3. Freedom Fries

"Today I worked an entire shift without eating any french fries."

-Lucy

Lucy waited tables at a local cafe near her university. To work there, you had to have a really big attitude, a really cool tattoo, or armpit hair. She only worked night shifts because she was attending classes during the day. Three men frequented the cafe painting the rainbow of alcoholism. First there was the nameless, homeless, drunken hobo with a cowboy hat. He would come in hootin' and hollerin' and cursing everyone to hell; the kitchen boys would have to kick him out of restaurant every time. Then there was Jim. He'd sit at the bar and drink 3 pitchers of Bud Light and order a plate of celery and and carrots. Jim would flirt with the waitresses and insult the customers.

"May I have a styrofoam cup so I can take my glass of wine to go?" asked Lucy's female customer.
"Sure" said Lucy, "I'll be right back".
"What a lush" mumbled Jim at the bar.
"SHHHH!!" said Lucy, "Someone might hear you".

Another night, Jim threw a wild card out for bait and Lucy asked him where he came up with such nonsense. Without hesitation, he answered "ether." Jim believed that we are all human and neither race nor religion surpassed humanity. He called himself a Darwinist and with all drunken conviction rallied for camaraderie as the underlying theme of evolution. Lucy played the devils advocate and asked "what about competition?" She was a biology major but she knew that Jim was onto something.

Larry came in every night at 6:30 since 1978 and drank two pitchers of beer. The first pitcher of Budweiser, the next one served as two halfway. He only drank out of a small cup so his beer wouldn't get warm. He sat right in front of the fan, except when it rained. Lucy would chat with him while Larry criticized the absurdities of Townsville before the dinner rush hit. Larry pointed out the escort service the fat capitalist was running out of his building next door. He stared in silence when the alumni strolled by in their alma mater "uniforms" of maroon and gold on their way to the football game.

"Why do they glorify a child? He's a kid, not a gladiator" Larry demanded to know.
"Because they need someone to believe in" said Lucy.

Until he was thirty, Larry drove potato chips bags in trucks across America . Then he became a nurse in the neonatal intensive unit in the Townsville Hospital. Larry and Lucy loved to talk about Kurt Vonnegut and Denver and the shortcomings of Caribbean Nights at the Cafe. Tuesdays were always dead because the Cafe fired their steel drum band and no one knew about their 25 cent wings. The kitchen boys would come outside and smoke a cigarette and complain about how they made the special sauce for no reason because the only asshole that would come into the Cafe on a Tuesday and order the most expensive thing on the menu was the owner of the restaurant. Meanwhile Larry would collect pistachio shells in his cap and dump them in the hanging plants on his was out. The juniper plant next to the fan enjoyed the same diet as Larry for 40 years, beer and pistachios.