“I don’t see it that way.”

“If it was fun, they wouldn’t call it work.”

“You’re wrong.”

“How am I wrong?”

“If I’m going to spend forty-odd years of my life working, I want to be doing something I enjoy.”

“You enjoy it down there, on the floor?”

“Yes.”

“With all those people.” But he said those people.

“Yes.”

He hasn’t touched his food in ten minutes. “Most of them are drug addicts, you know.”

“Dad.”

“It’s true.”

“There are worse things than drug addicts,” I argue.

He’s angry. “Yeah, like what?”

I look at him.

Don’t say it.

Don’t say it.

I didn’t say it.

You pussy.

* * * *

There’s not much to do back home. I suppose I could have borrowed Dad’s car and headed into town, but I didn’t feel like it. I sat around, watched TV, shot some stick. I went to bed but I wasn’t really tired. So I sat there in bed, staring at the ceiling. So I finally get up. And I get up and make myself a glass of chocolate milk with Hershey’s syrup. This is one of the best things ever. I hadn’t had chocolate milk in years. I drink the chocolate milk and I go in the TV room and turn on the tube. I start flipping around, land on Skinemax, so what the hell, I bang one out at one in the morning. I wipe my hand on the rug underneath the chair, then I start rummaging through the rest of the house. I’m not really sure what I’m looking for.

So I go in Dad’s office and he has a file cabinet there. I don’t remember that being there. So I look at it and there is obvious stuff. Life Insurance. Stock Certificates. Birth Certificates. There is a folder, it says “W.” I open it and examine the contents, a legal document. It is not too long, not too short. It has all those dashes and brackets and the text off to the side on the top, and the narrow margins. I don’t know why the lawyers do that. So I am seeing who gets what. I am reading it quickly, but too quickly to find myself in the document. It is complicated. He is leaving stuff to a bunch of different people. Finally I find myself at the bottom of the hill, standing on the sidewalk, and you wanna know what it said.

* * * *

Even with the long walk, I am still in the office fifteen minutes early. The kid is here already.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“You look like shit.”

“So do you.”

“You look like you were up all night.”

“So do you.”

“You got the breaks?” he asks.

“Working on it.”

I was hoping to get in early and do my own breaks, but the clerk beat me to it. The kid is built like a brick shithouse and is the second smartest guy here. In all likelihood he is going to make a shit-ton of money over the course of his career. You can tell. He has that look. He has the look of someone who falls ass-backwards into money. He is lucky. That’s actually how TRE interviews people. He asks them if they are lucky. If they say no, or they hesitate, they don’t get the job.