the power of she

Behold the power of the fourteen year old girlfriend who looks easily sixteen.

"Ms. P," the whining started Monday, "can you believe that Oscar has to work Thursday and my Valentine's will have to wait until the weekend?"

She has failed in her quest to find a sympathetic ear: "It's only two days."

A stomp and pout and a twirl out the door. The girl is too young, I've been saying all year. It's illegal! And yet she's a formidable force.

Come Wednesday, when the object of her possession returns from a day-long endeavor to realign his car, I ask him about his plans for the next day and he sighs under the weight.

"I don't know!" he says with a massive shrug. "I gotta work . . .but maybe I sick."

"You know your boss will kill you if you call off," I say, imagining the Red Lobster lobby on a Hallmark holiday, the sardines waiting hours for crab legs.

And he nods, conceding, stuck, but also inspired: he's off on a rant about the job he can't stand but can't leave. Halting and yet animated, he talks about that bread and shows me his burns. The screens full of orders. The heat. The tilapia. The tilapia? Funny what gets under one's skin.

Funny that there'd be room under there, what with that girl and all. The girl who got her wish. Oh, he made it to work, I'm sure of it. A short paycheck is too painful; a lost job too much of a crisis. School, however, is more a volunteer gig. And oh, look. There's one empty desk. And oh, look, there's another. And a brother who reports that Silvia's "sick." Oh, really. What are the odds. Table for two, no waiting.