Bill was woken up by his alarm at seven in the morning. Just another Tuesday, only he’d picked up a double shift. Overtime was the only way to truly make money as a cop. He was still half asleep as he shuffled to the kitchen in his boxers and started up the Keurig—time for his first cup of coffee for the day.

*

Darrell was woken up by his alarm at seven in the morning. Just another Tuesday, only he had to work open to close at Red Robin. Open to close shifts weren’t typical for his position as a FOH manager, but his GM wanted to stay at the beach for another day. Darell knew the favor wouldn’t be returned, but he hoped that, one day, it might lead to a recommendation to run his own store. Darell was still half asleep as he shuffled into the living room and packed a bowl of Cali’s finest.

*

Bill sat at the kitchen table, drinking his coffee and waiting for the caffeine to kick in and motivate him to get ready. He scrolled Facebook on his phone and saw nothing but posts about police, police brutality, and advertisements for Thin Blue Line apparel. Bill suddenly had to take a shit. He finished the last sip of coffee and headed to the bathroom.

*

Darell sat on his couch and hit the bowl, waiting for the THC to wake him up and motivate him to get ready. He scrolled through Facebook on his phone and saw nothing but posts of funny memes, bands he liked, and advertisements for weed-smoking devices. The THC hit him and he suddenly had to take a shit. He cleared the bowl and headed to the bathroom.

*

Bill got to work at eight in the morning. He stopped to grab a cup of coffee from the break room before heading to his desk. His partner, Jim, was already at his desk, a half-finished cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee in view right next to an extra chocolate-covered donut reserved for Bill. They alternated days picking up breakfast on the way in.

“Ready for a long one?” Jim asked.

Bill just held up his styrofoam cup in answer.

*

Darell got to work at eight in the morning. He sat in his car for a minute and hit his cannabis vape pen three times. He glimpsed Joe, the opening line guy in the kitchen, taking dabs in his ride. Darell laughed to himself. They both knew that each of them smoked, but because of fraternization rules, they couldn’t smoke together. Darell waited until Joe finished before getting out of his car and unlocking the back door to the restaurant.

“What’s up, D?” Joe and the rest of the employees all referred to him as “D.” Joe had a huge smile plastered on his face, and they both knew why.

“Just another double shot of paradise,” Darell answered as Joe laughed. They’d worked a lot of doubles together.

*

Bill and Jim responded to a domestic dispute call. Noon seemed a little early for this kind of thing, but nothing surprised Bill anymore. The man and woman were both shitfaced. This address had received no less than fifteen 911 calls in the last two years. The woman had bruises, the man bleeding from a cut on his arm, but things appeared to have calmed down by the time Bill and Jim arrived. Jim talked to the woman while Bill questioned the man.

Bill took himself back to his freshman year of community college. He and his girlfriend at the time were both extremely drunk when she’d found a text message from another girl in his phone. She’d thrown his phone at him and it smashed into pieces against the wall. He’d blacked out with rage and hit her. By the time the cops came, they were crying and holding each other. One of the officers pulled him aside and talked with him. At that moment, Bill decided he’d wanted to become a cop. He’d never allowed himself to become that drunk again.

No charges were filed in his case, and no charges were filed in this one, either.

*

Darell was doing dishes during the noon lunch rush. He had to fire yet another dishwasher, the fifth in the last two months, but it was hard to blame them. Eight bucks an hour to scrub filth while getting soaked with scalding hot water wasn’t much of an opportunity or a life. As he cleaned out pans of honey mustard and ranch, Darell thought back to when he was a full-time dishwasher.

Darell had been the star of his high school baseball team and had a full scholarship to a D1 school that was part athletic and part academic. He’d been a straight-A student and had great SAT scores. He’d used cannabis even back then and worked as a dishwasher. On the way home from picking up a quarter pound of cannabis from the brother of a kid on his baseball team, he’d been pulled over. He’d been selling small amounts to people at the restaurant along with friends from school so that he could smoke for free and save money since he knew he wouldn’t be able to work when baseball started in college. While the charges were eventually dropped to simple possession after a year of court postponements and drug classes, he still lost his scholarship and never went to college. He’d become a line cook, then a server, then bartender, then eventually a manager. A manager who still washed dishes when he had to.

*

Bill was three-quarters of the way finished with a 24-ounce Red Bull when he saw an old Honda Civic drive by with a brake light out. He pulled behind the vehicle and thought he smelled a whiff of marijuana. The driver of the car started driving erratically, so Bill flipped on his lights and pulled the vehicle over. Jim was already running the plates—no warrants or anything obviously dangerous on the car owner’s record. Bill took a long swig and finished off the Red Bull.

It was another young college kid, scared to death. The car reeked of marijuana. Bill kept it real with the kid, and the kid responded in kind. There were approximately two grams of a green, leafy substance along with a bowl. Bill decided to be cool and broke the bowl into pieces, throwing the pieces off into the woods. He gave the kid a simple possession ticket and allowed him to go on his way.

What Bill couldn’t know was that the kid’s dream had been to work for the FBI as a computer programmer. He was at the top of his classes in college, but with that simple possession on his record, he would never be able to work for the FBI. Instead, he’d turn into one of the greatest hackers in American history.

Bill climbed back into the cruiser and Jim laughed. Neither of them thought that weed was a big deal, but the law was what it was. Bill tried smoking in high school, but it just make him paranoid. He didn’t understand why people loved it so much.

“Dude, your hands are shaking,” Jim said as Bill put the cruiser in drive.

“Two cups of coffee and a giant Red Bull before 2 p.m. will do that to you, sometimes. I think my heart is about to beat through my chest,” Bill responded. Both officers chuckled.

“5-hour Energy next?” Jim asked with a knowing smile.

“Only if you’re buying.” Bill headed toward the convenience store.

*

Darell’s favorite thing about the cannabis vape pen was that he could hide in the office and hit it while he put in inventory. After a lunch rush spent in the dish pit, he was both sweating and seriously behind. Three hits later and it was all good. He was zoned in as he input all the numbers. He’d always been good with those.

He walked out of the office and came around the corner to the expo line where he saw Joe sliding Josie a grilled chicken salad with at least two servings of bacon on it. Darell already knew it hadn’t been rung in, but the looks on both of their faces confirmed it. He knew Joe had finally gotten in there the previous Saturday night—even though Darell was a manager, he still kept up to date on all the staff members’ social lives, especially with each other.

“Hey, D!” Josie started, trying to act normal. “Good job with the dishes today. You look tired. Want me to make a fresh pot of coffee?”

“Thanks, Josie, but I don’t drink coffee—it makes me jittery. And I’m sure I’ll find that salad with the extra bacon rung in when I do the discounts later.” Darell let the statement hang while the two new lovebirds looked at each other.

“I was just about to—” Josie began.

“I’m just fucking with you. Don’t do it again, though, or I’ll have to write you up, Joe.” Both Darell and Joe knew that he was never going to write Joe up for anything. Line cooks who actually showed up and got tickets out close to their ideal sell time were way too valuable. If he fired Joe, it would take at least a year to replace him. Fuck food cost and the salad. Plus, Darell was happy at the moment. Three hits off of the vape pen were just right.

*

“Wake your ass up!” Jim said as he punched Bill on the arm.

“Chill! I was just resting my eyes,” Bill responded, defending himself.

“Eat your burger and drink that Diet Coke, then we’ll stop at Starbucks.” Jim nodded in the direction of the coffee giant located at the other end of the strip mall.

The two officers were enjoying Red Robin burgers after an eventful rush hour. They’d responded to two accidents, handling a middle-aged woman crying hysterically over the damage to her brand new car and a teenager with a compound fracture of his right arm. The injury looked gruesome, but luckily neither of the accidents caused life-threatening injuries. Both officers knew that the last five hours of their shift were going to consist of paperwork dealing with both accidents. Jim suggested that they eat since both of them were crashing hard. Followed, of course, by quadruple shots of espresso from Seattle’s greatest contribution to American capitalist culture.

*

“I’m really sorry, D. I just totally forgot their appetizer,” Shaunna apologized for yet another mistake she’d made.

“Maybe you should spend less time hiding in the back on your phone and more time remembering your tables’ orders.” Darell was way more frustrated than he should’ve been. The look on Shaunna’s face told him as much. She was about to burst into tears again. She was a sweet girl, but she just didn’t seem cut out for the service industry life. It was guaranteed that she’d mess something up on every shift she worked.

The dinner rush was busier than expected due to multiple large parties walking in. Darell typically put his best servers on the parties, which left Shaunna with four tables—double the amount the managers agreed her limit was. She did get on her phone a lot, but so did everyone else. If he wrote her up, he’d also have to write up the nest servers he had. Darell needed to get to the office and take a couple of hits from his pen. With dinner volume dying down, he could head back there and do paperwork until close.

*

“This has been one hell of a shift. Let’s grab a drink at Brixx to wind down,” Jim suggested as the two officers headed toward the locker room to change back into civilian clothes.

“Alright, I’m off tomorrow, anyway, but you know I don’t drink much.” Bill usually kept to a strict two-drink limit.

“Of course, partner. That’s why you’re gonna drive.” Jim smiled and tossed Bill his keys for safekeeping. Jim was known to have a few too many and still drive anyway. It was one of the reasons Bill agreed to have drinks: he wanted to keep his partner safe. That and buy one of the buy-one-get-one-free pizzas after ten.

*

“Brixx tonight?” It was a text from Carolina, the manager at Longhornn Steakhouse next door.

“I’ll be there around midnight,” Darell replied. She was good company both outside work and in bed. They weren’t together, but when they happened to close on the same nights, they usually ended up in the same bed together. Her best, mostly. She claimed his apartment smelled like cheese and bachelorhood.

“I bought you a bowl from the gas station,” Carolina texted. This made Darell smile. His only reservation about staying at her place was that she didn’t smoke and therefore had nothing to smoke out of. The pen was nice, but he’d been smoking a bowl before bed ever since he got off of probation years ago.

Darell put aside company policy and asked Joe if he had a gram he could buy. Joe said he’d see what he could do and showed up in the office a minute later with some weed in a to-go ramekin. Darell handed him a twenty, but Joe tried to refuse.

“I’m still going to write you up for that salad that never got rung in,” Darell said, joking.

“Alright, gimme the twenty, then.” Joe laughed as he took the cash.

*

“Two vodka Red Bulls and a Jägerbomb.” Jim ordered for both of them as soon as both officers sat down at the bar.

“And a buffalo chicken pizza and a four-by-four,” Bill added. He was hungry again.

Jim took his Jägerbomb and was already sucking the bottom of his drink before Jenny, the beautiful bartender, could even ring in the food.

“Men and women beating and stabbing each other before lunch, potheads driving around like it’s not still illegal, women driving like shit, and teenagers changing the music instead of paying attention to the road. Working these doubles is a headache,” Jim lamented. It was a pretty good recap.

“It’s a messed up world we live in,” Bill agreed. He took a sip out of the Red Bull can. He’d asked Jenny if he could have the rest of it after she made their drinks. He honestly didn’t like vodka ruining his Red Bull.

A pretty woman in a Longhorn Steakhouse shirt sat down at the bar. Bill could tell that Jim was about pounce—he was always trying to be smooth with the ladies—but she was saving a seat for someone named Darell who Jenny also seemed to know.

*

Darell sat in his car, hitting his vape pen over and over. He tried to keep it to three pulls at work because concentrates tended to sneak up on him, but after work it was another story. He planned on walking into Brixx with eyes redder than a traffic light, a grin plastered on his face. Mission accomplished, he thought to himself as he looked at his reflection in the rearview mirror. He put the vape pen in his pocket along with the ramekin of bud before walking inside.

“Heyyyy,” Darell said, drawing Caroline’s attention toward the door as he made his entrance.

“My little pothead,” Caroline said, laughing at how obviously high he was.

“What can I get you tonight?” Jenny asked as he sat down.

“A giant water, a buffalo chicken pizza, and a four-by-four.” Darell grinned as he gave her his order. “And don’t expect to share. You better order your own,” he said at Caroline who pretended to be shocked. The last time they’d done this, she tried a piece of each and he’d complained about being hungry all night long.

“Good choices,” Bill said to the stoned guy sitting next to him as a food runner dropped off his order.

“But do you dip it in ranch or blue cheese?”

“Two slices into the blue cheese, six into the ranch,” Bill answered.

“Were we born to be bros?” The guy asked with a laugh. “The name’s Darell. I work at that circle of hell they call Red Robin. I just climbed out.” The guy held out his hand.

“The name’s Bill,” he said as he shook Darell’s hand. “My partner, Jim, and I actually ate one of your devilishly good Royal Red Robin burgers earlier.”

“Partner as in police partner, not—” Jim added, laughing. Bill watched Darell’s cheeks drain of color.

“Don’t worry. We’re off duty. And neither of us really care about pot,” Bill said.

***

Darell felt a wave of relief wash over him. The pen and ramekin of cannabis in his pocket suddenly felt hot and heavy as he flashed back to his arrest before college. He didn’t hate cops, but they still made him nervous.

“I don’t know how you all sleep after drinking those at this time of night.” Darell nodded toward the vodka Red Bulls the two cops were drinking.

“I’m pretty sure that we’re now immune to the effects of caffeine,” Bill answered.

“I feel that,” Darell replied. “I can’t drink the stuff. It makes me feel jittery and gives me anxiety.”

“Yet you do illegal drugs?” Jim asked. “I know it’s not heroin or anything, but it’s still an addictive drug.”

“I bet that if you both stopped drinking caffeine tomorrow, and Darell stopped smoking weed, you’d all be irritable and have headaches,” Caroline added.

“It’s not the same,” Jim replied as he chugged the rest of his drink, dismissing the idea.

“Alright, let’s do it,” Bill answered. “I’m off tomorrow, anyway. I won’t drink any caffeine.” He actually felt his body begin to sweat when he thought about going without his coffee and Red Bull.

“Dammit, Caroline,” Darell said. “Alright, let’s do it.”

The two men shook hands.