Now available for pre-order from Amazon, Working Stiffs. Here’s a look…
Chapter Three: I Can Quit Anytime I Want.
Coffee.
Coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee. Where was the fucking coffee?
We had coffee yesterday, didn’t we? I rummaged through the last cabinet in the kitchen, the one where we kept the dishes, as if the packet of coffee might have snuck under a chipped plate or snuggled down in one of the three mismatched cups. All the other cabinet doors hung open, having been raided, pillaged, and left for dead.
No coffee in the plate cabinet, either.
It’s a law—federal, state, and natural—when in doubt of an object’s location, ask the woman. “Chelle!”
“Joe!” Her voice came through loud and clear from her permanent place of residence in the john. In a three-room government apartment with Xerox-copied walls, we did not need an intercom to communicate.
“Where’s the coffee?” While the question traveled across time and space, penetrated Chelle’s hard crust of annoyance and generated a response, I checked under the sink. Nothing except for a bottle of liquid soap (so old, it had cemented itself to the cabinet floor), some Drano, a can of unopened greenish powdery substance (for cleaning?), and an empty box of scrub pads.
Somebody should throw that out.
Texanation 