[an excerpt from a work-in-progress]

We’re in a good rhythm, me and Jim and Jerome, lifting shovels full of steaming asphalt from the back of the truck Les is driving. It goes me, Jim, Jerome – shovel, shovel, shovel – don’t even have to think, just go. I can feel a small click in my shoulder every time I lift the shovel back up, but it’s always done this, even in high school. It doesn’t hurt though and I don’t think it’ll ever turn into arthritis or tendonitis, or whatever it was that made Herbert quit at the end of last summer.

Click, shovel, dump, click, shovel, dump, but Jerome stops to wipe his forehead and I don’t see it in time. Our shovels collide.

“Fucking, what the fuck?”

“Sorry man, sorry.” He’s a young kid, maybe 22 or something, good enough guy, and a hard worker.

Jim leans on his shovel. “You guys wanna break?”

I want to keep going, finish up at least this stretch, but Jerome’s sweating like a motherfucker. He takes off his hard hat and his hair’s all curly and plastered to his forehead – almost looks Italian, this kid.

“Any donuts left?” I ask, resting the handle of my shovel against the back of the truck.

“Les,” Jim calls out to the big guy climbing out of the truck, “you leave us any donuts, you lazy son-of-a-bitch?”

Les looks like a donut, one of the jelly filled ones, all round and super pale until the sun’s out, then he gets beet red. Always huffing and puffing and trying to get out of doing any of the hard shit. I’d give him the boot if I was Jim, except they worked together way back and Jim knows Les wouldn’t find other work.

[an excerpt from a work-in-progress]

I reek like cigarettes, but not in the good snap of a match, first drag way. No, from the way the lady just tucked in her chin and moved tables, it’s probably more the stale kind. Not my smoke, I want to tell her. I was out with the guys last night and have the same shirt on. I ran out of clean shirts this morning and it takes at least three hours down at the laundromat because the dryers are crap and you have to run them twice before anything’s even close to dry. The first time I didn’t know and it looked like my dresser had thrown up all over the place – boxers draped over the clock radio, jeans hanging over the TV. So fucking damp down here it takes days for t-shirts to dry.

I try to catch the waitress’s eye, but she’s busy windexing the pie case. From across the restaurant, Grace looks young, hot even, except up close you can see the lipstick bleeding into the tiny cracks around her lips. Smoker’s lips. Women get the raw deal on that one – guys get a cough, but chicks? They look old fast. And the nicotine turns their skin that weird pasty yellow they always try to cover up with makeup. They’re not fooling anyone. Not me anyhow. But I like her, Grace. She doesn’t really chat but sometimes gives me a beer if she’s opened the wrong kind for another table.

The menu has smeary fingerprints all over the plastic cover. Your basic shit – steak, burgers, fries, typical diner stuff. Sometimes, I get the liver. I don’t like it, not really, but Mom used to make Dad have liver at least once a month. Said it was good for the blood. I don’t know if that’s pure crap or what, but I figure it can’t hurt. I get it with a side of onion rings so it doesn’t taste too bad.

Today’s not a liver day though and I order a club sandwich. Grace doesn’t bother writing it down, just nods. “Pickle on the side, you got it.” She sounds like she’s chewing gum, but I don’t think she is.