We spoke on the Saturday for an hour and forty minutes.

Dolores Amaya is sixty-one and has been in accounts payable at Apex for nineteen years and has a voice like someone who has explained things to a great many people.

She knew me the way you know a colleague’s wife — she had met me four times, at two Christmas parties, a retirement thing, and the funeral of a man from procurement.

“You wore a green coat at the funeral,” she said. “That’s how I knew you were a real person and not just a name on a card.”

The collection started in September. Everett’s manager put it around. The stated purpose was travel and lodging costs for treatment in Boston that insurance wouldn’t cover.

Fourteen thousand two hundred dollars, in the first round, from forty-one people.