They didn’t notice it was my picture on the wall.

I had put on sixty pounds since, my hair is unkempt. Really the only thing that remains of my legacy is a wall-sized modeling photo and the name of the restaurant, a place nobody would go to if they weren’t stuck in an airport.

They even sell tee shirts here. Like, what really is the point.

It was a good business move, at a time when my minimal fortune needed to be cultivated and prosper after I stopped getting those sweet checks for an album nobody really remembers anymore. Sure, I’ve had my time in vogue, if you’d call it that, for about a year before I was forgotten. Now it’s just layovers and residuals for me. I’ve been encouraged to take up painting, star in a show or two on daytime TV, anything to keep me relevant. I had publicists, and they worked their asses off. They’re gone now, whether they were shitty or I was unwanted, either way it ended the same. A few investments here and there. Nothing I have to really pay attention to.

I should have gone for the car dealership.

The bar is sticky under my arms, and this margarita is atrocious. Surely it’s $11, served by a dour bartender who had seen better days, and a bored teenager who checks his phone obsessively in his waiter’s kilt thing. Probably sick of my face, of the tee shirts, of the overly-sugared drinks that create snail-streaks on the countertop, wiped away half-heartedly by the patrons just enough to leave a smudge of paper napkin behind.

Who the fuck comes here.

Sometimes one of my songs plays over the tinny speakers, which stutter as they short out like the clacking of an old film reel. It doesn’t make my song sound that much worse. Above all indignities on the warped, crusty menu is the cocktail specials with names like Jonny’s Punch, Jonny-Rita and the most egregious, Mo-Jonny-to. A self-insertion pun that doesn’t work when spelled, and is impossible to pronounce. I wonder if they sell any, or if people just roll their eyes and order a mojito without debasing language or their thirst. It seems like a thing that you have to be drunk already to order properly. Cleveland airport deserves better.

Why Cleveland? Something about affordability. A good opportunity.

My fries are soggy. It’s six p.m. and the place is only half full. I’m flying coach to visit my mother in the hospital. Maybe I should bring her a tee shirt.

I could change this place if I wanted, but then I would have to care. Or, I’d have to prove that me and this little restaurant didn’t age the same way. Sometimes it’s easier to sip your syrupy margarita and wait for your next flight out of here.