Sherri followed Honey into the office with the tinted interior window that overlooked the café. The clock said noon. Arthur’s timeliness and obliviousness made Sherri feel a painful tenderness for him. He hadn’t seen a thing, she could tell by the expectant look on his sweet, awkward, familiar face. He stopped and stared at the ceiling, no doubt considering how the place had been constructed—he liked to talk about joists, fluting, and eaves. “See that guy?” Sherri pointed him out to Honey. “The skinny one? Will you go out and ask how you can help him, and when he says he’s looking for me, can you tell him that I had to work an off-site at the last minute?”

“I tell him go to hell!”

“No, he’s not bad. Just … can you make him disappear?”

“Sure, baby.” Honey called everyone “baby.” “You got too many men?”

Sherri smiled, remembering what she’d been told shortly after she’d started—that she would need to arrange shifts for all the boyfriends she had. “Tell him it was a last-minute sort of thing.”

“He don’t need a story!”

Sherri peered through the window and watched Honey approach Arthur. She felt terrible. Arthur was there for one reason: to see her. But so was Mitch.

Honey returned. She clapped her hands together twice. “Bye-bye!” She flipped the blinds shut, and just like that, Arthur was gone.

Sherri sank into the desk chair. “Thank you.”

“You’re tired, baby. Here.” Honey opened one of Bill’s drawers and pulled out a mirror and a ziplock bag and set them on the desk. “You need a bump.”

Honey sprinkled some white powder on the mirror, grabbed a razor blade, and began to tack tack tack tack it against the surface. Sherri was nervous. There were rules against drug use, including the rule Sherri had set for herself. Coke scared her. It seemed so frightening and unnatural to sniff powder up your nose. Technically she could get fired for this, but everyone did it, and besides, Honey was her manager’s wife! What was one time, just to see what it was like? Honey pulled her gorgeous hair back, pinched one nostril with her finger, leaned over, and efficiently vacuumed one of the lines up her nose. It looked easy enough. Sherri’s legs shook. “Now you go.” She stepped aside, handed Sherri her rolled-up dollar bill, and put her hand on Sherri’s back. When she leaned over, she saw her reflection in the mirror. What am I doing? she wondered—about the coke, about Arthur and Roberta, about her life. She sniffed hard. The texture was like cakey powdered sugar. It didn’t burn, but ran into the back of her throat, where it felt like liquid metal.