Diner had a waitress with one leg. Peg was her name.

The short order cook was missing his right arm. His name was Peg, too.

I washed the dishes. Correction: I washed the dirty dishes. Got into a shit-load of trouble my first day on the job when I washed the clean dishes.

I felt a hand on my neck. A sticky hand. It was Sticky, the owner. He’s sticky.

“Fucking Sticky,” I said.

“Sorry, Peg,” he said.

That’s right. They call me Peg, too.

+

My mother was a school nurse. And my father was a hotel detective. And my brother John—fifteen years older than me, still living at home, and skinny, skinny, skinny—was in a wimp band called They Might Be Giants.

I asked my old man if I could get a cool haircut with my dishwashing money.

“Why would you want to go and do that?” he said. His face told me that he was about to say more. I waited a moment, and this is what he said: “A man with a cool haircut stands out in a crowd. A man who stands out in a crowd has a greater chance of being accused falsely of a crime that he did not commit. Studies—multiple studies—show that so-called eyewitnesses to crimes often connect the crime that they witnessed to the most recent stranger whose appearance was differentiated from that of the standard face in the crowd.”

My old man went on to say said that he felt the world above him now. So different from when he was young. When he was young he felt as if he were standing on top of the world.

“You must feel that way now,” he said.

I gave him my best shrug. He sighed like only a hotel detective can sigh. Upstairs, we heard John drop his accordion. I shrugged again and my old man sighed again. He was getting dressed to work the overnight shift at the hotel, which always brings on the sighs. He wears a bellhop uniform as cover. He put on his tasseled fez, red velvet, gold fringe. His fez is tallest among the bellhops.

“Are the other bellhops also hotel detectives?” I asked.

“You kidding me?”

+

In addition to missing his right arm, Peg the cook has a messed up face. Not all of his facial features face in the same direction. Direct eye contact with Peg the cook is out of the question.

He hollered over from his fry station that I was using too much hot water.

“What’s it to you?” I said “It’s not like you make the hot water.”

Peg called Peg the waitress into the kitchen and they brought me to the utility room. They pointed to the hot water heater.

“Open the hatch,” Peg the waitress said.

Inside, dancing within the blue flame, were miniature versions of both Pegs. At first I thought they were dancing in the flame. But no. They were wrestling one another. The mini Pegs in the flame were whole, no limbs missing. They seemed younger, too. They were really battling. It was impossible to say which Peg was more furious. They appeared to be an equal match.