The quiet after the last joke

I just walked out of a hotel bar in Bakersfield, the kind with sticky floors and a jukebox that only plays country from 1998. The set was bad—flat, like air leaking from a balloon—but the bartender remembered my name. Not because I’m famous, but because I asked for water with lemon every time. That’s the thing about night shifts: you become a ghost with a routine. And sometimes, when the lights dim and the city stops pretending to be awake, you notice how much your shoulders carry. Even dogs know. One just looked up at me in the parking lot and sighed like he’d heard it all before.