Funny, the definition of degenerate. Nick s'posed maybe he was one, he'd swung in and out of living by the law until he'd made it across the line to upholding it. Not a lot of straight people out there in the world, people made all kinds of decisions because of what they had in front of them. Nick poured himself a cup of coffee, because he didn't give a damn how hot it was out, and nestled it between two palms. He grinned on cue, but his smile sifted like ice-melting in the coke glass, bobbed against the sides.
"You think I was worried about you coming around here?" He took a long, obvious sweep around the place, the quiet of the heat. Trouble was if you got picky over who you served, you were making less and less of a pay-check and he had the pension but he wasn't gonna turn down business. Nah, the three am crowd were OK, and the bar tipped out custom on his doorstep when they closed up shop on the dot. "I wasn't worried. You do what you gotta do. Long as no one's shooting up in my booths or in my bathroom and they aren't fucking on the furniture, I don't care. You make money anyway you can. That's how it works."
He watched her work out her reasoning between her teeth, like she was trying to tie a knot in a cherry-stem. Coulda told her he'd figured that out the second she'd spat out the new state of affairs, because Nick could put two and two together fine. He leaned on the side of his chair and looked her over, wrists and inner arms first because there were two reasons Nick didn't want nobody around: drugs, and unreliability. He had two kids reliable as the sun going down every fuckin' night and the sweet haze on her clothes was fine as a customer.
"So here's how it's gonna be," he said into the air-conditioned silence, as the ice in her glass became cherry-colored slurry. "I'll talk to Gwen, she fixes the schedule. You gotta minimum number of hours a week, you get tips on top. We pay decent, and Caesar gets paid enough he don't split tips, he's salaried, because," he lifted his voice enough to make it to the kitchen, "He's an ornery sonofabitch who wouldn't work for me otherwise." Clatter of pots and a noise of agreement from behind the door. "You show up high, you get sent home. You show up high more than once, we're done. Everyone gets take-home whatever we don't sell, you split it between you."
He rubbed his hand across his chin, looked at her steady. "That's my conditions. What's yours?"