Buzzfeed, Boys, Black Magic

nobody has a good job

I wasn't scheduled to work tomorrow, so I didn't have an excuse not to stay out late. Besides, I hadn't convinced Rafi to stop seeing me yet.

We went to the local diner. After we ate our pancakes but before the waitress brought out the check, Rafi excused himself to the bathroom. Part of me wondered if he were going to dine and dash.

I watched the bathroom door until I got bored of it and glanced around the diner. The red-skinned trucker one booth over double-fisted a fruity umbrella drink and a cup of coffee. The manager- a skinny woman with smoker's lips and a 90s perm- dragged a chair beneath the TV hanging in the corner. Her nylons ripped as she climbed onto that chair and whacked the TV with a broom. The screen flashed from a Spanish-channel soccer match to CNN. The manager scratched her fluffy head at some footage of the latest violence in the Capitol. A senator had been shot. Blood was everywhere.

"Well," a gawky-looking waiter said behind me. "I guess nobody has a good job."

I averted my eyes as another senator fell to the ground. I couldn't tell you if it were a bullet or panicked exhaustion that took him down. I didn't look. The white-blue ceiling light above our table flickered, and my phone jumped in my hand. I read the text message.

Okay, here's a thought I'm sure escaped you. Have you told him to quit smoking? If no, that will do it.

Then a second message:

Nobody likes a nag

Abby's common sense. Classic. I don't know why my mind jumped to chemtrails at the festival. As if that would make Rafi think I was crazy. Most of the world was crazy. We were all used to that. But try to change a pothead, and he'll bolt. I would too, I thought, if somebody tried to change me. A replicant is a replicant, and a pothead is a pothead.

I would tell him that he needed to get clean. That twenty-two is too old to get wasted. That he should start thinking about putting his money away for a wedding, or a down-payment on a house. Or his future kids' college tuition fund-

"Let's go, Lee."

Rafi had appeared before me. His wrists pressed against the edge of the tabletop. A friendship bracelet rode up an inch on his arm. I caught a glimpse of a white tan-line.

"What about the check?" I asked.

He reached around to his back pocket and pulled out a receipt.

"Already covered it," he titled his head toward the front counter. "It's about eleven. Want to get an early midnight-slushie?"

I didn't say no. And as I rose from my chair, my eyes caught his. Sleepy, sweet, starry. His eyes were the eyes of good guy. Even if he were a rich kid frat boy with a pot habit.

At that moment, there was no part of me that wanted to nag him.

***

"What even is a good job?" I asked. This was an ostensibly rhetorical question.

"A job that doesn't make you evil," Rafi answered anyway. "Or believe in evil."

"What even is evil?" I took a sip of my slushie. "Who came up with that?"

"Pfft," Rafi exhaled. "If ya wanna talk like that, dude, I got a joint in my pocket. Just take a drag."

A squad car had pulled into the Wawa parking lot. Otherwise, I might have said yes. I think I would have said yes. Moth in my mainframe, weed-induced anxiety migraine or not.

"I mean, I'm not a fucking communist," I said. "It's good to want things and want to be better at things."

"Sure," Rafi said. "Have aspirations."