Sylvia was committed to every part of the job—the vocabulary and color-coded graphs, the cheerful smiling. One day I walked into her office and found her standing between two men. Their faces were red, their voices raised, their ties loosened. “Where do you think electricity comes from?” one said. Sylvia caught my eye and made a slicing gesture across her throat. Come back later, she mouthed. I closed the door without making a sound.

Stella was interested in my job. Your work, she was always saying. I always said: My job. She was never asking about the things I wanted to talk about. My strongest impressions were of the strange hospital smell of the place, the small satisfaction of keeping my white sneakers and my bag lunch in two separate file drawers. I had four drawers in total. These were the things I appreciated, but they never felt like the right answers to Stella’s questions.

She asked, “Is it fulfilling?”

“How do you mean?”

“Does it feel stimulating? Challenging?”

“It’s not like making a painting or finding the cure for a disease,” I said. “But it’s not bad. People treat me with respect.”

I’d been thinking of it like this: I started at the same time every day and I knew when I was going to finish. I knew I was going to put a certain amount of money in my checking account at Wells Fargo Bank. These were satisfactions. I’d tacked two photographs onto the flimsy wall above my desk: one of Abe when he was young, holding Smoke in his tiny freckled hands; and a postcard of a spiky-sided cactus against a background of big puff clouds. The photo was from Arizona, not Nevada, but it gave me a feeling I liked. I tried to explain to Stella: I missed the West.

“You’re in the West,” she said. “This is as far west as you get.”

I knew she was right, but it didn’t feel that way to me.

“But what do you do all day?” Stella asked. “I mean, minute by minute?”

Abe was there, listening.

“A little of this, a little of that. Making sure the reports have all their pieces.”

“But basically, you just run the same program over and over again?”

“Come on, Stella,” said Abe. “What’s your point?”

She gave him a look—of surprise and also hurt—that gave me a rush of pleasure. It was a victory I couldn’t explain.

Abe asked better questions. He actually knew the place. “Do you have those free packets of oatmeal in your kitchen?” he asked. “They’re good snacks.” Once he asked about my low hour—when did I get really bored? His theory was that everyone had one. His was five to six, when other people started going home.

“But you’re liking it alright?” he asked.

I nodded. “To be perfectly frank, though, I miss the sun.”

I asked him why we didn’t have any windows. He said it had to do with the Miami branch. Someone jumped off the nineteenth floor and so they made a policy.