Once I was back in my comfortable, normal clothes, I headed off to the bar and met Lori. One nice thing about working here was that employees got drinks for half price, so I ordered one right away. I told the bartender my employee number, and he logged the purchase into the computer, where the cost would be subtracted from my tip account.
I'd been getting tips fairly regularly, but hadn't really been paying attention to them that much, except for the one time tonight when I got a 50-dollar chip. That had been so unexpected that I didn't really know what to do, and probably embarrassed myself with the number of times I said "thank you." Most of my tips were $1 or $5, with the occasional $10 and rare $20. Of course, waitressing wasn't where the big money was. According to Beth, it was the poker table, which I didn't want to go anywhere near right now.
Anyway, I leaned over the counter (glad to be tall enough to do that for a change) and looked at my account balance on the screen. What I saw shocked me--it was almost a thousand dollars! And that didn't even include my salary, which was really peanuts by comparison. I got $15 an hour for all of 20 or so hours this week--that was probably no more than a couple hundred dollars after taxes.
Damn, I thought. I was already making more than my regular job at the Bureau paid, and according to FBI policy, I got to keep this money! After all, I'd earned it with legitimate work. The only time an agent had to turn in earned wages was if they turned out to be acquired illegally, and even then, they usually got most of it back.
Pretty soon I was going to be swimming in cash!
Of course, it hardly mattered to someone like me. I wasn't really looking to get rich. Since I had no life outside the Bureau, and no expensive hobbies or vices to waste my salary on, I'd built up quite a balance in my bank account over the past few years. It was why I could do things like drop $3K on a new computer any time I wanted to.
Naturally, the Bureau actually liked people like me on the payroll, because it meant I couldn't be bought or bribed.
I went back over to the table where Lori was sitting. "What was that all about?" she asked curiously. "What did you see on the computer?"
Observant girl, I thought. "I just looked to see how much I'd made in tips so far," I told her. "Almost a thousand dollars! Can you believe it?"
"Yeah, me too!" she admitted, a huge grin on her face. "We made that much in just a week! And I already took out what I made last week, too. I knew we'd make good money, but not this much!"
"What are you going to spend yours on?" I asked.
"Oh, I don't know. My car's about to die, so in a couple of weeks, I'll have enough to put a down payment on a brand new one. I've never owned a new car before! I've always been stuck with some used POS."
"If you need any help buying it, let me know," I offered. "I know some tricks to use on salesmen. Those guys love to have a single woman come in, especially if there's two of us. They think we're easy marks. We'll play good-cop-bad-cop and show 'em a thing or two!"
"Sounds great!" laughed Lori. "Now, I told you, now you tell me. What are you gonna do with your newfound wealth?"
"I've already spent it," I admitted. "I bought a new computer. I haven't been able to get online since I left LA, and there's some new games I want to try, too."
"Oh, I never got into computers much," she said. "I wouldn't even know how to turn one on."
"They're easy, especially now," I replied. "Back when I was growing up, it was different, but Virtual Windows does everything for you. You literally just point and click and off you go. I'll show you sometime."
"Oh, no, don't bother," she insisted. "I really wouldn't be interested."
Odd, I thought. Everybody knows how to use computers nowadays. Was Lori afraid of them? Well, we all have something we're afraid of, I thought wryly. "Okay, forget I mentioned it," I said. "Maybe you can help me with something, though. You know how Heather is so into this shrinking business?"
"Yeah," she answered. "That's so weird! I had to do some real mental exercises just to get used to the idea, but she just dove right in. I can't tell if she's lucky, or just sick in the head!"
"Ha!" I laughed. "But I wanted to ask you about it, not her. You seem to have adjusted to this a lot more easily than I have. I mean, Heather just likes it, but I know you didn't, at least at first. How'd you acclimate yourself so easily?"
"Oh, it wasn't tough," she told me. "Ever tried any self-hypnosis?"
"Nope," I answered doubtfully. I'd heard of that, and it sounded like a lot of pure hokum. I'd never been a believer in that sort of thing.
Her voice sped up a little, and Lori seemed eager to tell me what she knew, as though she were proud of herself. "Well, I was reading a book about it the other day," she told me, "and it said you can use the technique to get yourself used to anything! I don't know if I actually managed to do it 100 percent right, but it sure worked for me!"
"What'd you do?" I asked, now extremely curious, though inwardly I really doubted if it would work.
"Well, basically, it was kinda like meditation," she explained. "According to the technique, you just lay back and imagine yourself working up to whatever it is you want to do. Like, if you want to experience jet pack racing, you imagine what it's like to lift off and fly along, slowly at first and then faster and faster. Know what I mean?"
"I think so, but it sounds like just daydreaming to me," I replied dubiously.
"It is, kind of," she went on. "You're supposed to put on music and get rid of all your distractions. Me, I did it in the bathtub. I laid back in the water, closed my eyes, and imagined myself small, walking around in my apartment."
"And that actually helped you?"
"Some," she continued. "After the bath, I tried going out and laying on the floor, looking up at everything, and pretending I was small. You know, it actually worked! I got used to the idea a whole lot faster!"
"That was it? You just pretended?"
"No, I tried some other things, too. I went outside, and laid down in the grass, looking up at the sky and pretending giants were walking all around me. Then I thought about them touching me and picking me up. It really helped just imagining it. I'm not nearly as scared any more.
"But then the thing that really helped most was after the sun went down. I just lay there on my back, looking up at the stars while they came out, and thinking about the whole universe. I wanted to be an astronomer when I was growing up, and I got to be thinking about all the galaxies there are out there--thousands of them, you know? All of them millions of light years apart. Do you realize just how huge the universe really is? Just how insignificant and tiny we really are, here on this dust speck of a planet?
"What if the whole thing, all the stars and galaxies put together, is just the nucleus of an atom in a much bigger universe so big we can't even contemplate it? Well, think about that for a few minutes, and you'll find that being shrunk just isn't all that big a deal any more!"
"Damn," I said, somewhat astounded by Lori's words. "You're in the wrong business. You should have been a philosopher!"
She laughed a couple of times, looking almost embarrassed at the praise. "Sorry, it doesn't pay enough," she replied. "And try putting that on your resume. There just aren't that many job openings for philosophers, you know!"
I chuckled at that. "You've got a point there," I agreed.
Well, I thought, what she'd suggested wasn't a bad idea, actually. It certainly couldn't hurt.
And besides, talking with her suggested another possibility that Lori would never have considered, something that, with any luck at all, I'd be able to try out the very next day.