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Extrasensory perception can be a real bitch sometimes. Mainly when you’re trying to sleep. You set up everything in the apartment in just the right way: appliances uplugged, windows soundproofed, nothing that sounds or smells or feels funny, and then, inevitably, something upsets the balance. A spoon falls off the drying rack, or a cat scratches at the window, or the hippie downstairs lights her new scented candle that this time, will definitely let her find herself.
Or in this case, the phone rings.
I unstick my eyes and scrabble for the phone. There are nineteen significant deformities in the phone handle. Twelve are manufacturer’s errors. Three are unaccounted for.
Four are from me throwing it against the wall.
“Hello?” I manage to ask.
“Hey, Franklin? It’s me, Jeff.”
Jeff. Ah, shit. Shit. “Jeff? What time is it?”
“Three fifteen.”
“Three fifteen? In the morning?”
“Yeah, sorry. I just got off work. I, uh, I had a bad day.”
Three fifteen. It’s gonna take me another two hours to get back to sleep. But hey, if Jeff needs me, I need to be there. It’s what being a sponsor is about.
I grab a pack of smokes off the nightstand and light up. There are over seven thousand chemicals inhaled in cigarette smoke. On a good day, I can pick out each one. “Alright, well, what happened?”
He sighs. “So it’s Sunday, right? Our busiest day. And Maria’s kid has the flu, so she has to take care of him. And Gordon, his gout is flaring up. So we’re already short-staffed. So I have to help out with the dishes. And I’m elbow deep in scummy water, the bleach is giving me hives, I still haven’t had time to make the schedule for next week, and then Sammy comes in-”
“Sammy’s the waitress, right?” Be engaged. Take an interest in their lives. One of the program’s many helpful sponsor tips.
“Right, the waitress. She comes in, and she’s in tears, and tells me one of her tables wants to speak to the manager. And as I’m going out front, this woman meets me at the door. She’s pushed her way past the front staff to get to me, and she rails on me for twenty fucking minutes about how her steak is too well done, and how she had it sent back three times, and how the whore waitress backtalked her and has to be fired, and all I can think about is how easy it would be to slam her right through the wall.”
“Jesus, Jeff!” No, that was wrong. Don’t be shocked, don’t be judgmental. Another tip.
“I’m sorry, Franklin, but I just couldn’t help it! She made my waitress cry. Over food.”
“Alright, alright,” I say. I pull hard on the cigarette, letting the nicotine cool me down. “What did you do?”
“What I had to, Franklin! I comped her meal and apologized! And she wants a written apology from the waitress!” The voice shakes. “And Sammy spent the rest of the night crying, and I know tomorrow it’ll be the same shit all over again, and I just can’t stop thinking about putting my fist into that bitch’s stupid, jerkoff face!”
He sounds so defeated. “I just want to make it right,” he says. “This woman is toxic, you know? And all I can do is take her shit, everyone’s shit, day after day after day, and they all get away with it. I just want to make it right.”

“Listen. Jeff.” Firm. Sympathetic, but firm. “Maybe she had a bad day, alright? Maybe her kid is sick, maybe she screwed up at work. Maybe the divorce papers still haven’t gone through, and the only way she feels better is to spread it around with a shovel. The point is, you don’t know. You can’t know.”
“Or maybe she’s just a bitch.”
I drag on the cigarette. “Or maybe she’s just a bitch. There’s a whole lot of mean bitches and bastards in the world, Jeff. They get their kicks out of making waitresses cry. But Jeff… do they deserve to die?”
A heavy sigh. “No.”
“That’s right, they don’t.” God, the words take an effort. Fake, and awkward, two grown men talking like a parent and a kid. But the program is clear.
And if it feels even an iota less fake to Jeff, hey, it helps.
Probably.
I take another drag, let the smoke flow upwards and get tangled in the ceiling fan. “You have to see out of their eyes, Jeff. You gotta look at a big lump of hate and stupidity and know that there’s a whole person behind that. That every jerkoff that cuts you off in traffic, demands to see the manager and sits behind the desk at a DMV, is a real person. That we’re all sharing this world, the strong and the meek and the raging assholes. Hell, that’s what this whole program is about.”
“Yeah, I guess.” Begrudging. “I just hate it, is all.”
My turn to sigh. “Me too, buddy,” I say. “Me too.”

His voice turns nostalgic. “We had a hell of a ride, didn’t we? You and me, fighting block by block, all those years? Our names in the papers? Good against evil, for the fate of mankind’s soul.”
He can’t see a smile over the phone, can he? I let it creep out across my face. “Yeah, we did. It was simple back then." Firm, remember, firm. "But it couldn’t last.”
“We were so obsessed with good and evil, Franklin, but we never accounted for the everyday assholes.”
That one gets a laugh out of me. I can’t help it. There’s silence on the other end, and then he bursts out laughing too. And then we can’t stop, two grown men at three in the morning howling with laughter, tears running down our faces.
At least, down mine.
I grab at the desk, heaving for air. I can hear him gasping too. And then the only noise is us pulling our breath back, hiccups and wheezes with the occasional chuckle.
“Hey Franklin?”
“Yeah Jeff?”
A pause. “You know I never would have joined the program if you hadn’t first, right?”
I frown. “No shit?”
“Yeah, no shit. Honestly, I thought they were all cowards for hanging it up. Taking an easy out, you know? And then you joined up, and I thought you were weak. Hooked myself up to every television set in the city and let them all know it.”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Not my best moment. But Franklin… when you were gone, I had the run of the place. And it was good, for a while. But then it just felt, I don’t know, hollow. Empty.” He sounds hesitant, stilted. The words must feel so fake, so awkward to him.
It sounds just a little bit less fake to me.
“And then I sucked up my pride, walked down to the station in broad daylight and signed up. You can’t imagine how exposed I felt!”
“Bet you a dollar?” I say. “First week in the program, I kept expecting you to rip the roof off and come at me!”
We laugh again.
“And here I am now,” he says. “Proud manager of a chain restaurant, with my archnemesis as my sponsor.”
“Living the dream.”
“Yeah, living the dream,” he says. “Goodnight, Doctor Malevolence.”
I smile. “Goodnight, Captain Justice.”