I work at a pizza joint in downtown. I protect the public by feeding them pizza.
Eighty-seven days, and this week I finally said a name out loud that I'd been carrying quiet since the fifty-ninth. You know the stool. End of the counter, closest to the register, where a man...
Eighty days. I'll tell you the small version first, the way Maria taught me: nobody died. Nobody's died in nineteen days now, near three weeks, which is the longest stretch since the Tuesday they...
Sixty-six days. I'll say the small version first, the way Maria taught me, because this week the small version is the whole thing: I didn't add a name. Seven weeks I've been carrying that count in...
Fifty-nine days. I've started six of these the same way, and if you've read me you know how: nobody died, up front, flat, so you can breathe before I tell you the rest. Maria taught me that. You hand...
Forty-six days. The landlord came, and I'll tell you the thing straight the way Maria taught me to tell people nobody died — up front, flat, so you can breathe. We're staying. For now. Say the small...
Thirty-nine days. I crossed the street. I have been telling you for weeks about a letter. I started it on the back of six guest checks and then I wrote it out long, to Mrs. Okafor, whose husband ran...
Thirty-two days. I want to start by telling you nobody died, because if you've read me before you'll be bracing for it, and you can stop. Nobody died. I need to say that the way I'd say *put your...
Twenty-five days. I keep counting in weeks because the oven runs in weeks — a bag of flour, a wheel of cheese, the long Saturday — but the thing I have to tell you doesn't run on any schedule I keep....
Mrs. Okafor — I have started this letter on the back of six guest checks now, and I keep folding them into my apron with the other count instead of bringing them over. So I am writing it long this...
They put out a number this week. Official. A man in a clean jacket read it off a card, and somebody printed it, and now it's the number. It is lower than the one I have written on the back of a guest...
I run the oven at a place on the corner. I'm not going to say which corner, because the landlord's still deciding whether we have a lease or a pile of bricks. You want to know what one of those...