Jeremy

Jeremy is the seedy-looking manager who uses his authority over Anastasia’s job to discipline, touch, threaten, and ultimately dismiss her. His confrontation with Grizzly begins over a pair of broken glasses, but it exposes a larger imbalance: Jeremy controls Anastasia’s wages and employment, while she is left weighing the danger of resisting him against the need to keep working.

Identity and Position

Jeremy appears from the back of the bar after Anastasia has dropped and broken her glasses. The narration describes him as skinny and seedy-looking, and Anastasia’s recognition of him identifies him as her boss. He immediately frames the broken glasses as a matter of workplace discipline, scolding her about her hands and saying that their replacement will come out of her paycheck. Her protest that she needs the money and that the glasses cannot cost much does not change his position.

The glasses make the power imbalance tangible. To Jeremy, they are both property to be replaced and a reason to charge Anastasia; to her, the threatened deduction matters because she depends on the wages. He does not respond to that dependence as a reason for leniency. Instead, he turns the small accident into an occasion to assert control over what she earns and how she behaves at work.

Confrontation with Grizzly

Jeremy’s reprimand becomes physically threatening when he raises a hand toward Anastasia. Grizzly catches his wrist before he can strike her, causing Jeremy to wince and cry out in pain. Jeremy protests that this is bar business, but Grizzly challenges the claim that abusing an employee can be treated as ordinary workplace authority. The intervention stops the immediate blow; it does not remove Jeremy’s power over Anastasia’s job.

After Grizzly lets go, Jeremy rubs his wrist and mutters curses. When Grizzly asks what he said, Jeremy backs down, tells him to have a good night, and directs Anastasia to clean up the mess and return to work, adding that they will talk later. The retreat is temporary and practical: with Grizzly present, Jeremy does not continue the confrontation, but he preserves his authority over Anastasia and postpones the dispute until the customer is no longer the focus.

Grizzly expects Anastasia to thank him or insist that she could have handled the situation herself, recalling her earlier feisty manner. Instead, she is pale. Her reaction complicates the apparent rescue: the threat has been interrupted, but she still has to remain at work under the person who raised his hand to her. The scene makes the difference between stopping an assault in the moment and changing the conditions that leave her vulnerable to her boss.

Workplace Control and Retaliation

Jeremy’s treatment of Anastasia continues after Grizzly has left. As she cleans the counters, Jeremy comes out from the back and slaps her on the ass. She pretends to ignore it, reasoning that if she accepts the familiar groping, he may forget his dispute with Grizzly. Her response is not evidence that the contact is welcome: it is a calculated attempt to keep her job by managing Jeremy’s reaction. She is also anxious about staying late, fearing that he will make her work overtime bent over his desk. The narration presents that fear alongside her recognition that she cannot always afford to be choosy.

When Jeremy asks about her night, Anastasia lies that it was all right and that there was not much to do, then theatrically calls the bikers stingy. The performance gives him an explanation for the evening that avoids discussing what happened between him and Grizzly. Jeremy rejects the complaint about the bikers and says that he is taking the money to replace the glasses, with the rest serving as grievance money because she has caused him more trouble than she is worth. He tells her she can go with her biker boy and not come back the next day. His account converts retaliation into a supposed financial charge, while his dismissal makes clear that her continued employment is also at stake.

Dismissal and Consequences

Anastasia’s stomach drops when Jeremy tells her not to return. She pleads that she needs the job, then tries another appeal: she tells him she will do anything, invoking his knowledge that she has made such offers before. Jeremy briefly appears as though he might relent, but instead shoves her away. He then dismisses her sexual value in degrading terms and threatens to send her off with a black eye and a violently painful sexual assault if she comes back. The threat transforms the earlier raised hand and unwanted touch into part of a broader pattern of coercion, not an isolated argument about damaged property.

After Jeremy has fired her, Anastasia has enough cash for one final night at the motel where she has been staying, plus a sandwich and a bottle of water from a gas station. Having finished the food, she tries to make the water last as she walks along the highway, with little hope of meeting anyone soon. That immediate precarity gives the dismissal its consequence: Jeremy’s decision does not end with an unpleasant exchange at work but leaves Anastasia without the job she said she needed and facing an uncertain night on the road.

Narrative Role

Jeremy is depicted through the effects of his conduct on Anastasia: the pay deduction she contests, the hand Grizzly has to stop, the touch she endures to protect her employment, and the fear behind her attempts to placate him. The scene’s movement from broken glasses to lost wages and then to a threat of violence shows how a seemingly limited workplace dispute can expose the reach of a boss’s control over an employee who has few practical choices.

His retreat in front of Grizzly and his later retaliation also create a sharp contrast. Jeremy will yield when directly confronted, but that moment does not make him safe for Anastasia; once Grizzly is gone, Jeremy resumes touching her and then uses his control of the job to punish and threaten her. The episode therefore marks the limit of the intervention: Grizzly can prevent a blow, while Anastasia remains subject to the economic and sexual coercion that shapes her next steps.