She did the books for the hardware supply from eight to four-thirty and then she did ours from six until whenever it got done, at a card table with a legal pad, because we did not have software and would not for three more years.

Fuel by the gallon.

Tolls.

Which customers paid in thirty days and which ones paid in ninety and which two would only pay if she called them on a Tuesday.

She built that company.

I want that on the page early and plainly, because there is a version of my life that I told for about eight years in which I built it, and that version is available to anybody who looks at a logo with my name on it.

I drove.

She made it a business.

The song is from the first winter.

There was a night in January of 2011 when a customer went under owing us eleven thousand dollars, which was more money than we had ever had at once, and Carmen sat at that card table at one in the morning going through the same column for the fourth time as though the number was going to be different.