As she entered, she realized that she was hearing a blender of sorts, turned up to its highest setting. Philip stood at a counter beside a shiny, metallic device. A chunk of skinless pink flesh lay in his right palm. More pieces were spread on a cutting board in front of him. Tonya could see bands of white fat running through ropy red muscle. Philip dropped a piece into the machine, force-feeding it with the aid of a plunger. Pink and white ribbons spiraled from holes in a round plate at the grinder’s end.

Tonya gagged at the sight. Eating the proverbial sausage and knowing how it was made were different things. She wanted to enjoy one without the other.

She retreated to the basin, put a fresh head on the mop, and resumed working. She slapped the soapy water onto the still-dirty part of the floor and then drove it toward the baseboard. After, she swirled the mop in a figure eight, dancing with the dingy tiles, wishing for music. Her wireless headphones were somewhere in her storage closet, at least ninety minutes away by public transit. Tomorrow she’d venture out to Bushwick and try to find them, she told herself. The shift would pass faster with tunes.

At the moment, there was only the screech of the grinder. Philip worked with efficiency, feeding a new meat chunk into the machine before it could finish its prior morsel. As a result, the sound never stopped. It droned on, too loud for white noise yet too consistent to keep her attention.

Tonya was nearly finished with work when it finally stopped. In her peripheral vision, she watched Philip escort the pan of extruded meat to a counter. He covered it with plastic, labeled it with a Sharpie pulled from his jacket pocket, and then placed the pan inside the walk-in fridge.

As he turned from the door, they made eye contact. His unmasked expression was tight, as if he were annoyed that she was still there—or that she’d been watching.

She pointed to the meat grinder. “Do you want me to take that apart and wash it?”

Philip reached toward his ears. He removed two plugs and then brandished them, indicating that he hadn’t understood.

Again, she gestured to the machine. “Want me to handle that?”

“I got it,” he said, his face relaxing. The redness from earlier had faded into a graying pink, like expired beef. “Caribbean spiced meatballs are on the menu tomorrow. We’ve got a bunch of leftover flank steak from dinner service. Home diners don’t want to eat as decadently as they do when they go out.”

He approached the grinder. “I have to adjust my ordering.”

“I remember having those meatballs,” Tonya said. “Delicious.”