She woke at 11:40 on a Sunday with her phone at 4 percent and her jaw sore from clenching. In the crisper were two Modelos she had put there the night before, on purpose, the way other people lay out gym clothes. She drank the first standing at the open fridge, in eight swallows, and counted them. By the ninth minute her hands were steady enough to text back.

She had a word for this and the word was maintenance. Her shift started at four; she was upright by one, showered, pleasant, forty minutes early. Nobody at the restaurant had ever seen her sick. What she never said out loud was that the second Modelo had stopped being insurance sometime in March, and that she now bought them in twelves.