It was groceries for two people for most of a month.

It was the cushion, the only cushion, that kept a single bad week from turning into a catastrophe.

I thought about Chloe at home, about the careful budget I kept in a notebook, about how many hours of my life were folded into that envelope of tips, every polite smile and aching foot and late night, all of it counted out in cash.

And now I was being told to hand it over because two wealthy strangers had decided to steal a dinner and my manager could not be bothered to care.