“Hey. Are you hungover, Sally? Can you come to work? I have to make deliveries and there’s nobody else to work out front until after lunch. The bakers can’t go out front and serve, you know. It’s the union.” Her soft, young face was grim with disapproval, the anxiety that I might inconvenience her, and the disgust at what seemed to be the aftermath of a problem with drink or drugs.

I let the door swing open and turned to find my yellow uniform. She leaned in the doorway, tapped her own elbows, and watched me. I was tousled, smeared—the alcoholic slut.

“Don’t you want to … wash up?” Pat was her name, I think.

We walked down the grimy posterior of Beacon Hill toward the corner. Prime location for a donut shop, directly across from Massachusetts General Hospital. I had managed to put on shoes, and by some miracle, my hair was out of my face.

“No more cheese rolls,” I rasped to a customer from behind the counter. Tears rusted my vocal cords.

“I’m too tired to get you any more coffee. Go away,” I snapped at a sassy intern.

“You are too fat,” I muttered, glaring at a big-butted college girl holding a Rollo May book in a library binding under one upper arm.

“What?” she said. “I want a dozen maple bars.”

“You are too fat!” I shouted, my throat aching. “Don’t you know nobody will share your bed if you are too fat? Go away. Don’t eat for six weeks and you’ll be fine. Go away.”

Mr. Chesbrough, the head baker, emerged through the swinging door from the kitchen. He’d been watching. I always called him sir. He liked me.

“What are you doing?” He spoke to me softly as I scraped the donuts from the display trays straight into the garbage. Sugar, glazed, chocolate, and butterscotch donuts slid into the big plastic garbage pail.

He stuck his arm out, blocked me from grabbing more. “Better lie down,” he said as he led me along.

“You are an anti-fuck manufacturer,” I said to him. “Too many donuts—no more flesh because there is too much flesh.” I giggled. “You’re a goddamn Nazi, handing out poisonous anti-fuck treats to innocent children.”

He deposited me in the chair inside the office. Mr. Chesbrough asked for the name of my doctor. He was kindly, but worried.

“You seem to me like you’ve been smoking marijuana, but if you say not…” I hardly listened. “You were throwing my whole night’s work into the garbage, and I am telling you that you are either stoned or drunk, drugged solid it looks like…”

There was a big office paper cutter on the desk. The long, machete-like blade was up, waiting. I hadn’t noticed it before. Had no idea it was there.