“But you wrote it down. You cut that little piece of cardboard very carefully and found a Magic Marker and wrote all the words down in capital letters. Then you covered the whole thing with strips of invisible tape so the words wouldn’t get splattered with chicken grease and you punched that little hole in the top and threaded that shoelace through it and then you climbed up there, above the wings, balancing and maneuvering your fingers through the electric wires, tying the knot so that it would hang dead center just below the lamps in plain sight of anyone who might come in, right at eye level where you knew the eye would be seduced into reading it and the mind would then turn it over, replacing for just a second any thought about food or hunger with a new thought that might turn them toward the actual plain fact of living and away from dreaming about the stock market or their girlfriend or their failed marriage or their history grades or even Armageddon. And in that flashing moment some mysterious light explodes through their whole body, sending signals to a remote part of themselves that suddenly remembers being born and just as certainly knows it’s bound to die. You did that, Dicky. That’s what you did.”

“Yeah, I guess,” he mumbles, and shuffles back to work, giving me a little good-bye wave with his pale fingers flicking. The soft clacking of computer keys starts up again. The snake has completely devoured the egg; the huge bulge of it inching midway down its body. The Asian students are cleaning up their booth; wiping red sauce off the Formica tabletop. Brett Favre throws a bullet into the end zone. A frantic female vocalist enters the background music with no pretense of developing a melody line. I stare down at my basket of wings. They seem far away. I have no idea what town I’m in. It doesn’t matter. I have no idea what town I’m going to. I have no plans.

The Company’s Interest

THE COMPANY’S INTEREST