The Old Blog in the Desert

The news came over the dusty bar TV like a joke told by a drunk priest, something about the government shutting down again and the national debt hitting thirty-eight trillion dollars.

The bartender, a former accountant named Lorna, just snorted and kept polishing a glass that had been clean three swipes ago.

“Thirty-eight trillion,” she muttered. “Hell, I can’t even afford my rent.”

At the bar sat a man named Ray, nursing a beer. Outside, the D.C. streetlights flickered in rhythm with the old neon sign that read OPEN, though nobody inside really believed it.

A couple of furloughed federal workers sat two stools down, arguing quietly. They looked like ghosts in government-issue suits, mid-paycheck and midlife.

One of them, a man with a thinning hairline and a half-loosened tie, said, “We’re thirty-eight trillion in the hole, and my boss still sent an email about diversity training.”

The other laughed, sharp and tired. “Man, they could train us in how to live off air. That’d be useful.”

The TV droned on with a clip of the Treasury Secretary smiling like a man trying to sell life insurance at a funeral. He said something about cutting waste and boosting revenue.

The announcer mentioned inflation, borrowing costs, and other villains hiding under the national bedstead. Ray stopped listening because the words sounded like rain hitting a tin roof, loud, pointless, and far away.

He thought about his ex-wife. She used to balance the checkbook every Sunday night, tongue between her teeth, eyes squinting at the numbers.

Said it made her feel in control. When she left, she said she needed “stability.”

Ray had laughed at that. Stability was just the next thing waiting to fall apart.

Lorna turned up the TV volume. A professor from an Ivy League university was trying to explain that debt meant higher inflation, lower wages, higher costs, and fewer dreams. “You want a house?” he said. “Better start saving in the womb.”

“Too late,” Ray murmured, not realizing he’d spoken out loud.

At the end of the bar sat a man who looked like he’d been there since the Nixon years. He was watching the crawl on the screen, eyes glassy.

When it said the debt grows by $69,713 a second, he started counting under his breath. One…two…three…, and then he muttered, “There goes another two hundred grand.”

Lorna poured him another whiskey, heavy on mercy and light on the ice.

“I remember when a trillion sounded big,” she said.

“Now it sounds like a typo,” Ray answered.

They laughed together, the kind of laugh that doesn’t reach the eyes.

A young couple came in, probably fresh out of college. They sat in the corner, whispering over their phones.

Ray overheard something about mortgage rates, something about waiting to have kids. They were planning a life on quicksand, and he wanted to tell them to take what they had, buy a camper, and head west before the numbers swallowed them up, too.

But he didn’t. You don’t save people from hope.

The professor on the TV was still talking: interest payments, $14 trillion over the next decade, debt climbing faster than anyone could count. The ticker rolled past another half-billion like a slot machine gone wrong.

Ray finished his beer, left a crumpled ten on the counter, and stepped out into the shutdown night. The street was quiet save for the hum of streetlights and the distant wail of an ambulance, someone else in debt to time.

Somewhere, the clock ticked, and the national debt climbed another hundred grand. Ray lit a cigarette and thought, “Maybe someday we’ll all get the bill.”

Then he laughed, soft and bitter, because deep down, he knew, they already had.