The mere thought of a night alongside the same old delinquents made quick work of this thrill. Hour after hour of smoking and boozing and jaw grinding and waiting for dawn with the skinnies sounded about as appealing as offering his scrotum to the deli counter slicer. What did sound enticing was the chance to turn this check into a lean pile of cash. He would find a way to back out last minute, a way to get back home to the computer, to Michelle, and arrange a time and place for them to get together. So, making a frown of approval, he told Al, “Cool.”

“Fuck me, dude. Tonight gonna be a good one.” Al was fidgety, how he always got when discussing weekend mischief or his newest get-money scheme. He went for another cigarette, but it fell from his fingers and off the edge of the loading dock. “Bet my whole paycheck I rail Meghan tonight.”

“Not happening.”

“Will, too, dude,” Al said. “You can watch for twenty.”

“Twenty says she can’t find that toddler pinky under all this,” Henry said, swatting Al’s stomach.

“Dude.”

Al was all appetite. Not an ounce to spare for something as trifling as wit, so he would never have cooked up a decent comeback, even if the Taystee semi hadn’t turned the corner just then. By now, Henry had learned to cheer this delivery with the others, its cargo promising a couple hours of easy lifting. Right now, though, racks of bread and crates of pastries were a disappointment. All of it too light, bagged air, when he was roiling with this newfound power. He wished it was a meat delivery instead. He would have pushed past the forklift, marched straight into that frosty trailer, then heaved the frozen slab of a split cow off its meat hook and slung the son of a bitch over one shoulder, strutting and whistling some lovesick ditty all the way to the butcher’s.

$17.41

The rooms closest to the motel office are all doubles—only twenty bucks more. Otherwise, she says, Henry is in the last vacant single, room 8, next door to the other occupied room.

As if the service charge wasn’t reason enough to despise her. That unexpected expense means he’ll have to find a few hours’ work before tomorrow’s interview after all. Lunch money plus the gas to get Junior back to school alone will leave them with pennies. And now this woman has bled him only to put them next door to whatever degenerate lowlifes—no room for doubt, he’s seen their cars—are staying in room 9. No wonder she’s used to being ignored. She is a hideous billboard of a woman.