Jubilation. Fireworks and champagne and orgasms. By the time Henry makes it to the truck, he’s dizzy from clenching all his gristle in order to have stopped himself from pirouetting out of Alex’s cube and cartwheeling down the channel of desks and heads, then leaping out the front door and into the sun. Alone now, he can let loose. He squeezes the steering wheel to anchor his torso, bucking and thumping on the driver’s seat like a rodeo steer. No crow, no river, but still he screams and screams.

All he’s got to subdue this thrill are his fists, flattening elation against the steering wheel, the dashboard, pound after pound after pound. He’s got to collect himself, has to get back to thinking what’s what. First things first, he’d told Alex, and so first of all, he’s got to figure out what that first thing actually is.

The phone. He’s got to get it charged with juice and minutes. After all, Alex said by Friday, so—who knows?—they might be calling him sooner. What if they called him later today? Not a minute to lose. He digs the flip phone out of the door’s side pocket, then unwinds the charger’s cord like some mangled yo-yo. For safekeeping, he stuffs the cigarette burner into his front pocket, then plugs the charger into the dashboard and sets the phone in the cup holder. The instant the engine turns, he’s flooring it, racing out of the industrial park and into the first gas station he can find.

The gas station shop’s window is a collage of cigarette and energy drink posters, their colors as bright as shouts. In a strip of glass between two ads, his reflection flashes. It stops him. No doubt about it: he is visibly stronger, bolder, sharper. He is radiant. He loosens the tie and undoes the shirt’s top button, lending him an air of chic nonchalance, and in this condition an idea comes to him as if by a breeze, because in this condition there’s no way, nohow, anyone could tell him no.

He goes directly to the back corner, the fridges. Twenty-four ounces of the Champagne of Beers for $2.99 is a fair price, well worth it, because it’s very much deserved. Anyway, he’s already bought that can of Chef Boyardee for Junior’s dinner. The beer along with the five bucks’ worth of minutes for the phone, he assures himself, are an investment. Not just to remain reachable for the call from Horizon Lines, but also for Jorge with this morning’s forty dollars.