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sometimes.’
    He stopped talking when he saw the waitress coming towards them with the food. He drank the rest of his beer as she set the plates on the table. He ordered another shot and beer and pushed the food to the center of the table. His hands were unable to stay still. His fingers shook horribly as he tried to get a cigarette from the pack. The girl looked at her food and slowly began eating.
    ‘I mean, look at Vegas. The population’s almost tripled in twenty years. That means from when you were born it went from around 400,000 people in the whole county to maybe 1,700,000 now. It was a dump to begin with, then you add all the fucking new people. And the Mexicans come in like fog, cover everything, get in everywhere. They fuck up their country and then they come here. Our border controls are fucked. The INS is fucked. They should stay and fix their own fucking country. You have to do something, don’t you? Pretty soon they’re gonna ruin everything. Leaving dirty diapers in parking lots, pouring motor oil down drains, throwing trash in the reservoirs, ruining houses, neighborhoods. The fucking rich people start it all and then they go and live in the goddamn suburbs in gated communities. They never have any contact with them in the first place except when they need their lawns mowed or their houses cleaned or food served. Put all the Mexicans back in Mexico. And the blacks? They have no respect for themselves. Their men abandon their women. Look at my old neighborhood. The Mexicans and the blacks moved in and now it’s a fucking cesspool. My grandma got so scared when her neighborhood went to shit that now she lives in an old folks’ home. My grandpa built her goddamn house by himself in the 1950s. The whole thing for her, just the way she wanted it. Brick by fucking brick, after work he did it. He was a damn welder. All day long he was busting his ass for someone else and then he comes home and builds her a house. She hated leaving, she loved that house, but there were three murders on her street in less than five years. She had to get an alarm system. My dad put bars on her windows. In the end everyone was too scared about her being there and finally we made her leave. You don’t see that happening in white neighborhoods, do you?
    ‘My dad used to take me outside on the lawn and grab me by the neck and push my face an inch away from dog shit if I ever mouthed off. He must have done that till I was nineteen. He’d take me out there in my underwear, before school, it didn’t matter. I hate that fucking cocksucker, but still, I have a job, I pay taxes, I have a retirement plan, I’m saving for a house. My car’s insured and I vote. I have a clean record. I give money to my mom. I have money in the bank. I mow my aunt’s lawn and visit my grandma. So how can you say that the blacks are forever ruined ’cause they’ve had a rough go?’
    The waitress came back with his beer and whiskey and set it on the table. He drank the shot and watched her walk away.
    ‘She looks like Faith Hill,’ the girl said and forced herself to smile.
    ‘Who’s that?’ Jimmy said and lit another cigarette with his trembling hands.
    ‘The country singer,’ she said and ate the chicken fried steak with mashed potatoes and carrots. She looked out the window at a trucker and a woman walking towards the parking lot. The man had a gut and wore a cowboy hat. He had his arm around the woman.
    ‘You ever think about being a truck driver?’
    ‘I’d hate sitting on my ass all day. It makes you lazy as hell. Faith Hill, which song does she sing?’
    ‘“Breathe” or something like that. It doesn’t sound country to me.’
    ‘I can’t eat,’ he said. He put his cigarette out and took a long drink of beer.
    ‘You need to rest.’
    ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘You know we should move. Head up north, for real this time. Get a place in Montana, somewhere like that. Away from all this.’ He put his hand up in the air, waving until