I spent my day surrounded by bland bins and boxes, and I didn’t even care to know what was in them all. I drove around all day long, mostly routine, driving around the perimeter of the building, picking up bags – clear for paper, blue for plastic and glass, and black for garbage – and cardboard boxes and whatever else found its way to the designated stations where the crap was put, but every once in a while they’d send me a text and tell me I was needed somewhere else. Usually something had been spilled and I’d have to put on some protective boots and gloves and shit and clean it up. I didn’t know what it was, but it was something no one else wanted to deal with. I could have asked, but I didn’t. Maybe that’s what had happened to the last guy, one too many cleanups. I didn’t ask. I did what I was told until it was time to go home. It was an act I had to do every day. I couldn’t be myself. I couldn’t be myself around anyone.

No one knew me, really knew me. Except Froehmer. He knew everything and too much. I had to keep my mouth shut. I had to be somebody else every day. I wasn’t sure I could do it.

—

I was exhausted all the time. More mentally than physically. I tried to jump-start my brain; I found a copy of Karl Marx’s writings among Frank’s books. I tried to read it at night, but I couldn’t last more than a few pages at a time. Instead of a jump-start, it was more like a short-circuit. I would fall asleep sitting up, with the book in my hands. “Marx might have been wrong about communism,” Frank had said, “but he was right about capitalism.” It steals from the workers, steals the time a person needs for “growth, development, and healthy maintenance of the body.” Workers are nothing but fuel for the fire, the grease for the wheels of the machinery. I had always avoided it, and now I was stuck inside the machine and miserable, more miserable than I could remember.

“It’s designed to make you miserable,” Frank had said. “Capitalism only works if everyone’s unhappy. And they think they have to buy their way to happiness. It’s a fool’s pursuit, but that’s the way it’s supposed to work. The only way it can work. Everybody has to chase after something, and then be dissatisfied once they’ve got it and go chase after something else. We’re trapped by the pursuit of happiness, but it would all come crashing down if we all were actually happy.”

“Are you happy?” I said.