurt yourself for five minutes.”

As she walked away, Bunky mumbled, muttered something she didn’t quite catch, but enough meaning conveyed in the sound of his voice that the words didn’t much matter anyway. Russell looked up from the chessboard, one white plastic bishop in his hand, flashed her a grandfatherly scowl, his everybody play nice or else face, bushy white Gandalf eyebrows knotting like epileptic caterpillars.

Daria shrugged, dredged up half an apologetic smile that she hoped would pass for sincere. Tonight, it was the best she had and was going to have to do.

She fed two dollars and fifty cents into the cigarette machine, too much to pay, but it was her own fault for not having picked up a pack on the way over after practice. A booth she liked near the back was still empty, back where the two men who looked like professors and the black woman sat talking in their shroud of pipe smoke. Daria slid into the cool Naugahyde, fake leather the unlikely color of eggplant, and tapped the fresh red Marlboro box hard against the palm of her hand before peeling away the cellophane wrapping.

“Mmhmmm,” the woman said. “In the Sumerian and Babylonian fragments. The Semitic tribes were still worshipping their rocks and trees.”