“It stops on the corner,” I said.

“Go hang that bag up.”

“You always say that when something’s wrong.”

I got the peanut butter down and made him a sandwich, and he ate it standing at the counter watching me, and neither of us said anything else about it.

When he went to the front room, I took the two papers out of my jacket and laid them side by side where the lunchboxes had been.

The promotion form, creased in half, its effective date typed as the eighth of August.