Congratulations Busboy!

You’d have made waiter (you’re the only person in the service industry who has to “make” waiter, by the way) year ago if it wasn’t for your attitude and your skin. But you’ve been toiling from empty table to empty table, collecting at best scraps of tips.

The wait staff treats you like a second-class citizen, the kitchen crew like a retarded cousin, and you haven’t slept with a new employee in almost half a year. There’s no pussyfooting around it. Your life sucks.

The only respite you find is when your uncle Jackie stops by your workplace and gets a table in the section you’re cleaning. He always makes sure to slip you a bill in exchange for a little extra service, and you get some decent treatment from your co-workers for the night because they’re horrified of his mob connections.

Which is why Wednesday night is going to be pretty good for you. No one will be in the weeds and Jackie will be there with Tony, Guido and Rodanzo ordering meat balls and pizza pies and bottles of Chianti until about thirty minutes before closing.

He’ll give you a nice chunk of change and tell you to go after Casey, the new waitress who was serving them. Hell, he already charmed the pants off her for you, all you’d have to do is say that you’re his nephew and you’d be knee deep in pussy before sunrise.

Wow. That image is disturbing.

Anyhow, you’ll be riding high as you clean his table, humming The Killers to yourself, going over the approach you’ll use on Casey step by step, when you see that one of Jackie’s friends left his briefcase. You’ll pick it up intending to bring it back to him, good nephew you are, but when you get a quick sit down just before you change out of your work duds you’ll take a look inside.

In the case there will be money. Lots and lots of money in small bills: tens, twenties and fifties mostly.

You’ll see it all and you’ll get so excited you’ll start to hyperventilate a little, but then the reality of your situation will dawn on you.

There’s enough money in that case for you to live comfortably for a long time. Not forever, of course, but enough so that you could start a new life somewhere elsewhere no one knows you. Maybe one with Casey.

Of course, you’d still be unbearable, and if Casey agreed to come she’d leave you within a week, but we digress. You’re slow, so you’ll consider it.

The other option is to give the money back to your uncle. You’ll get none of it, of course, but you’ll get a pat on the head and he’ll know you’re loyal to the family. This option also allows you to avoid the grisly death that would no doubt follow any attempt to keep the money.

You’ll stand there thinking for upwards of five minutes, the most you’ve thought all night, about this topic until you decide to split the difference when Casey walks in and you ask her to come out with you for a drink.

She’ll say yes and you’ll pay for the evening with money from the case, thinking your uncle and his friends will be none the wiser.

The next day you’ll return the case to your uncle at his mafia headquarters and he’ll break your hand after he notices the missing money.

You won’t sleep with Casey, by the way. She’s Christian. Still, it was a fun night. You should try asking her out again. She might be able to stand you. Some of those Christian people are really gluttons for punishment that way.

Oh, and congratulations busboy. It’s this or temping, right?