THE HIRING AT DALLAS ENTERPRISE
The news item appeared on a Tuesday evening.
I was at the kitchen table with my laptop — editing a piece for The Meridian about a Chicago gallery opening, the kind of work that required enough attention to occupy the front of my mind while the back of it did whatever it wanted. Liam was asleep. Jasmine was in her studio corner with her sketch pad. The flat was in its nighttime quiet.
I'd open the local news in a second tab.
The habit of a city still being learned — I read the Chicago news the way I'd read Portland news when I first arrived, looking for the specific texture of a place in its own daily account of itself. I scrolled without particular purpose.
The item was on the business page.
Small. A paragraph. The kind of thing that appeared because a
