Days you’re hungover, you punch in and fold napkins in a corner of the dining room that’s dim and quiet as a church, whose hush stills the beehive in your skull. You fold napkins, dozens and dozens of them, into sailor hats and sailboats. You fold napkins because you can’t break anything that will need to be swept up or mopped, because you don’t have to think. After years of being told to think, this not thinking is such a relief. In a restaurant, the body learns what it needs to. Each day you add another muscle memory until serving is like swimming. Soon enough, you stay afloat without thinking, balance cork trays of martinis on your fingertips. It’s all in the wrist. Each night on break, you order steak rare for dinner and throw the bone to the pair of stray cats that prowl yowling and yellow-eyed around the dumpster. The dishwashers pass a joint thicker than your index finger and teach you dirty words in Spanish and how to read the stars.
