Grace got me into the all-nite deli. She's working tonight. I stop by around 4:00. It's a short walk. The place is hopping. She's got Air bappin' on the boom box loud enough to cover the classic rock that pours out of the ceiling all night because the manager locks the radio inside his office. You have to do something.
 
She knows that two songs competing for dominance can be distracting, even disturbing, especially for the early morning customers, but she also knows it's an improvement over Boston. Also she can't hear it from her side. She forgets. So the French girls keep singing my bayonet is a pruner day of lipbalm, my bayonet is a pruner day of lipbalm, over and over. As long as nobody's waving the creamer at her, she's content.
 
"Good morning, Mister!" she tweets in her distinctive cartoon voice. "Six hundred forty two dollars!  Have a dreamy day!" 
 
Just in for coffee but happy to help: garbage out, sweep the lot, stock the cups and napkins, mostly just watch the hologram from the other side of the stage: the same characters in the same sequence, same moods, same routines.
 
He's Marlboro Lights, she's Marlboro Lights 100's soft pack. He's Marlboro Menthol Milds hard pack. She's Marlboro Reds. He's Marlboro Ultra Lights Menthol 100's hard pack. Here's the ice man, always gets a bag of ice and wants a separate receipt. Then two packs of Marlboro.
 
Coffee is chaos. Arms thrusting, grabbing the 200-degree coffee pots to Cat Scratch Fever is a Duh duh Duh my bayonet is a pruner day of Cat Scratch Fever net deDuh duh Duh. my bayonet is a Cat Scratch--
 
Spilled coffee and sugar have made syrup on the floor. Somebody threw down napkins that are sticking to shoes. Swooping, I kill the French girls and sanitize the area. There's a perceptible ahh. I'm noticing all the tattoos on the women, old and young women, mostly on thin women, but all types of women, most nearly hidden because it's Monday. In a lull I ask Gracie if I can see her 'toos.'  
 
"My what? You mean my 'tats?'" 
 
Last week she corrected 'tits' to 'boobies' at least twice, now it's 'tats,'  not 'toos.' She shows her only tattoo, a few inches above her elbow on the front of her bicep. I tell her it's cool. I thought it was a horrible bruise, but I don't tell her that. It's impolite to criticize anything that's permanently attached to a person's body.
 
"Someday," I say, "look out, stand back, it's going to be boom time for tattoo removal."
 
Her jaw falls open. "I would never get my tattoo removed! What are you talking about? Removed? Are you from Mars, Mister?"
 
I pull back with a chocolate donut and big tall creamed up coffee. I never drank it with cream before, but that's how everybody drinks it here, and I can see why. It's creamy.
 
I'm looking for two girls, one tall, one shorter, with winged tats on their backs and rings of barbed wire circling their thighs, and guessing their mothers probably have tattoos too. Seems like most all the women around here have tattoos. And they'll show you.
 
Growth industry, tattoo removal. Coming right up. That's me, thinking, walking home sucking a Coke, but the thing is you have to be a dermatologist and have the laser equipment. Or can you just have the laser equipment? Could you work out of a tent on the beach somewhere, with any music playing, including no music at all, just me in the rubber gloves and her in the bikini, a laser, a glass helmet, her screams of pain.
 
I'm happy where I am.